 Hey, welcome to the 21 convention podcast. This is our special guest Mark Sisson from Mark's Daily Apple our co-host Schuyler Tanner I'm Steve Maider. We're live from Austin, Texas. What is happening? Well, what's happening is I'm here in Austin for the Paleo FX convention It's been amazing. This is the third day Thousands of people showing up for this. It's really impressive to see what's happened to the paleo community And how it's grown and how it's flourished and how not just the people who are attending but the vendors That's really what I find most fascinating is the fact that we're creating basically a marketplace now with products and and Services that cater to specifically to a paleo lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, man It's crazy. So paleo FX started four years ago in Austin and it was small and you were at the first one Yeah, and like now it's it's huge if you guys have not been there in fact, I haven't attended Actually, I have a press pass, but I gotta go here interview but but no man And it's just nuts because it's this huge cultural phenomenon, but you actually started Like this movement massively, you know, actually the pramble blueprint which we see right here How have you seen paleo change in evolve over the years? Yeah, it has evolved You know it started really well before I got into this through the likes of some of the people doing work in in the 80s Mel Connor Boyd Eaton wrote some of the first books really looking at the Paleolithic diet Lauren Cordeine came in in the early 2000s and started looking deeper into that It was one of the impetus that I used to change my own diet And and I'd gone down this route. I'd where I'd started to be accepting of healthy fats The concept that less exercise is probably an appropriate Lifestyle for me. I looked at a lot of these different hunter-gatherer experiences and the last thing to fall into place for me was Elimination grains and I got a lot of that from from the guys. I just mentioned so I started writing about this in 2006 and That's when I started my blog. I Started to write and I figured I'd write every every day for a year and at the end of a year I'd have written everything there is to say about the life and and diet and exercise and health and fitness and whatnot and of course That wasn't exactly an accurate statement because at the end of a year I just started digging deeper and deeper into these nuances and these different paths that we could explore and and so it became Mark's Daily Apple and and you know when you say You know you credit me with with having advanced this movement. I'd like to think so I'd like to think that that my blog has taken what other guys have done and Kind of brought it a little bit more mainstream I I pride myself on the way I write and the ability to take complex scientific Ideas and and translate them into a way that appeals to the mainstream reader who wants to just like get the nuggets Give me the information. Just tell me what I got to do So so you touched on some of the the Boyd eatings of the world who were kind of preceding you and I can even think of back in the early 70s a guy by the name of Stefan Boyd and there's an Australian, you know Human ecology writing about this stuff and yet there seems to be a lineage at least 50 years talking about this stuff If not even earlier to the early home economics was there's a grain in there There's a German there about like here's the stuff you do in your life and home and sleep and some of what you even dig backwards Even further into with the primal connection Why is it seem like it's so hard for people to get on board with this idea because it's not like it's not like you're The first person to say this that's exactly right I mean it's and there's an whole academics Discipline dedicated this stuff. So it's like, you know, it's and I would agree that that I'm just repackaging ideas that have been around for a long time and I'm trying to put them into a framework that is accessible to the average person So yeah, these are these are concepts that we sort of intuitively all get yeah We should be eating real food and not package food. We should probably be getting you know enough sleep We should probably be going to sleep a little earlier and not waking up to an alarm clock We probably should be getting more sun and playing out in nature and and digging around the dirt but you know we're the fighting that whole movement is this science and technology and advancement in you know interactive digital technology and all these things that are sort of taking our minds That are hardwired to be hunter-gatherers taking them in a direction of short attention span you know Instagram and Facebook weren't enough now. It's got to be snapchat You know and and something you know the six-second video concept It's like that six seconds is enough time to get the message across seriously. I mean so so we've Here we are trying to Encourage people to spend more time cooking their food and shopping for their food and eating and enjoying their food So the concept of fast food kind of flies out the window and yet society is pushing fast food on us Here we are trying to Encourage people to spend time face-to-face. I'm hanging out with you guys. This is awesome. We're looking at each other We're not doing a Skype chat, you know And and yet the technology is set up for us to do you know for six kids to sit in a room and all be Focused on their on their devices, you know texting each other. It's it's so while we're hardwired to To extract the greatest amount of pleasure out of life Sometimes we perceive that pleasure as being instant gratification and so it's I'm just trying to tell people look Let's just really if we're here to experience joy and pleasure and contentment and fulfillment Let's figure out ways that do that that that resonate with our genes it resonate with our hunter-gatherer brains And that don't rely on digital technology, but but you know cause us to have to go back to Face-to-face communication real food getting sleep instead of figuring out hacks so that we don't have to sleep You know what I mean? Yeah The whole biohacker community is kind of funny right because it I think I think we have gone so far off the path That we need hacks to kind of grease the skid to get us back to where we should have been in the first place Well, this is something that I think is it I mean you brought up so many different points there, but what? We call pleasure in the pursuit of pleasure is no longer a human existence You know and so getting back to the humidity Humanity in fact we were talking about this on Keith Norris's podcast the founder of paleo effects Or one of them, but basically he was saying if you asked certain indigenous cultures what health was they'd look at you like Okay, I don't and we look at pleasure is this thing. I'm supposed to get yeah rather than an existence That would be a natural byproduct off of living in some I guess I hate to use the word organic ways But just normal human ways is that being said? Not just what is the human diet, but what is the human function? What do you see from all this mixing of anthropology? You know science genetics. What is that? You know