Fat Is Delicious
by
Mark Sisson
Mark’s Daily Apple
Recently
by Mark Sisson: 6
Books I Am Reading Right Now (plus the Official Release Date of
The Primal Connection)
ItÂ’s
Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal
Blueprint Real Life Story from a MarkÂ’s Daily Apple reader.
If you have your own success story and would like to share it with
me and the MarkÂ’s Daily Apple community please contact me here.
IÂ’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they
keep coming in. Thank you for reading!
I hesitated
to share my story since before I started The
Primal Blueprint (PB), I was already a fairly healthy 22-year-old,
so my transformation simply cannot compare to those that have lost
weight in the triple digits and literally cured diabetes. However,
I decided to write out this story after some encouragement from
my friends, and I do believe that my transformation is incredible
in its own right: particularly, the results materialized so quickly.
IÂ’m writing this after less than 4 months of following PB.
Moreover, I donÂ’t see many success
stories involving my ethnic group, Asians, probably because
of the importance of rice in our culture. One of the most common
critiques that I hear is “look at all those skinny Asians who
gobble down rice.” I wanted to show that there exist substantial
benefits to toning down the consumption of rice.
My story starts
in my senior year of college. After four years of college, I had
put on 20 pounds, reaching 160, which was slightly overweight considering
my height of 5′ 5″. Furthermore, the acne that I assumed would
disappear with time still persisted from my high school years. You
can see me as a college senior.
When I graduated,
I decided to make my health a priority and threw myself fervently
into the Conventional Wisdom (CW) approach. For 5-6 days every week,
I would exercise splitting my time about 50-50 between cardio (in
the form of running) and strength training (mainly pull-ups, squats,
and bench press). As for diet, I ate my whole grains, lean protein,
low-fat dairy, and upped my fruits and veggies. The results were
slow, but over the course of about 3 months, I managed to lose 10
pounds. Suddenly, progress stopped. I stayed the course with this
regimen for 2 months, and my weight remained unchanged. In addition,
I doubted my ability to sustain this volume of exercise: I constantly
felt tired. You can see the results of CW.
Around this
time, I stumbled upon MarkÂ’s
Daily Apple when looking for ways
to increase my ankle mobility (I was having trouble squatting
low, which I have also since remedied). I began to dig deeper into
this concept of “Primal Living,” and I found much of it,
particularly the bits about insulin and cholesterol, aligned with
what I had learned in my college Biochemistry class. Suddenly, I
began to look through the lens of evolution, connected the dots,
and realized that something has gone awry with how humans interact
with our environment. For instance, I discovered that high-carbohydrate
diets have been linked to myopia. In terms of evolution, it makes
no sense that I was wearing glasses by the time I was 7, and myopia
among Asians is the norm. Perhaps, we donÂ’t store fat the way
Westerners do, but I sincerely doubt our carbohydrate-rich diet
is harmless.
Frustrated
with the CW approach and being young with not much to lose, I figured
that I would give PB a try. Rather than ease in to the PB, I dove
all-in, dropping grains immediately. When I got the low-carb
flu, I doubled down and ate more fat. I had an awful case of
the flu that lasted nearly 3 weeks, which indicates that I was very
insulin-resistant at the start. After 6 weeks, I decided to check
my progress, and I couldnÂ’t believe the results. I had already
reached my goal weight of 140! That was my weight back in high school
when I played tennis and soccer, but I found myself even leaner
then than my former 18-year-old self. IÂ’ve managed to stay
the course, adding in things like organ meats and intermittent fasting
(which for me tends to mean simply skipping breakfast), and have
made even more progress as you can see.
Listen
to Lew’s recent podcast with Mark Sisson
March 31, 2012
Copyright
© 2012 Mark’s Daily Apple