Keto Info Week 1/12

[spEEdfrEEk]

CATEGORY: training/anaerobic

TECHNICAL: *

SUMMARY:

This short note summarizes a thing known as "evolutionary

fitness" which is a strategy designed by Arthur De Vany to promote

health and longevity via diet and exercise. The main crux of

his work was to define a training program to take advantage of

the way we evloved. To a degree, I believe he's done that.

In fact, I agree mostly with his suggestions. I have another

article that goes into greater detail about his plan. For now,

I just send this note. In a short while I will post my complete

training program to the list and show you how it is very similar

to his. He focuses on intensity and variety, and that is a key

to any successfull program.

The program I have to offer uses something similar but

defines itself in more specific terms. You will hear things like

"progressive overload", "holistic training", and "periodization".

Those 3 things have combined to help me surpass my wildest

expectations in the gym, and they will help you too.

Suffice it to say that, if you train scientifically,

strength plateaus will be a thing of the past..

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Arthur De Vany's EVOLUTIONARY FITNESS

Copyright © 1995 by Arthur De Vany.

This is a brief description of my in-progress book on the

evolutionary diet and physical fitness program. You may download this for

personal reading but may not redistribute or archive without permission.

The book should be published in 1998.

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Introduction

Evolutionary Fitness is a result of my personal and scientific quest

to stay fit and young. It combines my experience as a professional and

amateur athlete, and as someone who has spent more than 40 years

exercising, with my scientific interests in evolution and complex adaptive

systems. It begins with the premise that our bodies and minds are adapted

to an ancient environment that passed more than 10,000 years ago. We

evolved as hunter-gatherers over at least three million years and that

lifeway shapes our attributes, behaviors, and capabilities as human

beings. It is by understanding the hunter-gatherer adaptation and

incorporating the activity and eating patterns of our ancestral lifeway

that we can live a natural and healthy life in a modern world that is very

different from the one in which human beings evolved.

Darwin and Fitness

In developing this idea, I take the Darwinian approach that has been

so successful in the new fields of evolutionary psychology and medicine

and apply it to physical fitness. But, I integrate a Darwinian perspective

with the theory of chaos and complex systems. A deeper look at the

evolutionary record, the new revelations in the biological sciences, my

scientific work in complex systems, and my own personal experience as a

life-long student of fitness tell me that the right model for

understanding health and fitness must combine insights from evolution and

chaos.

Non Linear Systems

When the body is viewed as a complex adaptive system exploiting

evolved mechanisms, it becomes clear that conventional thinking about

diets and obesity is wrong. The human organism is an open energy system,

operating far from equilibrium. Diet and exercise programs that are mired

in linear thinking are completely inappropriate for understanding human

energy metabolism.

The primary objectives for any exercise and diet program must be to

counter hyperinsulemia (chronically elevated insulin) and hypoexertion

(wasting the body's lean mass through inactivity)---these are the number

one health risks according to the National Institutes of Health. A natural

diet, based on the evolutionary record effectively counters

hyperinsulemia. Intermittent, intense exercise in brief spurts promotes

hormone drives that quench hyperinsulemia and build muscle and bone

density that keep you young and lean.

Ancestral Dynamic Patterns

Intermittent, intense, and playful exercise mimics the activity

patterns that were essential to the emergence and evolution of the human

species. High intensity, intermittent and brief training mixed with power

walking and play is closer than aerobic exercise, high volume weight

training, or sedentism to how our ancestors lived. We are hunter-gatherers

and have been for all of human and pre-human history. Only 15,000 years

have passed since the last Ice Age, not long enough for bodies suited for

the sedentary modern age to have evolved. If such bodies ever do evolve

they cannot have our minds, for the human mind evolved to live in a brain

adapted to an energetic, versatile and dynamic body.

Fitness from Chaos

In the book, I present new technology for exercise --- power law

training --- that is, in reality, as ancient as life itself. Power law

training is the technology consistent with the chaotic natural dynamics

that science finds in all living things; it matches the rhythm of life

itself and is found in the movements of wild animals, healthy heart beats,

neuronal dynamics in the brain, and the music of Bach.

Mind-Body Integration

Our brains and bodies are dynamic objects that thrive on challenge

and movement; intermittent intensity brings key adaptations in hormone

drives, neurological function, and body composition. The mixture of

variety, intermittent intensity, and play bind perception and kinesthetics

to create a dynamic and positive self image which is the reference point

on which our knowledge and living are organized. Movement and play build

muscle and cognitive maps in the brain and repair the mind/body continuum.

The Big Idea

Your brain and body are evolved for life in 40,000 BC; take care of

the hunter gatherer body and mind that you carry in that pin-striped suit.

Outline of the Book

Figuring out how our ancestors lived occupies the first part of the

book. Understanding what these ancestral living patterns mean in terms of

body/mind processes is the challenge I tackle in the second part of the

book. The disease that results from adaptations to modern living patterns

is the puzzle I investigate in the third part of the book. Learning to

live and eat like it is 40,000 BC while living in this modern world and

enjoying what it has to offer is the challenge I take up in the last part

of the book.

The Author

I am not a "trainer to the stars" or a reformed overeater (the most

common types of authors in this genre), but I am a scientist and athlete

and a successful example of what I preach. At 60 years of age, I look

like a Cro-Magnon ancestor from the Paleolithic: 6' 1", 205 pounds with a

dense and athletic musculature and less than 8% body fat.

Based on body composition, strength, flexibility, reaction time, and

blood profile, a research institute rates my biological age at 32. Not so

remarkable when you understand that what we call aging in this modern

world really is the accumulated damage of inactivity and dietary abuse.

Hunter gatherers don't age like Westerners do.

Art De Vany, age 60, September 1997

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:cool: TJ :cool: