Your Primal Body is a book that will transform how you think about your body. Not just another fitness/weight-loss book, Your Primal Body shifts the paradigm for how to achieve a lean, muscular, vibrantly healthy body according to your genetic inheritance. This is the same body your Stone Age ancestors had, expressed through the human genome that evolved over a period of 2.6 million years. It's the body you too can have when you learn how to follow ancestral dietary and activity habits in your 21st century life. Scientists studying the remains of early humans tell us how our ancestors were in far better shape than we modern humans, their bodies free of disease and painful conditions. Natural adaptation and selection occurred over millions of years when they lived in caves, hunted wild game, and foraged for plants and berries to survive—a way of life very different than ours today. But one thing has not changed: our DNA. The human genome has evolved so slowly that our genetic blueprint is almost exactly what it was 40,000 years ago when our ancestors still hunted and gathered their food. Lifestyles may have changed, but our modern bodies are no different in their basic DNA—a startling fact that revolutionizes how we think about and approach diet and exercise. The thesis of Your Primal Body is that we modern humans can follow the diet and activity patterns of our Paleolithic hunter-gatherer ancestors for optimal health and weight-loss. When you do eat and move as they did, you are healthier, more muscular, leaner, and pain-free; when you don't, you run into trouble. The “diseases of civilization”—heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, arthritis, to name a few, are all linked by researchers who study health and longevity to sedentary lifestyles and eating habits. Eating highly processed food and performing minimal activity, you become susceptible to the health problems that plague our modern society—none of which our ancestors had. In this book, you will read the argument for switching to a more “primal” way of life and how it is scientifically valid, based in the latest research done by exercise physiologists, evolutionary fitness theorists, and scientists in university laboratories. Your Primal Body goes beyond theory and science to give you a practical plan for implementing primal fitness into your modern lifestyle. In Mikki Reilly's 5 Step Primal Body Program, central to the book, she shares her 20 years of experience in training people from all walks of life about how to lose weight, become fit, stay healthy, and condition their body for athletics. Reilly's clients span a range of ages, from 18 to 74, and the book includes their inspiring stories, along with their “before and after” pictures, placed throughout the text to illustrate the book's points and instructions. Their stories are not fictional composites but actual words of people who got the results they wanted from “going primal,” telling exactly how they did it. The Primal Body approach is not a quick-fix, but a complete overhaul in habits that have been stopping people from taking advantage of their natural inheritance, a fit and healthy body for life.

Combining your body’s Paleolithic needs with modern nutritional and medical research for complete mind-body wellness • Provides sustainable diet strategies to curb sugar cravings, promote fat burning and weight loss, reduce stress and anxiety, improve sleep and moods, increase energy and immunity, and enhance memory and brain function • Shows how our modern diet leads to weight gain and “diseases of civilization”--such as cancer, osteoporosis, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, and ADD • Explains how diet affects the brain, hormone balance, and the aging process and the crucial role of vitamin D in cancer and disease prevention Examining the healthy lives of our pre-agricultural Paleolithic ancestors and the marked decline in stature, bone density, and dental health and the increase in birth defects, malnutrition, and disease following the implementation of the agricultural lifestyle, Nora Gedgaudas shows how our modern grain- and carbohydrate-heavy low-fat diets are a far cry from the high-fat, moderate-protein hunter-gatherer diets we are genetically programmed for, leading not only to lifelong weight gain but also to cravings, mood disorders, cognitive problems, and “diseases of civilization”--such as cancer, osteoporosis, metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance), heart disease, and mental illness. Applying modern discoveries to the basic hunter-gatherer diet, she culls from vast research in evolutionary physiology, biochemistry, metabolism, nutrition, and chronic and degenerative disease to unveil a holistic lifestyle for true mind-body health and longevity. Revealing the primal origins and physiological basis for a high-fat, moderate-protein, starch-free diet and the importance of adequate omega-3 intake--critical to our brain and nervous system but sorely lacking in most people’s diets--she explains the nutritional problems of grains, gluten, soy, dairy, and starchy vegetables; which natural fats promote health and which (such as canola oil) harm it; the crucial role of vitamin D in cancer and disease prevention; the importance of saturated fat and cholesterol; and how diet affects mental health, memory, cognitive function, hormonal balance, and cellular aging. With step-by-step guidelines, recipes, and meal recommendations, this book offers sustainable strategies for a primally based, yet modern approach to diet and exercise to reduce stress and anxiety, lose weight, improve sleep and mood, increase energy and immunity, enhance brain function, save money on groceries, and live longer and happier.

Primal Blueprint author Mark Sisson presents a fun, easy-to-follow, practical guidebook to help you "get Primal" in only 21 days. First, you'll learn eight Key Concepts that represent the most important day-to-day elements living Primally, then tackle five Action Items that will enable you to literally reprogram your genes toward a long, healthy, and energetic life. The Action Items are presented in a fun and life-transforming 21-Day Challenge, featuring daily diet, exercise, and lifestyle endeavors with corresponding journal exercises. You'll transition out of the regimented, carb-dependent, fat-storing Standard American Diet (SAD), the chronic, overly-stressful exercise patterns recommended by Conventional Wisdom, and other health-compromising elements of hectic modern life. Instead, you'll smoothly implement the evolution-tested lifestyle behaviors of our hunter-gatherer ancestors to promote optimal gene expression. By eating Primally, you'll transform from a "sugar-burner" into a Sisson's so-called "fat burning beast", where stored body fat becomes your preferred fuel choice, and energy, hormone, metabolic, and immune function are optimized automatically. With an intuitive mix of Primal workouts, you'll get exceptionally fit in only a few hours per week -- and have fun while you're at it! The Primal Blueprint 21-Day Transformation is stocked with photos, diagrams, concise section summaries, workout descriptions and photos, resource lists for Primal-approved foods and foods to avoid, recipe suggestions, and detailed real-life success stories to help you stay confident and focused on your Primal journey. Unlike many complex, regimented, quick-fix programs, the Primal Blueprint 21-Day Transformation is a simple, sensibly-paced journey shaped by personal preference and a strong emphasis on enjoying comfortable modern life. The material is scalable for everyone, from Type-A fitness die-hards who might benefit from a more relaxed approach, to couch potatoes who need motivation to take that first step. Mark Sisson guides you in a light-hearted, irreverent tone that will make you feel comfortable and inspired, and never intimidated. You can expect quick results in the first 21 days (fat loss, improved energy levels, fitness, and blood test markers), but your 21-Day Transformation is only the beginning of a life of ease and contentment that is possible when you live in harmony with your genetic requirements for health and longevity.

Author of the popular Primal Body, Primal Mind and widely recognized Paleo expert and nutritionist Nora Gedgaudas presents a revolutionary and accessible high-fat diet for maintaining health, losing weight, and reversing some chronic diseases. Popular nutritionist Nora Gedgaudas returns with advice that may sound counterintuitive: Eat fat to burn fat. In Primal Fat Burner, she explains the benefits and science behind a ketogenic (or fat-burning) diet, which switches your metabolism from a dependence on sugar to running on healthy fats. As Gedgaudas reveals, numerous studies in recent years refute the long-promoted anti-saturated fat and anti-cholesterol agenda. Now, “with able, funny writing” (Booklist), Gedgaudas explains the science that fat isn’t always a bad thing—if you know the right kinds of fats to eat. In her comprehensible, enjoyable style, she also lays out a practical meal plan with recipes. Author of the bestselling Grain Brain, Dr. David Perlmutter writes in his foreword that Primal Fat Burner is, “Wonderfully actionable, compassionately taking the reader from ‘why’ to ‘how.’” On this diet, you efficiently and effectively metabolize fat (ketones and free fatty acids) as your primary source of fuel, rather than glucose from carbs, starches, and sugars. Because fat is so satisfying, you naturally wind up eating less—without feelings of hunger or deprivation. And natural dietary fat is ultimately the key to feeling better, looking better, thinking clearer, and living longer. Discover all this and more healthy tips in one of the most groundbreaking nutritional books in recent time.

