Primal Blueprint Podcast

Brad's message emphasizes three themes that counter the narrowly-focused rat race mentality that equates dogged hard work with success without considering the big picture. In the presentation, Brad gives examples from his nine-year career as a professional triathlete (coached by Mark Sisson!), where he learned the lessons of success and failure in an intense and dramatic manner. In the athletic arena, personal frailties and flawed perspectives are exposed for all to see with sub-par performances or difficulty functioning in real life despite material success. Brad explains that to truly experience peak performance, you must:1. Balance Stress and Rest: This includes all forms of stress in life, as even pleasurable events such as workouts are a form of stress to the body 2. Release Attachment to the Outcome: Don't attach your happiness or self-esteem to the results of your endeavors. Pursue peak performance goals in the workplace, in fitness/athletics, and even with body composition for the right reasons - for

Join Mark Sisson as he comments extensively on many of the most common challenges and confusions of living Primally. Topics covered include how to drop those final five or ten pounds of excess body fat when you have stalled at a certain level - through dialing in your appetite and sensible, intuitive eating, optimizing your carb intake level through personal experimentation, and adding sprint workouts to aggressively stimulate accelerated fat burning; eating in a compressed time window and how morning coffee intake affects that; experiencing nausea when eating high fat primal foods without anything else; the best way to read at night to not disturb your circadian rhythm. Mark also gives an overview of the forthcoming Primal Blueprint Expert Certification program, soon available online at PrimalBlueprint.com - a great resource for health/fitness professionals or devoted primal enthusiasts to deepen their education on primal principles and motivate others to live primally.

Mark recaps the incredible PrimalCon Vacation Tulum event, which took place March 1st-6th at the Dreams Tulum resort in Mexico. He mentions the many excellent presenters as well as some interesting guests who attended. He then gets into some interesting questions from listeners. Topics covered include: how to stay motivated with diet/health/fitness goals when life throws you some curves; the importance of a sustainable approach as reflected in the Primal Blueprint 80/20 rule; the importance of an intuitive approach to balance workout stress with ample rest, so listeners never do a crazy workout like Mark's 16 x 800m in 2:24-2:28!; the benefits of standup work environments; carb intake strategies for weight management and adrenal fatigue; where potatoes stand in the Primal camp; and the pros and cons of alcohol consumption.

Darryl Edwards joins host Brad Kearns broadcasting from PrimalCon Vacation Tulum to talk about his favorite subject: Play! Darryl has made a big splash at the last several PrimalCons, taking guests out of their comfort zones to rediscover their playful, childlike spirits. Darryl is the author of Paleo Fitness, and founder of Fitness Explorer Training & Nutrition based in London, England. Darryl discusses how to make your ordinary workouts become more fun and inspiring, not just with practical suggestions but also in the cultivation of a playful attitude.

Steve Levine is an ordinary guy with an extraordinary passion for primal living. A voracious consumer of all available written and audio material in the primal/paleo/ancestral health community, Steve joins the Primal Blueprint podcast to discuss his personal journey and success with transitioning out of the Standard American Diet into a primal lifestyle. Steve, an attorney by trade, has a refreshing and passionate perspective that will be helpful for both newcomers to primal living and reaffirming and enlightening to hard-core primal folks. He has taken a methodical, critical thinking approach to all aspects of the movement to create a personal success formula that he has followed for nearly a decade. Give it a listen and hang on for a fun ride with Primal Blueprint enthusiast Steve Levine!

In this podcast, Mark Sisson takes questions from the audience relating to enjoying grains with no ill effects; effective decision making with your workouts to avoid getting sick or overtrained; how to motivate and inspire family and friends to go primal without turning them off; the best uses of Primal Calm and the beneficial effects of phosphatidylserine (including an extensive discussion on the importance of managing the fight or flight response and preventing chronically elevated cortisol levels); and how to deal with a tendency to get sugar cravings in the evening.

In this podcast, Mark Sisson addresses the common theme of devoted fitness enthusiasts who tend to exercise in a chronic pattern, and suffer from declines in health and fitness accordingly. Sisson discusses how to transition out of a chronic pattern and into a sweet spot where your fitness efforts are sufficient to support outstanding fitness, peak performance efforts, and safe, diverse, injury-free play efforts, but not too extreme or excessive where you might compromise your health. Included in this discussion are the potential pitfalls of pursuing the endorphin high to excess, the importance of cultivating an intuitive approach to workout planning rather than a robotic approach, and the importance of each of the three Primal Blueprint fitness laws: Move frequently at a slow pace, Lift heavy things, and Sprint once in a while.

In this podcast, Mark Sisson explains how appetite supersedes the oversimplified equation of calories in = calories out, and how optimizing hormones and gene expression is the true path to effortless lifelong weight management. Mark discusses how moderating insulin production is the key to lifelong weight control, for it unlocks the potential to minimize reliance on ingested calories in favor of burning stored body fat and ketones for energy. Optimizing insulin also regulates appetite hormones such as leptin and ghrelin, and enables you to obtain the fat reduction and cellular repair benefits associated with Intermittent Fasting.

In this podcast, Mark Sisson discusses the rationale for why supplementation can be considered in pursuit of a healthy Primal lifestyle. Starting with the question of whether we need to supplement or not and how it aligns with the primal/paleo dietary philosophy, Sisson explains that the influences of hectic modern life and the limitations of modern dietary options might call for use of certain dietary supplements in a strategic manner. For example, taking vitamin D in the wintertime when sun exposure is unavailable. Sisson covers various popular categories of supplements, the reasons to use them, and how to select for high quality products. The categories of supplements discussed are vitamin D, omega-3 fish oil, multivitamins, antioxidants, probiotics, and high protein meal replacements.

In this podcast, Mark Sisson presents the compelling premise that you can reprogram your genes in the direction of weight loss, health, and longevity by following 10 immutable “Primal” laws validated by two million years of human evolution.

In this podcast, Mark Sisson discusses his strategy of eating in a compressed time window of typically 1pm-7pm each day, and various other methods of Intermittent Fasting. He details the various strategies for post-workout recovery, comparing the carb paradigm strategy of immediate refueling with the Primal strategy of optimizing hormonal benefits by fasting until hunger ensues after intense workouts.

In this podcast, Mark Sisson discusses the popular Primal Blueprint concept of the 80/20 rule, which is often misinterpreted and manipulated to compromise dietary quality. Sisson explains that the spirit of the 80/20 rule is to strive for 100% compliance with Primal guidelines and maximum nutritional value of your diet, but to accept the imperfections and limitations of your food choices. The common excuse of having difficulty finding quality meals away from home is countered by Sisson’s strategy of practicing Intermittent Fasting when healthy options are not available. Sisson also mentions the flip side of being too obsessed with Primal perfection, and experiencing increased stress from an overly rigid approach. He also talks about society’s distorted perception of ideal body composition, urging you to focus on your own personal peak performance potential and enjoyment of life, instead of struggling to adhere to the sensationalized standards of models and elite fitness specimens.

In this podcast, Mark Sisson discusses the common phenomenon of an excessive and overly stressful approach to fitness, for which he coined the term "Chronic Cardio" back in 2005. Chronic cardio applies to not only endurance athletes, but to devotees of Crossfit, exercise class junkies, or anyone who is inclined to overdo it on exercise and compromise health in pursuit of fitness. Sisson discusses how to adopt an alternative strategy and philosophy, where you perform the optimal amount of exercise necessary to realize your fitness goals, nurture your health, and promote longevity - as opposed to compromise your health and accelerate aging when drifting into a chronic approach to exercise.