Evolutionary Fitness

A New Science of Diet, Health, and Fitness

Arthur De Vany, Ph.D.

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c by Arthur De Vany.
Copyright !

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without
prior permission of the author.
Contents

1 Darwin and Fitness 1

2 Evolution and the Human Lifeway 25

3 The Evolution of our Diseases 65

4 An Evolutionary Model of Health and Fitness 71

5 The Modern Killers 75

6 Aging 97

7 Why Diets and Aerobics Fail 101

8 Metabolic Fitness 103

9 The Evolutionary Fitness Diet and Eating Patterns 121

10 The Evolutionary Fitness Activity Model 133

11 Stage One: Getting Started 147

12 Stage Two: Intermittency and the Critical Region 157

13 Stage Three: The Power Athlete 159

14 The Evolutionary Fitness Lifeway 161

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Chapter 1

Darwin and Fitness

Charles Darwin was overweight and chronically ill (a typical byproduct of

obesity). So, what can we learn from him about human health and fitness?
The theory of evolution he created is the most powerful idea in the life
sciences and it is an idea that has the power to improve our health and
fitness and even the way we look. The idea that our minds and bodies are
the product of a long evolution over millions of years clears away a lot of the
nonsense we hear about how to lose weight and get fit. It also provides us
with a very powerful model for understanding why we get fat and become
weak and chronically ill as we age. More importantly, an understanding of
the evolution of the human body and mind provides us with a model we can
use to be healthy and fit and at peace with ourselves.
It may come as a surprise that many of the ills we modern humans experi-
ence are new to the human species. Obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes,
multiple sclerosis and a host of other morbidities and illnesses are new con-
ditions that ancient humans largely did not suffer. Our bodies do not thrive
on modern life where inactivity is imposed by work and other obligations
and where food, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs are over abundant. Nor do our
minds seem to thrive on modern life. Modern humans likely experience more

1
2 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

chronic stress than our ancestors, whose primary stresses would have been
acute and episodic. The fight or flight instincts that our ancestors relied upon
to escape danger are triggered in innumerable ways in modern life without
resolution and the resulting chronic stress is a potent source of disease, obe-
sity, and addiction. Even our wealth and possessions do not bring satisfaction
because our minds evolved at a time when they were meaningless.

Our ancestors of 40,000 years ago were extraordinarily well-nourished and

healthy. We are over-fed and undernourished. They may have been as tall as
the tallest twenty per cent of the latest generation of Americans. They were
far more powerful and muscular than we. They lived a vigorous and active
life, one completely unlike modern life. Their life expectancy was about a
third of ours primarily because of the high infant mortality rate. The next
causes of mortality were a predator, a fall, a hunting-related injury, snake
bite, or a fellow human. In many ways, our ancestors lived as wild animals
and we live as caged lab rats. Predation is the major cause of death for most
wild creatures. Only large animals and predators experience low predation
risk in the wild. Lab animals live about three times as long as wild animals
of the same species. They live this long because predation risk is removed
in the lab. Since we live more as lab than wild animals, our maximum life
is about three times that of our wild ancestors; we live to almost 90 they to
about 31 years.

There is no genetic difference between our life expectancy and theirs be-
cause we have virtually identical genes and at least some of our ancestors
lived into their sixties, in spite of the hazards. Transport an ancestor of
100,000 years ago to the present and they would live as long as we do.

Predation was a major cause of death for our ancestors and this has
left an imprint on our minds and psyches. Snakes and noises in the dark
 3

seem to produce exaggerated reactions in us. Yet, these reactions would be

appropriate in the world of our ancestors. If our fears seem excessive for the
direct risks we face today and strangely lacking in areas where risk is more
abstract or detached from our actions it is because of the vast differences in
the ancestral risks and ours.

The risks of ancestral life influence our genes as well as our fears. If an-
cestors were killed by predators or any of the other hazards of that ancient
world, then their/our genes would not invest in the kind of maintenance
functions that would keep us well in our old age. Thus, once we are past
reproductive age and beyond the life expectancy of a wild-living human an-
cestor, our genes are in a new environment for which evolution could not
prepare them. As life expectancy approaches 90 years of age a host of new
diseases threaten us.