A personal trainer and former competitive body builder offers a weight loss and fitness program that mimics the diet and activity pattern of humans' Paleolithic ancestors who hunted wild game and foraged for plants and berries.

Primal Endurance shakes up the status quo and challenges the overly stressful, ineffective conventional approach to endurance training. While marathons and triathlons are wildly popular and bring much gratification and camaraderie to the participants, the majority of athletes are too slow, continually tired, and carry too much body fat respective to the time they devote to training. The prevailing "chronic cardio" approach promotes carbohydrate dependency, overly stressful lifestyle patterns, and ultimately burnout. Mark Sisson, author of the 2009 bestseller, The Primal Blueprint, and de-facto leader of the primal/paleo lifestyle movement, expertly applies primal lifestyle principles to the unique challenge of endurance training and racing. Unlike the many instant and self-anointed experts who have descended upon the endurance scene in recent years, Sisson and his co-author/business partner Brad Kearns boast a rich history in endurance sports. Sisson has a 2:18 marathon and 4th place Hawaii Ironman finish to his credit, has spearheaded triathlon's global anti-doping program for the International Triathlon Union, and has coached/advised leading professional athletes, including Olympic triathlon gold and silver medalist Simon Whitfield and Tour de France cyclist Dave Zabriskie. Under Sisson's guidance, Kearns won multiple national championships in duathlon and triathlon, and rose to a #3 world triathlon ranking in 1991. Primal Endurance applies an all-encompassing approach to endurance training that includes primal-aligned eating to escape carbohydrate dependency and enhance fat metabolism, building an aerobic base with comfortably paced workouts, strategically introducing high intensity strength and sprint workouts, emphasizing rest, recovery, and an annual periodization, and finally cultivating an intuitive approach to training instead of the usual robotic approach of fixed weekly workout schedules. When you "go Primal" as an endurance athlete, you can expect to enjoy these and other benefits in short order: Easily reduce excess body fat and keep it off permanently, even during periods of reduced trainingPerform better by reprogramming your genes to burn fat and spare glycogen during sustained endurance effortsAvoid overtraining, burnout, illness, and injury by improving your balance of stress and rest, both in training and everyday lifeSpend fewer total hours training and get more return on investment with periodized and purposeful workout patternsHave more fun, be more spontaneous, and break free from the pull of the obsessive/compulsive mindset that is common among highly motivated, goal-oriented endurance athletesHave more energy and better focus during daily life instead of suffering from the "active couch potato syndrome," with cumulative fatigue from incessant heavy training makes you lazy and sluggish Primal Endurance is about slowing down, balancing out, chilling out, and having more fun with your endurance pursuits. It's about building your health through sensible training patterns, instead of destroying your health through chronic training patterns. While it might be hard to believe at first glance, you can actually get faster by backing off from the overly aggressive and overly regimented "Type-A" training approach that prevails in today's endurance community. Primal Endurance will show you how, every step of the way.

"The New Primal Blueprint serves as the ultimate road map for anyone wishing to make the shift from flawed conventional wisdom about diet and exercise to a healthy, happy empowering lifestyle patterned after the evolutionary-tested behaviors of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The book details the ten immutable Primal Blueprint lifestyle laws that enable empower you to reprogram your genes to direct in the direction of weight loss, health, and longevity. The Primal Blueprint laws are validated by two million years of human evolution as well as an ever-expanding body of contemporary scientific research. Sisson's philosophy was originally met with skepticism as he aggressively challenged numerous mainstream health tenets. Eight years later, mainstream medical and health science are validating the Primal Blueprint tenets assertions that a high-carb, grain-based diet will make you fat, tired, and sick; that a consistent routine of medium-to-difficult cardiovascular workouts can actually compromise your health and longevity and increase risk of heart disease; and that consuming (whole food sources of) fat and cholesterol does not lead to heart disease as we have been led to believe, but rather offers many health benefits." --