what so that's a broad philosophical question. I want to go there. Yeah. Yeah, what's what's the human function? I mean, I mean, you know look I think we're here to extract the greatest amount of pleasure from every moment we can In this life full stop You know we would argue that we have this biological imperative to pass the genetic material along to the next generation But in the process of getting to that I'd like to enjoy my experience as much as possible So I look for ways to seek the joy in every moment and that includes Never putting any food into my mouth. It doesn't taste great And so you bring me, you know some green drink that I got Plugged my nose to suck down and you tell me it's really healthy and it's good for you. No not having it You know you or you know kale is like one of my least favorite vegetables I know it's the healthiest vegetable apparently out there But unless you can find a way to process the crap out of the kale literally and figuratively I'm probably not gonna go there I'd rather have a nice lamb chop or something that really you know that I enjoy eating So that's just one example. I want to experience the pleasure of Play when I'm working out. So if you say well, I got this really grueling workout mark You're gonna love it. I'm probably not gonna love it if it's really grueling Yeah, I spent a couple of minutes in the gym every week doing stuff that I know I need to do for Rehabilitating injuries or for not getting injured But my drive when I in my movement pattern in my exercise is to find ways in which I can have fun Where I can play so once a week I play an ultimate frisbee game in two hours It's the hardest workout I do all week and it's the most fun I have all week and and at no point in the game am I thinking oh jeez when's it gonna be over? I'm thinking oh jeez. It's probably gonna end too soon. I want to keep going Because it's fun. So this is just another example of experiencing pleasure and joy and and contentment I do an exercise every morning. I get up I have a cup of coffee I go outside and I spend a couple of minutes just doing a gratitude exercise Just to take the time to be thankful for what's happening right now What happened yesterday doesn't have to be all the wins in my life or all the great things in my life Could be the lessons I've learned from the from the things that that hurt at the time, but it's my objective again is to is to We rebranded the primal blueprint this year. It's called primal blueprint live awesome And so my my my real intent is to discover for myself What it what it takes to live an awesome life as as much as possible and then to impart that wisdom to my readers How can you live an awesome life for yourself? Now you touch on some I thought was really interesting Which is in Western society in general it's a bit of a working out as a bit of a quid pro quo Isn't it like if I don't get enough for my effort then why would I do anything no pain no gain No pain no gain right and so one of the characters and real people obviously in the book born the run was barefoot Teddy This great idea were shockingly where every action should be towards fun should be enjoying it and eventually you'll get good at it Shocking how that works. We want we tend to we as a society tend to want to reverse We'll start with the grueling and hopefully we'll enjoy it later and you're you you from the beginning from the moment reading this It was always Everybody can let's calm down a little bit You don't need to be perfect on this and better is better and you don't need to make it so hard like you Everybody who really is because it's people with type A. They're they're almost with diets are like I Need to like more kale and green drinks And you can just you can read their message posts on your on your blog where they're there and they all you they're They're practically doing that to their their keyboard and it's it's hard to walk people off that ledge of like you You want to be easy and fun first and you do and you're gonna stick with that a lot longer and kind of Seguing slightly isn't that basically what you're talking about the paleo effects this year? Absolutely I think the theme of this this year's paleo effects has been let's back off a little bit Let's let's recognize why we're doing this. We're not doing this because Possibly in 25 years will we'll have better blood work and we'll you know look better naked And we'll you know our doctors will give us a blessing of having done good work We're doing this because we want to experience life now and we want to again from from all we have is now You know it's really and if you don't get that then you're missing the huge big picture all you have is now You know yesterday is it's in the past. It's gone. There's no regrets and whatever happens in the future I'm ready for it. I'm prepared for but right now I want to experience the most pleasure possible and that includes eating and so when we One of the things we talked about in a panel yesterday was this idea that you know sugar in general is considered It's vilified in the paleo eating strategy and and yet It's really the dose that makes the poison and what I was talking about Generally was you know 145 grams a day of sugars probably too much for most people maybe all people But a few grams Used appropriately and judiciously to sweeten up a cup of coffee or to do something isn't gonna kill you It's not gonna offset any future risk factors for heart disease or cancer But if it adds pleasure right now and in the context of everything else you're doing It's it's going to increase the experience of drinking that cup of coffee or that glass of tea Why not do it and we and yet somebody posted on my site the other day? Every gram of sugar adds nothing and only contributes toward death and risk and everything I go dude You just you're not getting the big picture here. It's really not about It's not about the actual elements about the dose and the context and the balance man one second one second We have to pause for a quick break All right, we're back and Skyler Tanner had a pressing pressing question and I have one after that Well, what well the point is to make is if anybody's even gotten close to your recommendations for exercise They're gonna have plenty of storage capacity for any bit of sugar anyway, and it's it's not It's a problem when you're full people when you don't have when your tanks are full and it's got a spillover Then you've got a problem But if you're if you're keeping your carbohydrates fairly low anyway, and this is another question in of itself It's mind-boggling that people have a binary idea about carbohydrates don't they your suggestion of like you probably don't need more than 150 grams is is Absolutely positively in line with the physiology and the nutrition where it's like your brain needs that glucose. It's the fastest thing Yes, it'll run on ketones to up to 75% of the time But leave a little for your brain leave a little for peripheral insulin sensitivity everything else you can run on fat You're good, you know unless you have a screaming endurance athlete and yet What does this 2000 2008 was this yeah 2008? I mean what we've got seven years now and people are still pushing back against this idea that a moderate It's either you're either ketogenic or sugar burner sugar burner It just I just don't understand how else you could put it. Yeah, it's it's been very interesting to see what various populations of people and in different walks of life and how they react to that admonition that This carbohydrate curve that I created. I created the curve about nine years ago, which suggested that an appropriate intake of carbs for most people would range from zero to 150 grams a day and that the point I made was it really nobody Needs more than 150 grams of carbs a day and and and how you back into that as you say if I've eliminated the sugars That didn't exist 200 years ago if I've eliminated the the refined carbohydrates That we probably ought not to be eating and I'm and I'm pretty much eating copious amounts of vegetables and a little bit of fruit And whatever starchy tubers, I'm gonna be hard-pressed to exceed 150 grams a day And oh by the way, that's what every human being up until 200 years ago for the last two and a half million years Probably consumed on an average average daily intake. So they seem to do very well being able to store Access calories as fat to being able to access those those stored calories in times of famine and do so without sacrificing Their body mass or their strength or their power or their ability to think or track animals or you know Without getting cranky at their tribe mates all these things that we claim are a result of low blood sugar if you develop if you build The metabolic machinery to be able to burn fats to access fats and burn them appropriately and then Burn some ketones as well you unburden your body of needing to get a regular supply of glucose every two and a half to three hours All day long. It's very freeing and empowering. So that's been what I put out there What what's really gratifying to see how many people in the endurance community are starting to go? Wow, this is really cool technology This is where the next level of breakthrough is going to come in the longer endurance events that ability to burn fat efficiently and effectively at a high level of output and spare glycogen and spare glucose And allow the brain to work a little bit more on ketones because it's the brain and a lot of these endurance events It's the brain Tim Noakes calls it the central governor theory of the brain It isn't so much that you run out of glycogen in the muscles that causes you to hit the wall It's that you run out of glucose in the bloodstream and the brain goes that's enough pal We're pulling over we're taking a nap So if we can sort of override that for those people who are really interested in digging deep We can do that through learning how to burn fats more efficiently and that comes as a result largely as a result of manipulating the diet You're literally depriving yourself of enough Sufficient carbohydrate that your body becomes lazy and relies on carbohydrate now. You're telling your body look if we're gonna start burning fat We need to build more mitochondria We need to make those mitochondria that we build and the and the ones that we already have more effective Because remember we have not just the DNA that builds a mitochondria mitochondria have their own DNA So they become more efficient effective that way. We call this mitochondria biogenesis That's the strategy that a lot of endurance athletes are using now to improve their ability to put fat through the mitochondria and and Unburden them of having to open a gel pack every 15 minutes or slam down another Gatorade or whatever it is Well, that's a good point too because I mean guys like Phil Maffeton We're talking about this in the late 70s and early 80s And you would think that after having a stable of triathletes just crushing people Running slow enough to burn fat and then getting faster as a result of that that people jump on and it just never seems to be the case That that people can believe that if you stay with it long enough that those mitochondria will readily multiply and yet And yet it's all there. It's it's sometimes it's almost like no matter How well you put it to people or how thick the science is they just until someone like a nox for example I mean when you when you write a book that is like 700 pages in the lore running Who finally comes around all these years later and goes I was wrong. No, it's it's unbelievable to me That he would be be vilified as much as he is in the academic community, particularly of South Africa where here's a guy who who? basically made his life's work The the sparing of glycogen and how do you manipulate carbohydrates to increase the amount of glycogen you store? And then how do you spare that during long races? He was the go-to guy anything to do with carbohydrate glucose glycogen And and did this for 30 years. He's one of my heroes for having done that He became a bigger hero for having looked at the research and the evidence to go and be willing to go All right, my entire career. I was telling you to do one thing. I realize now that that was wrong I'm going to tell you to do something almost the exact opposite and and start Restricting those carbohydrates a little bit and learn how to become good at burning fat and as a result becoming a better athlete And as a result becoming a better more efficient human being and less prone to type 2 diabetes I mean the guy is it's it's that's the perfect application of science when a guy who's a man of science Sees the evidence and reverses his position. So let me actually ask you this Because with guys listening to this who are totally unfamiliar with what you guys just like we said But you know but before this all started you actually said that this was kind of the next evolution where endurance athletes are going to start adopting Different parts of this diet. What does that mean if we go to? Or we build habits of if we're doing a hundred mile bike ride Yeah, we're not slamming those gel packs and you know getting the quick sugars in our body What kind of difference will we see with health and people and a cultural movement of better health? Well, so if you're looking at the elite level and you see what kind of differences will we see we'll see Times come down even more as as we fine-tune and tweak what it takes to be Performing at such a high output that you are maximizing fat burning and the use of ketones and minimizing the reliance on glucose and glycogen and but what that takes and you mentioned this earlier is There's a great adaptation about an 80% adaptation takes place in about six weeks in the average athlete that But what happens shortly in the short term they lose some of their power and it takes about another year to regain the power Staying in that zone and you go tell an elite athlete who's already making a living right eating against other sugar burners They're they're less Prone to say you know what I'll give up a year of my career totally and to shift my training That's really though the main summoning point But this is something that like everybody forget the elite athlete Yeah, talk about somebody who's like myself or something guys who have like, you know Whatever six hours a week two hours a week to work out