We are chronically ill and frail more years in total and for a larger portion
of our lives than our ancestors of ten to forty thousand years ago. The risk
of death at every age has declined steadily since the 1900s. But, with these
advances, have come the new risks of mental loss, chronic disease, frailty, and
disability to an aging, unfit, and overweight population.

The human body and mind are the product of millions of years of evo-
lution. They are your greatest gifts and your vessel through life. The Dar-
winian model says they are powerful tools for survival and reproduction that
evolved in a world very different from ours. Neglecting these precious gifts,
as sedentary and stressed individuals tend to do, sets us onto the path of a
long period of disability and morbidity in our old age. Our genes are not
evolved for this and they express disease and frailty in the body if it is not
used well. And in the mind if a life is not lived well.

Because human genes had only a short period lasting only ten to fifteen
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years to reproduce themselves, owing to the risky lives of our ancestors, they
were not able to evolve defense and repair mechanisms to keep us well in our
later years. But, research shows that we can “trick” our genes in thinking
we are still young, active, and of reproductive value. Our genes really don’t
know how old we are and they can be made to encode healthful messages
by maintaining a youthful body composition, high hormone sensitivity, and
the right activity patterns and levels. We also have to go hungry sometimes
as a signal to our genes that they must turn on the repair and maintenance
mechanisms. These are some of the essential strategies of Evolutionary Fit-
ness.

Sex and reproduction play a large part in both the evolution and life of
the human species. We are a very sexy species and a lot of what we do, think,
and strive for revolves around sex. But, our bodies are the carriers of our
genes and it is the genes that wire our brains and shape our bodies to their
purposes. To the genes our bodies are disposable once we have reproduced
carriers to take those genes into the next generation. Our genes are millions
of years old, with some mutations along the way, and they don’t care about
you. We are temporary vessels for genes that have been around for a very
long time, far longer than the life of any person. That is why we have to
think about sex so much; our genes have wired our brains to ensure that we
will reproduce so that the genes may live beyond our own lives. Genes that
fail in that task do not survive.

Darwin told us all that and the modern view of evolution has deepened
insights into the role that genes play in natural selection. One of the startling
results of the analysis of genes is that our genes differ about two percent
from a chimpanzee’s and only fifty percent from a daffodil’s. Some genes are
shared by all species; the gene for insulin exists in every living creature and
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is more than a billion years old. Nearly all species use the same strategies
of metabolism and movement. They all have the same kind of alimentary
tract (if they have one at all). You can see the evolutionary history of our
species in the development of the human fetus. The developing fetus looks
like a minnow at first, then like a little tadpole, then a frog or maybe a large
shrimp. Little buds poke out where limbs develop; the ribs of the fish-like
skeleton fuse to form a pelvis; the head enlarges and eye buds pop out and
the fetus starts to look like some little pale curled up dolphin. Only gradually
does it develop into something that looks like a human being. Even after it is
born, a human baby looks and acts much less like an adult than the infants
of any other species of animal. Its development extends far past the womb.

An equally remarkable finding of genetic research is that a human baby

born today would easily thrive in the world that existed 40 thousand years
ago. And a baby born in 40 thousand BC would look just like a baby born in
2000 AD. They would have the same genes and develop into normal babies
and adults in either time period. Though I have taken slight liberties to put
it this way, the fundamental finding remains and it is that our genes have not
changed in the past 40 thousand years. They encode the same fundamental
information. So, each little baby that is born today carries genes that prepare
it for the life of a hunter and gatherer, the occupation of every human who
has ever lived but for the few generations of who came after the invention of
agriculture 10 thousand years ago.

The remarkable thing is that we do so well in a modern world that is

completely different from the world in which humans evolved. That little
baby born today has no more genetic instructions on how to live and survive
than the one born 40 thousand years ago. The baby is no stronger, or
smarter, or better suited for life than one born in the distant past. Each
6 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

baby will have the same skills for language and learning and would develop
into adults along the same path if they were in the same environment. Even
though the Paleolithic baby grows up to make stone chips, spears, and to
hunt mammoth it uses the same brain modules and learning skills that lets
the modern baby grow up to make computer chips, business deals, and to
hunt for theorems in an abstract mathematical space. This is astonishing,
but true. How does that little baby that is hard wired to be a hunter gatherer
learn to be a nuclear physicist? Or a politician? It doesn’t seem possible.
But, they have the same brain and the same body and can therefore have
the same thoughts, with enough training, and do the same things. They are
different only because they live in different worlds and that is the rub.

