Ending and Beginning

I’ve been reading a lot about the so-called Paleo diet and lifestyle recently, the idea that for optimal health we should eat and act much like our ancestors did before the relatively recent introduction of agriculture. The concept makes a lot of sense to me.

There are certainly differences among the Paleo gurus (PGs), and that’s where each of us has to make decisions based on our own experience and common sense.

For example, only Mark Sisson says that we should spend a lot of time walking or otherwise performing low-level cardio (in addition to the high-intensity exercise pretty much everyone agrees on). But even though that exercise prescription is rare among the PGs, it makes sense to me and I’m going to continue doing it. It just seems likely that if we were hunters and gatherers, we would spend a lot of time walking and gathering, and even the hunting part of it would often mean slowly tracking for long distances before the active part of the hunt.

I still haven’t decided how or if to incorporate the ideas from Born to Run. When I read that, I was sold on the idea of persistence hunting and the concomitant long-distance running. But that idea does not make it into anyone else’s view of Paleo existence. The fact remains that humans are superb endurance athletes, and it’s unlikely that’s just an accident.