I finally lost weight and began improving my fitness when I gave up on the whole low-carb/primal bullshit. To the extent that this book might help you get more fit via exercise, then great. But the diet portion is just more of Taubes' unscientific good calories/bad calories pseudoscience. Read anything else, really... ( )

This is one of many books I've just completed on the topic of paleo or primal eating and fitness. I enjoyed Sisson's attitude towards eating and activity. His recommendations regarding healthy eating and exercise are scientifically sound and anecdotally proven. The man looks and acts like someone half his age! ( )

Not sure if I will go Primal / Paleo but now I see what the story behind the hype is. ( )

Great strategy for healthy living ( )

Mark Sisson packs a LOT of information into this book. Extensive research has been done for the last fourty or so years about what foods do to our bodies. He makes a very good case that carbohydrates and processed foods are poison. And I think he might just be correct.

There are 10 basic rules ranging from food to exercise to sleep. It's a simple, easy plan. You have to give up bread, pasta, sugar and processed foods, not to mention avoid legumes (including PEANUTS!).

The presentation is a bit long, but I think the content is sound. ( )

I almost don’t know how to start this review or where to go. This book ties into so many issues of modern life and flies in the face of a lot of conventional wisdom (CW) about the standard American diet (SAD), health and exercise. However, it also talks the talk and walks the walk. Despite living in Malibu, on the beach and looking like a movie star, I think Mark Sisson is the real deal. He eats this way. He exercises this way. He lives this way. And it works.

The book is exactly what it says in the title; a blueprint for the primal life. It’s a framework of basic elements that when put together will reset your body’s metabolic processes, improve your genetic expression and help your body and mind run optimally. You’ll need to stop clinging to conventional wisdom though and really open your mind, something a lot of people are too (dare I say it?) brainwashed to do. Some of the scientific information you’ll need to do this is not in this book although a lot of it is touched upon and cited. For that kind of info you’ll need to read Taubes, Wolf, Davis and the other heavyweights of the primal/paleo world. It is a bit daunting, but look where CW has gotten us; we’re fatter and sicker than ever as a population. Finally that’s what made me read this and make the change. After all, the USDA doesn’t really have my best interests in mind, they exist to serve lobbyists funded by gigantic food corporations like CarGill and Monsanto and their only concern is profit, not health. If I really wanted to go off the conspiracy cliff I’d lump the big pharmaceutical companies in there, too. There is no money in healthy people.

So now I’ve gone Primal - 3 weeks at 100%. No sugar. No flour. No grains. No beans. No beer. For 20 years I’ve been active (hiker, walker and weight lifter), I’ve eaten low-carb and low-fat. I avoided eggs and other “cholesterol bombs”. The result is that I’m 40 pounds overweight. Clearly it wasn’t working. Why not change? Didn’t someone, somewhere define insanity as doing the same things over and over and expecting different results? If following CW just made me fat, why not do the opposite and see? What harm could it do me? Granted, I don’t have a lot of health issues (like hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes etc.), but after a mere 3 weeks on this plan, I feel better and a lot of my petty complaints that I chalked up to ageing are gone. Oh and I’ve also lost weight. Imagine that. I eat bacon every day and I’m thinner. CW be damned.

Back to the book. It needs a copy editor quick ‘cause, damn! I wanted to get my red pencil every time I picked it up. Annoying. However, beyond that, the style is pretty even and light. He doesn’t bludgeon you with facts. He doesn’t include a lot of hokey analogies (although the Grok and Korg thing got my eyes rolling and I skipped a lot of it). The carb curve chart is worth the price of admission all by itself. Once you understand how the body processes carbohydrates, you’ll never look at pasta or crackers the same way again (you’ll look at them as piles of sugar, which to your body, they are). Once you realize that the toxins in wheat actually cause inflammatory conditions, impede nutrient absorption and are a nutritionally poor food, you won’t look at your morning bagel the same way either. My one issue with how Mark presents his info and solutions is that um, hello! we don’t all live in southern California. He’s wicked spoiled by living there and a lot of his living the PB comes very easy because of that. The rest of the world will have it tougher in terms of access to local produce, beaches, seafood, sunshine and nature. I wish that he’d included a few more thoughts on how to make the Primal Blueprint adaptable to someone, say, living in Calgary or St. Louis. Cushy Californians they are not.

The plan itself I think is pretty real-world friendly. It’s not some rigid calorie-counting, portion-measuring regime that no one could follow outside some perfect bubble. Some will view it as elitist and exclusionary, but so what? Nothing worthwhile is ever easy, right? Can you have elite health eating crap? If it were or if you could, everyone would be thin, athletic, and type 2 diabetes would not exist. No, you can’t eat cookies, crackers, bagels or toast. But you can eat bacon, porterhouse steaks, salmon and all the glorious veggies you want. You can’t drink beer, but you can still have red wine, bourbon, scotch, whiskey, vodka, gin, and other spirits. You can’t have soda or energy drinks, but coffee and tea are still primal. Yeah, you’ll have to ditch your mac-n-cheese in the blue box, but you’ll save time at the store from not having to go down all those middle aisles. Sure, most of your diet will be like a caveman’s, but hell, this is the 21st century we live in and there are allowances for that. Sisson knows that a diet that sucks the fun out of life isn’t one people will follow. He urges you to go for 100% primal, but realizes that if you need to eat something that isn’t so primal, it isn’t the end of the world; an 80/20% split is fair for most people. The Primal Blueprint is full of things you can do and eat (like dark chocolate!). It is a lifestyle that encourages play, good sleep and using your brain. Plus I get to eat bacon. What’s better than bacon? It’s the candy of meat! ( )

I was introduced to Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint & his blog MarksDailyApple a few months ago and finally got around to borrowing the book via interlibrary-loan. The Primal Blueprint encourages us to look at, learn from, and be inspired by our ancestors circa 10,000 years ago through the archetypal primal man Grok as compared to the archetypal american family the Korgs. The book is an enjoyable read due to Sisson's casual writing style, jokes, and pop-culture references. Very technical material is covered in a way that is easy to understand. I would have liked to see more citations since most in-text references seemed vague or absent although one chapter was loaded with end-notes. ( )