You're gonna go through that mental change and this is this is the sacrifice you have to make I mean I've found that I need at least six weeks of kind of committing to something I want to say force myself because I hate making a diet about that or a way of life But I have to commit six weeks to see any change if I'm going through a pretty dramatic shift in my body Whether that's through strength or diet or you know, whatever however, I'm using it I need more time to do that There's gonna be all sorts of plateaus and highs and lows and I think that's part of the problem with this quick fix mentality You know the Facebook the snapchat all that sort of stuff is I can't get it now. Yeah our relationship with our bodies our minds and our health is a daily practice and Let me actually termed it a little bit here And I kind of want to know what both of you guys have to say about this But is the paleo community moving into kind of this like controlling neurosis of like I have to take 40 supplements a day And in order to be healthy I have to work out in two-hour increments And then you know do my sleep and because people really latch on to it. Yeah, you know that sort of way Well, I mean, you know the paleo community in general Arrows from frustration so a lot of people come to paleo come to paleo because other things they've tried haven't worked Right, it's rare that you get an elite athlete who says oh, I think I'll try this paleo thing and Now it's not rare because now you're seeing it in in baseball and basketball. These guys are adopting totally But but because we paved the way for them But up until now most people who come to paleo are people who try to lose weight and were frustrated at counting calories or on low On on low fat diets They were given advice by their doctors. They were taking a lot of medications They weren't seeing results. And so that's that's where the initial Population of paleo adherence came from was out of the frustration of that So, um, what was the question steve? Man, so What do you see like your speech this year at paleo effects was like hey, we need to we need to show Right. So so when you when when you come to this Um realization that everything you thought you knew about Diet and health and exercise is wrong You know, you when you when you see that fats are okay. They're not bad when you see that you don't have to count calories When you see that you don't have to exercise so much to burn off to burn off weight You you start to get excited about this movement and you start to become um, you know a bit of uh As a zealot and that's what we see people become they're so invested in this great new Sort of anti dogmatic lifestyle that it becomes its own dog month And so I did a thing the other day about how the pendulum swings all the way out to the other side and now people are That they're paying no attention to how much fat they consume. They're just baking all the time and larder because fat is good And the more fat I get is better and uh, you know, or if or if a little bit of ketosis is great or low carb is great Then full ketosis all the time is better. And that's what i'm going to do and and uh, you know, if um If chronic cardio marks is chronic cardio is bad. So i'm going to stop running all together I'm just going to do high intensity stuff and join a crossfit box and and and do anywhere from 12 to 17 minutes You know what I mean? And and so it became its own dogma and and that's great for a while But then what we started to see was frustration plateaus people were saying i'm getting injured Um, I i'm losing my energy because i'm in ketosis all the time. I don't want to get out of ketosis And that's where I said look All right, you got the basic premise And I gave you a template but within that template there's a lot of room to move here And just because I said, you know, uh Cut out the the refined pastas and the sugars doesn't mean you have to cut every carb out of your life You know, just because I said saturated fat is not the cause of heart disease doesn't mean you have to load on Saturated fat at every meal just because I said chronic cardio is probably antithetical to health Which means that you shouldn't go out and run at 75 to 80 percent of your heart rate Every single day if you're training for a marathon doesn't mean you never run It just means you have to find for yourself what works man Let's just take a quick break here for our sponsors and then we'll get right back to what you got to say skyline. Okay All right, we are back here in austin texas mark sisson Skyler tanner and skyler we were talking about kind of how paleo has evolved into this Kind of like a rebellion against what didn't work before What do you got to say? Well, it's interesting because about six years ago I wrote a blog post before everybody else did about like what paleos could learn from the blue zones now for you You out there who don't know the blue zones are these isolated cultures, whether it's by island or by culture Of people who live a really really long time and they and on at first blush They don't seem to do a lot of stuff what what orthodox paleo would have them do they they tend to consume legumes they don't do any sort of thing we would call exercise especially in western world and yet Uh, they live a really really long time. So how do you rectify this? Well, it's the fact that they're doing good enough for long enough And the going back to your original point about asking what is the human function? They live a life with that they don't they're not worrying about am I you know, where am I going to be in five years? They they continue the shepherding culture. They're continuing for example in sardinia It's men live longer than women which anywhere else on the planet would be unheard of and yet they do The only thing that they found is related to this statistically now they've gone back and parsed it It's not the beans the beans are fine though. It's not the cheese or the wine or any of that nonsense It's the great of the terrain how far they have to walk and their pastoralism, right? Like nature and exercise are the thing that precipitates into you know, the expectation of your genes for Carrying on tomorrow the same way you carried on today And not worrying about anything else And I think that it's easy to sort of do everything you talked about like oh, peter atea is in ketosis He's a big ketone guy therefore. I have to be it even if he says I don't think everybody needs to do what I'm doing or you or anybody else and it seems that It's just another net in which people will kind of wrap themselves up and to try and be safe um And I think that people miss out on that 80 20 principle which you which you drum Perpetually in the book that you get good you do the good enough you do the stuff good enough Everything else is just the tails and Unnecessary to fret about and yet 80 percent of the stress will be about those 20 percent of tails 80 percent of the stress will be about the 20 percent And that's what leads to the frustration So people will sometimes start to get results and they're all excited and they think they project ahead Okay, if I tracked along this line for you know the next year or two I'm going to get