Evolutionary Fitness

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

Bryan Applewood calls Evolutionary Fitness the diet that really works and describes Art DeVany as a half-naked 71-year-old with 8% body fat and the testosterone levels of a boy of 18:

So how do you live the Arthur life?

First, you free yourself of the homeostatic delusion. We are not made to eat regular meals or take regular exercise, nor are we meant to suffer chronic stress in an office. Our ancestors ate when they could and kept moving. Most of their life was stress-free, but occasionally they would be subject to acute stress in the form of an attack by a predator. So Arthur e-mailed me these recommendations. “Don’t eat three square meals a day. Skip meals now and then. Work towards an extended overnight period of no eating. This means eat sometime before you sleep and don’t be in a hurry to eat breakfast… Do not fear hunger. Nothing but good will come of it, but it must be episodic, not chronic.”

And on exercise: “First, everybody over-trains. Don’t do it. Don’t trudge away on a treadmill, count sets or repetitions, or work out according to a top-down Soviet model. You will hate it and it does not produce results. You must let it happen. You must have a playful, intermittent form of exercise. And you must exercise. The benefits are profound… Make it fun, intense according to your own fitness and goals, and brief. The goal of an exercise session is to promote growth-hormone release, to build muscle, and to elevate insulin sensitivity. Brevity and intensity are keys. Intensity means a little burn in the muscle, not heaving and straining. Brevity means you do not release stress hormones. So, you are favourably altering your hormone profile.” Superman’s grandad, it turns out, gets by on no more than 45 minutes in the gym and only when he feels like it.

Getting the food right is hard work. Arthur shops only on the outer edges of the supermarket, where they keep the fresh stuff. And cutting carbs completely, as I did, results in a few days of hell — raging hunger and gloom. On the fourth day I woke up so depressed I could barely move. Then I ate a peach and I was fine and I’ve stayed fine, more or less, ever since.

I’d suffered an enormous drop in blood sugar, which the peach instantly corrected.

Breakfast is hell at first — no cereals or bread — but you can have almost everything else. Arthur sent me an example of his breakfast: “Four thin pork chops, well trimmed and browned in a bit of oil with rosemary and pieces of fresh apple. Some canteloupe melon with it.” Trust me, after a month or so, the spectacle of toast or a bowl of cornflakes will revolt you.

In the end, I am not qualified to say that Arthur is right. But I am qualified to say that it works for him and for me — 20lb lighter at the time of writing — and that he is the most articulate definer of a paradigm shift in our thinking about the human metabolism that is still in progress. Carbs, not fats, are modernity’s most deadly assassins. And, even if they don’t kill you, they make you feel worse. I sleep better without them and I seem to have become a nicer person; what with that and the weight loss, my friends — or were they enemies? — barely recognise me.

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