How You Can Maximize Your Productivity by Eating Like Your Ancestors

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It should come as no surprise that a vast amount of time and money is spent gathering endless scientific evidence to tell us how to eat and live, but what is surprising is that the findings are often very contradictory, and as a result, we're left confused and ill-informed about how we should stay healthy.

As some experts suggest, living healthily and functioning optimally (in both body and mind) is as easy as eating and living like our ancestors did, before the Neolithic Revolution 10,000 years ago, before we started to farm grains and leave our hunter-gatherer lifestyles behind.

Eating like our ancestors means to eat what nature gave us. Essentially this is animals, insects and vegetation, and when you think about it, this should be rather easy for us since we no longer have to hunt food ourselves!

Mounting research, clinical evidence and revelations as to why official advice has worked so poorly over the past few decades seem to make it clear that emulating the way we ate for the vast majority of our evolution is a good idea. But there’s still some condescension from part of the media, which is quick to point out that the old way isn’t always the best way. That’s technically true, but it ignores that these approaches work not because they’re old, but because they reverse some of the recent, disastrous innovations in human food consumption.

It seems as if we'd mostly rejected this way of living because we're so enticed by modern-day fad diets that would rather take our money than help us live longer, healthier lives. However, we're now starting to see diets like paleo, keto and primal gaining in popularity, and these diets outline the ways that we can eat and live like our ancestors for optimum health and productivity.

What do these diets consist of? Let’s take a look.

Sisson’s Primal Blueprint

Former runner and triathlete Mark Sisson discovered (from his own first-hand experiences) that following the same lifestyle "blueprint" our ancestors followed ⏤ thousands of years ago ⏤ still greatly benefits us today. His modern-day Primal Blueprint is almost identical to the lifestyle lived by our ancestors and you can read about this in further detail in his book, The Primal Blueprint or on his site.

It's made up of the following rules:

• Eat lots of animals, insects and plants
• Move around a lot, but at a slow pace
• Run really fast once in a while
• Lift heavy things
• Get lots of sleep
• Play (i.e. enjoy yourself)
• Get some sunlight every day
• Make use of your mind
• Avoid trauma and poisonous things

I won't go into too much detail, but you may have noticed that some of these rules sound a little primitive or even downright obvious, but 10,000 years ago was a different time. While coming into contact with poisonous things was certainly something to avoid doing back then (and it still is, don't worry!), nowadays that might apply to alcohol and substance abuse. Playtime would have meant practicing spear-throwing, but today that could be a soccer game.

In short, Sisson advocates a balanced diet and lifestyle similar to our predecessors. Eat plenty of protein (fish and eggs are great substitutes for vegetarians), eat plenty of vegetables, make sure you’re not sedentary (sitting down for too long), include rigorous exercise now and again, have fun (don't stress yourself too much), avoid placing yourself in unnecessary danger (such as failing to wear a seatbelt), have lots of sleep to rest your body and mind, and avoid fast food, refined carbs and sugars and other harmful substances.

Why Refined Carbohydrates Are the Enemy

Have you ever noticed how tired and foggy your brain becomes once you've eaten a carb-y meal such as pizza? That happens because our ancestors never ate bread and other grains, and so our bodies never evolved to "understand" those types of refined carbohydrates. Simply put, your body has to work overtime to digest these unnatural foods. In terms of evolutionary biology, we haven't caught up to that yet!

As you may have guessed, your body becomes exhausted and highly unproductive when it has to work overtime to digest the foods or handle the blood glucose levels that we've not yet evolved to handle ⏤ this can even lead to food intolerance and have adverse effects on both your physical and mental health, including frequent headaches and other uncomfortable symptoms that can seriously hinder an entrepreneur's peak performance.

Let’s discuss the other two diets, paleo and keto.

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by Rebeka Bergin via SitePoint