down to my ideal body composition Which will put me on the cover of victoria secret catalog or flex magazine and And and and and then they hit a point of plateau right and they go what's going on what and the first thing they think is I'm doing it wrong I got to do more I got to do I got it now. I got to dig deeper now I got it and it may not always be the case it may be That you talk about the blue zones and stress I mean it may be that you're stressing so much about being compliant That your cortisol levels are keeping you with an extra half inch of belly fat So there are a lot of elements to this that that we need to sort of look at And and not just blame one missing factor This this ability to trend toward a healthier life and lifestyle and better performance Is a complex equation for a lot of people and requires some experimentation But but almost more than anything else it requires A clear head in this a mindfulness a willingness to say everything is as it is and everything is great right now And what people don't do is a lot of them don't take the time to express gratitude to themselves for what they've done so far It's like oh, I'm pissed that I've hit a plateau and instead Of saying oh, this is look I've lost 30 pounds. This is incredible. Look what I've done with myself Look how how nurturing I've been with my body in the past, you know, a couple of months Um and ultimately just back to the blue zone thing one of the reasons these guys live longer And these people live longer is that stress element that that lack of stress when they do these longevity studies, particularly with octogenarians You know, some of them smoke cigars some of them drink a fifth of jack daniels or whatever and they look for the commonalities The single greatest commonality is what we call an ability to roll with the punches And typically it has to do with a major traumatic life experience So death of a loved one loss of a job things like that And and that's you know, if you can understand that principle and always come back to Look life is what it is. I should enjoy the moment and move on so like Let's talk about that stuff because when we the The worst thing you can do for a diet or a way of life I mean eating shouldn't be something that you have to obsess about is to make it a hundred percent Whenever it's an absolute It's what makes us unhappy and I think that what's happened and you actually talked about this in the beginning of These divisions of the sciences and who's communicating and academia has been figuring this stuff out Yet the dieticians or people like trainers are not doing anything. Let's remember too. The academics are never the ones taking their own advice I mean, it's it's great. It's great. It's just that it's not that's not how they're they're fixed But man, I mean hundreds of years ago just 200 years ago the sciences and philosophy weren't so, you know Repped apart from each other and we got into this mentality of compartmentalization Of having more about not being happy with what you have And trying to get more of what's supposed to be outside of you And man, it's just it's such an interesting thing to to basically see how In my mind the paleo community was the first community that brought this all together that how we were born to live actually you know like Was the most perfect expression of ourselves for instance I thought the the image of my body was supposed to be like flex magazine or something like that But as soon as I started to lose weight and eat better It stopped being about this like oh what it's supposed to be. It's like an acceptance of who I am You know where I'm at now is good enough and I hear you kind of talking about all this stuff and bringing it back together It's very cool. Well, we talk about ideal body composition a lot and uh, you know What is ideal body composition because a lot of our Our our mental pictures of it are driven and dictated by the magazines and by society and by You know the the guys who are flexing and the abs that are showing and all that stuff and we think well That's that must be ideal body composition. Well What we've determined within the primal blueprint is over the past few years ideal body composition is where your body says This is awesome where you are right now. This is a place where I've lost some weight I'm my inflammation has gone down. I'm off the medications I maintain this weight effortlessly without having to go hunger hungry ever I'm able to perform exercise and have fun. I'm able to perform well at work. My relationships are all great I don't get sick Often if at all and I quite likely live longer at this weight Then at a lower weight or a higher weight. So that's really the the concept of ideal body composition becomes one of Of a of a health diagnosis. It's like, okay. This is where your body says We like it right now and we're not going to shift. You may you may see it as a plateau But it's actually your body saying don't do anything. This is awesome And if it doesn't look like the picture that you had in your mind or on your vision board You know, then we have to talk about what you know, what the reality is of of human existence and the fact that we're wired You know to to to retain a certain amount of body fat and some of us are wired a little bit more in that direction We we I think we ought to be okay with that And and get away from again this sort of idealized NFL, you know wide receiver 2% body fat kind of concept I mean, there's there's uh, I can I can speak to experience from that within the past five years I have been within two pounds of 175 without counting without doing just just just living You know Being real food fasting periodically sometimes more sometimes less as the mood took me And not stressing about it and it's funny how that works because you can you can literally be like All right, I'm gonna eat clean from the next month and your body drops like a pound and a half And then you're like I feel like I've really gone off the rails for a little while too much wine or dark chocolate Holiday season and my body weight ticks up a pound and a half. You know, it's just like it's just oh You know, it's the feedback loop when you give yourself It's a funny word, especially in secular america to give yourself some grace and and be like, hey Everything, you know, there's a lot going on below the rational level that you have zero control of your inputs Are only influencing and not controlling and just let them do the math. Yep. It's it's shocking What will actually happen if if people let it happen? I did I did a mind thought experiment Um, uh a while back, uh, and I thought, you know, for most of our lives, uh, many of us perhaps all of us Um, our our vision of eating is how much food can I eat and not gain weight? Okay, it's it's really one of of um, you know a a A plentiful diet a copious amounts of food again, how much food can I eat? What can I get away with in terms of eating and not gain weight? And that's that's fine. That's interesting, but I reversed that and as a thought experiment. I thought what's the Least amount of food I can eat and not lose weight and not lose muscle mass and not get sick and not get hungry Because that's the key element to the primal blueprint is is not getting hungry So if I get hungry, then it's not working But what's the least amount of food and I found that it's 30 fewer calories than I thought We can get away with so I I What what does that do? How does that how does that resonate with me now? I don't worry about losing muscle mass if I skip a meal Um, I realized that I'm I'm okay with pushing away a plate of food if I'm no longer hungry for the next bite And that's a skill that we start to teach in the primal blueprint is is are you in touch with what hunger really is And what appetite really is and what appreciation of a meal really is If you know we say, you know paleo would say well the sugary deserves you to stay away from entirely and I'd say well You know if you get a big piece of a slice of pecan pie Absolutely, probably inappropriate to eat the entire piece Um, unless it's you know, whatever unless you're eating in a pie eating contest Uh, but that doesn't mean that two bites Wouldn't be sufficient to give you the essence of what that piece of pie is and be enough And I mean truly be enough not feel compelled to like keep going keep going kill But say after two bites go, you know ask ask yourself am I really hungry for the next bite or do I get it? I understand the experience because at best you're going to spend four minutes eating this entire piece of pie At which point four minutes of gustatory pleasure is going to possibly Result in five to six hours of high heart rate sweating palpitations Um, you know inability to sleep restless leg syndrome Gast gastritis irritable bowel syndrome, whatever, you know, whatever it is for you So you got to always do the trade-off and that's the mindfulness that we talk about In terms of of you know being in the moment with the food choices and with all the choices you make in your life Just make them intuitively but be very mindful of them. Yeah, cool Man, we have to take another quick break, but we will be right back in just a moment And we are back with mark sissons. Skyler tanner. Skyler. What were you about to say? So so really it's it's almost like these two volumes if I if I could sum it up for those at home Who don't understand when we talk about in a modern state with someone's epicurean It's almost like slothful eating of these things and really if you actually go back to the philosophy It's being with friends eating simple flavorful food and enjoying that company in a face-to-face fashion you've almost You didn't maybe you set out to do this and you just haven't talked about it this whole time but in some respects you have Written two books that's harking back for this more than perhaps any other philosophy of eating has in I mean It's funny to think about if you could put a philosophy of everything, but to some degree it's you've ended up in this this place that is very reminiscent for me of Epicureanism Yeah, sorry. Sorry. I was just gonna Go ahead, please, but gotta rip off that just basically gonna say man eating was the center point It is such a huge thing about Man and what he always did that obviously there was meaning through friends family You know yourself that this huge relationship that we don't have anymore It's usually a relationship with something way more abstract and man-made and stuff No, I mean we we I think we view food as something that's necessary in many cases to get through the day and we We scarf it down. Certainly. We want the the the the crunchy salty fatty sweet That is provided by processed foods because we're wired to to kind of seek that out But the the reality is that that food in throughout our history was a major part of of our lives and our lifestyle It was about procuring the food getting it and you know optimum foraging strategies. It was about cooking it and fixing it and and Cleaning it and preparing it and then eating it in the presence of other people and enjoying it and and celebrating it And and thanking the gods for it And even even today in in most of europe There's a real culture based around eating and you know they Many countries they take breaks in the middle of the day and they have a long lunch or they have a you know They have long dinners and they it's a ritual of getting together and sharing the day's experiences and Many courses are served and yet they don't tend to get as Overweight as we do it may be The simple process of spending more time eating their food and not scarfing it down the way we do They allocate You know 27 of the average income In in europe is allocated toward food in the united states. It's around 14 or 15 percent so There's a there's much more emphasis on food in in european cultures or at least historically has been it may be trending back toward the us way right now, but You know I mean I Love to eat and then I open sort of with a statement that I don't put anything in my mouth That doesn't taste awesome But I also know when it's you know, how much time it takes to eat and when it's time to push the plate away and say You know what? I'm not hungry for the next bite and partly because I know there's food Whenever I want right around the corner You know one thing that I want to talk about because of the 21 convention It's talking about health. It's talking about dating. It's talking about personal philosophy It's talking about business anything the total package of the ideal man And that's really what happens like when people get involved with the 21 convention They they might come to listen to a dating coach, but they they actually I remember when you spoke Like three months later every well not everybody But there were there was a the biggest change actually came from you and dr. Doug McGuff It was it was crazy. You know these guys got in better shape better relationships with themselves They're more positive. They worked more efficiently. They had a better attitude You had brought up just a few minutes ago that you know, the primal blueprint for the body You know was to be in its natural state. What is the primal blueprint for one's Socializing one's mentality and emotions because that ties into this whole health and fitness thing as well No, absolutely. And you know, we talked earlier about Our attachment to digital entertainment and short attention span and you know, we're wired as social creatures I talk in the primal connection about Tribes and about the Dunbar number the fact that through most of human history We never had contact with more than say 150 individuals in our entire lives And here we are trying to manage 5000 facebook friends and all these twitter followers and all this other stuff that that really has no meaningful impact On our lives and certainly does not involve any amount of empathy or other other of the truly Important human emotions. So the socialization Is which we're losing and I want to sort of bring it back Can happen in many different ways it can happen in Like one example you talk about preparing food if you're a young guy and you're you know, trying to to uh, Woo some young lady one of the greatest ways to do that is to prepare a meal for her to learn Learn how to create, you know Pick one recipe that you're really good at and you know, whichever girl you bring back to the house Make that whatever I mean But you know, that's That's part of this, uh, social experience That I think a lot of young people today have sort of you know, they've they've um They've outsourced that shall we say to the delivery service or the or the pick You know drive in or whatever it is that they're doing Things like that that you can um that are that are fun that are creative That are certainly very social and bring you in touch with with another human being in a way that you otherwise wouldn't Through skype or facebook or whatever it is Did you want to say no, no, we'll go about home economics all those at the beginning of the time Is like you teach you how to cook something to this day I'm still the primary cook in our house as a result of that right there My wife says you cook you cook better you cook from the start you keep doing it So law of unintended consequences, maybe but I like cooking, you know, I like food It's something that I have I've surrounded myself with friends who um We all get together and prepare these elaborate meals as good as some of the things we'd find in You know three star restaurants four star restaurants five star depending on where you are in the world It is an element that I think people have a hard time Especially guys have a hard time cultivating. I think close relationships out of you know, their teenage years or college It's it and food seems to be a great thing. Yeah. Hey come over for a barbecue. Yeah come over for this It's something that can bridge that gap because otherwise I think there's a Stigma about trying to be relational as a guy, which is really really funny Yeah, so, you know another thing that I've witnessed First hand over the past few years Is uh, you know, I live in in in a remote community of uh, Los Angeles called Malibu We moved we moved from Santa Monica because it was too urban so to raise children in Malibu was was uh our intended goal and um, you know Malibu doesn't have a lot of There's not a lot of socialization in Malibu. So we have a regular sundae Uh, it started out as a family sort of pickup game of ultimate frisbee But it's morphed into an opportunity for all the guys in Malibu who are sort of like-minded and want to have fun Doing a fit a fit activity And every sundae anywhere from 12 to 25 of us show up at the field and we all know each other now And that's that's the essence of our connection is this is this ultimate match but then when we see each other out in Social situations our connection is greater now because we've spent so much time literally in the trenches On the same teams or opposite each other on teams and so so that The concept of maybe finding a pickup basketball game a regular pickup basketball game or something Is important to to to young people Guys in in particular, you know to have something that's outside the realm of work or outside the realm of of just, uh You know the home office environment where they're, you know attached to the keyboard Get out there get in something sometimes it means getting in someone's face, you know having We use the ultimate frisbee pitch, uh as a laboratory and the other dads and I talk about this a lot Because we brought our sons in to play this game and and we go, you know at the end of a game we'll go Geez what an asshole I was I can't believe with my kid here that I argued that call as as As vehemently as I did and it became so it became this great laboratory to see, you know How you how you play frisbee is how you play life? And uh, I just highly recommend that how you do one things how you do everything man. I you know, this is interesting because with You know, we obviously have looked at the body and how eating in this kind of like american or westernized fast-paced diet can Be harmful and proven it, you know, but when we look at socializing when we look at our ability to have empathy emotions A well-rounded expression of one another We do the same thing of actually we have I mean things like addiction We weren't born to have that, you know, and there's this big argument of predisposition and all that sort of stuff That meant something else 10,000 years ago that meant something else 3,000 years ago and If we lose this component of these things that men and women were were born to do what human beings were born to do Whether it's eating socializing connecting it moves into some sort of distortion and dysfunction I find that all of this especially with the whole paleo community is getting back to How can we live within all this of what we call the norm? And get back to really the expression of this Well, you know, you brought up addiction and that's a that's a really interesting Topic because we are wired to receive pleasure from certain chemicals And so oxytocin sort of the love chemical and and serotonin Some of these feel-good neurotransmitters which are created as a result of activities that we do and in In case of oxytocin, it's cuddling and nurturing and being in close contact proximity Serotonin from some of the foods we eat You know, there are there are all these Various and sort of a great example would be endorphins, so endorphins are these chemicals that we make endogenously we make them ourselves And they attach to a receptor site that gives us a feeling of euphoria Now the theory is that endorphins were created Under extreme duress you would create these endorphins which would then Allow you to continue to maintain a positive light in the face of a life-threatening situation So you're being chased down the savannah by a saber-toothed tiger You're running running running running running and breathing hard and you create these endorphins And instead of just giving up like a deer in the headlights you keep going you keep wanting to live Now that's good once in a while to keep you alive, but but when you start chasing that high And in the case of drugs it's easy enough to do So now we've got these drugs that we can inject or that we can swallow or snort That occupy these same receptor sites that are giving us the same high that in one case was a feel-good Experience intended to promote life and now we're abusing it And we can abuse it in the case of running I was I was addicted to running. I was addicted to the endorphin high I actually ran so much that I needed to run every day to continue to feel to not experience pain Because otherwise if I stopped if I got like injured or got a cold and couldn't run for five days in a row Then all of the pains that I had accumulated Then they began to manifest tremendously, but I'd been masking them by chasing that high every day and creating that endorphin rush so What's the converse of that it's to go back and and how do you experience that same high that natural high In a natural setting that isn't abusive that isn't that isn't creating damage to you and that's through interaction with people through eating the right foods through Exercising appropriately and through human contact. It creates that oxytocin kind of thing. Cool, man Unfortunately, we got to take another break, but we'll be right back and uh with marxist and skyler tanner All right, and we are back marxist and skyler tanner and man We're talking about so many awesome things, but you put it into practicality I mean look anybody who watches the podcast knows how much I love talking about these abstract topics bringing them together for the ideal man, so guys can get out there and do it but What do we got going on here first off the book that started it all off? I was actually checking this out earlier today the primal connection, man this Is what I this is what I live by this is a message that I personally am like trying to promote But now also you're creating a line of products and let's move this bottle out of here and get into this. Yeah So primal male Start a company about a year and a half ago called primal kitchen with the intention of making Saucers and dressings that people could put on food that actually would enhance Not just the flavor and the taste experience, but the healthfulness of the food So many of the sauces that we are used to over our lives are are like used with caution Only use a little bit because it's unhealthy. It contains unhealthy fats It may taste good, but don't use so much. So I decided to create a line of product that would be Functional foods healthy fats that would enhance the eating experience because the reality is I love to eat I wanted these sauces and dressings to exist. I couldn't find them anywhere in the store. So we've created we have six Salad dressings that were ready to roll out But the first product that came to market was was this primal kitchen mayo and it's made with avocado oil Instead of these nasty canola oils or soybean oils that are in pretty much ubiquitous It tastes great. It tastes just like or better than more buttery than the original Mayo that you grew up sort of as the junk food that you grew up consuming And in the paleo world, it's sort of like the holy grail Everybody said we can't you know, we want to eat mayonnaise, but there's no good mayonnaise because it contains these oils So they sort of they took may they took mayonnaise entirely off the list Now interestingly in the last year with a discussion on resistant starch You know for the longest time potatoes were like they were they were not on the paleo diet in any way shape or form in the last year or half The constant the the idea the behind resistance starch is that you feed your your gut bacteria This starts that your body can't extract glucose from but that your bacteria can use to create all these wonderful chemicals So resistance starch was a good thing and one of the sources is cold potatoes, right? Well, who eats cold potatoes? By themselves, how do you eat cold potato? Schuyler? You eat you eat it as a potato salad potato salad So all of a sudden now we got the mayo that works and the cold potato now you got a functional food and potato salad It's back on the menu People avoided eating tuna salad because they wanted to put mayo in it and they couldn't now they're making tuna salad With this extremely healthy and helpful mayonnaise So the traction we've it's been out two months and the traction has been incredible We sold tens of thousands of bottles across the country And we're getting grave reviews from everybody who's tried it and and there are a lot more products behind that and uh Go ahead go ahead. No, I was going to say I'm not in the in the promo video Where you go out in slack line and all that you smear it on a hamburger patty that's on a salad I said that's how I need to use my hamburger No, no, because it's it seems almost funny. It's all it's america like a hamburger salad But it's of course you could do a hamburger salad. So there you go mayonnaise on your hamburger on a salad beautiful What what uh Skyler if you took something from the books the mayonnaise What is the most important thing that you could wrap up and just a short few sentences about that? That I took away and found useful actually the funny the bet the thing I loved most and and whenever I went back and I've probably read the prime loop loop and three times loaned it to someone who we had a falling out with unfortunately That happens in real socialization as well. Uh, and don't have it anymore But I've got the primal connection is When you talk about your three days of going to dallas to film know the know the cause or know the cure No, the cause know the cause still on top of it And and when you're walking in the mall and you basically try to lay out like the flexibility Of the whole thing. Yeah, that was that was for my wife, especially who she was sort of You could gently walk her into it. She was an endurance athlete and Actually ran for UT cross country for just a little while until she realized she'd be an also ran Right like I want the college experience. I don't want the college athlete experience Right. Yeah, right. No, no, no, it's true. It's all in it's all in right and uh, so So that was the thing I think when you because the the idea was for some people is like, all right You eat your perfect paleo diet and then you live in a hyperbaric chamber because you're a paleo monk Or you're just like there was this bizarre notion And it's just unfortunately kind of the game of telephone when it comes to this diet and to see it laid out like Hey, I'm writing the book and I don't even act like that You know this idea that uh, I don't I like your christ I don't like your christians are so unlike your christ It's kind of like the most zealot people are the ones who are listening to what you're saying Not you and so to see that laid out was sort of a You know hit me in the head like oh, yeah, of course It's just this is this is a lifestyle and truly is well, it's doable and it's just sustainable Anyone can do it and anyone can do it forever Final words mark. Uh, yeah. Well, um, you know, I'm a big fan of the primal blueprint I've been doing it for a long time. It works We've had hundreds of thousands of user experiences. So, um, you know, I just I'm very grateful that I've Been able to not only build a community but learn from that community part of my continued education Is the feedback I get from posts that I do on mark's daily apple and and that's really That's that's the essence of of how My philosophy has evolved over the past seven years Man, and let me just say for myself It's been a pleasure actually always sitting next to you but first time sitting next to you But uh, man, let me just say it's always been my mission to Communicate The ways that man was made to socialize have empathy connect build relationships even into a sexuality in the paleo movement Starting actually with the 21 convention with watching you and I remember that year because everybody was just blown away with a standing ovation It was just crazy the first time the guy's hearing this Was that it made the connection that there was a way to do this because before this book and other people who popularized it There was just what are we going to do live in caves? No, you know, the grocery store is better, you know, you know all this sort of A beautiful revolution. So definitely an honor for me to be sitting next to you and having this moment Guys, thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed this leave a comment We'll get back to you and of course subscribe to the channel pass on the good word of the 21 convention And we will talk to you guys soon