That little baby whose genes, brain and body expect it to be a hunter
gatherer grows up to be a sales manager or a tax accountant. Instead of
roaming the African savanna foraging for food, she shops in a mall or super
market. Instead of tracking antelope, he tracks financial flows on a spread
sheet. None of our ancestors ever ate a french fry or drank a sugary soft
drink. Many of the foods we eat today are completely novel substances
from an evolutionary perspective. We do know that our predecessors were
incomparably better nourished than we are and we know that they were very
powerful, fit and they were not fat. Their lives were active; they expended
energy in the range of 3 to 8 thousand calories a day which is more typical
of elite athletes than of modern office workers. Diabetes, breast cancer,
and heart disease are so rare as to be almost unheard of among Paleolithic
humans. Why do we get these diseases today? Why are most adult humans
so overweight that they are obese?

If Darwin is right, then our genes are adapted to life as a hunter gatherer
in the Stone Age. An evolutionary adaptation is a capability or trait of a
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phenotype (person) that confers a selective advantage in that environment. If

the modern environment differs from the one we are adapted to (the environ-
ment of evolutionary adaptedness) then these genes may be disadvantageous
today. For example, our genes wire our brains for a fight or flight response to
danger and stressful situations. Modern life presents us with many chronic,
low and high stress situations that we cannot fight or flight our way out of.
This evolutionary stress mechanism may go haywire in our lives even though
it had survival value in ancient times. It still probably does support survival
even now, but it seems to be triggered too often and the triggering situa-
tions go on chronically and without resolution these days. A preference for
sweet tastes and fat was adapted to an environment where they were rare
and signaled dense energy in a world where energy was scarce. This adapta-
tion makes it hard to resist fat and sweets when they are all around us and
cheaply gotten without expending much more than a couple of calories.

Life today is incomparably different from life forty thousand years ago
and it is better in nearly every way. It is safer and we are all but free of
the many pathogens and parasites that threatened out ancestors. Far fewer
infants die now than did in the Paleolithic or old Stone Age period. Life
expectancy is higher not only at birth, but at all ages now than then (but
not by so much as you might expect at later ages). Modern health problems
are of a different kind. Ancestral humans had a higher probability of death
at every age than we do. But they lived a smaller portion of their lives
in disability than we do. Modern humans live longer but age more rapidly
than ancestral humans and they live a longer portion of their lives in chronic
illness and disability. This probably is better than not living at all, although
it depends on the nature of the chronic condition under which life continues.
The decline in function and onset of chronic illness typically experienced by
8 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

a modern adult is not what happened to our ancestors. They were fit well
into their advanced years and exhibited few of the signs we associate with
aging. They aged well and a good deal of what we call aging is a modern
form that is more akin to a disease than natural aging. (More on that in a
later chapter.)

The position I want to take is that we are active genotypes trying to

live as sedentary phenotypes. For now, I will just say that our genes were
forged in an environment where activity was mandatory—you were active
or you starved or were eaten. This created strong selective pressure for
genes encoding a smart, physically adept individual capable of very high
activity levels. Humans are among the most active of species and we carry
energetically expensive brains to boot. Our energy expenditures rank high
among all animals. At least they did.

The sedentary phenotype, homo sedentarius, is the typical modern Amer-

ican who gets no exercise, becomes obese, unfit, chronically ill, and ages
rapidly because his genes are adapted to an active lifeway. Sedentism and
obesity alter the expression of the active genotype and this produces disease.
Diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, insulin resistance, heart disease and the whole
modern panoply of chronic, long lasting diseases are the product of genes
that require activity for healthful expression; an active life is essential to the
healthy expression of this active genotype. If this is right, then exercise is
not just something that you do to improve your health and drop off some fat.
It is not an “intervention” as some health professionals call it. It is essential
to a healthy life. You exercise because the length and quality of your life
depend upon it.

What happens to astronauts is pretty convincing evidence of the essen-

tialness of activity. There also is a world of other evidence which I shall
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mention later. Consider the astronaut. The astronaut’s body wastes away
when it is in the zero gravity environment of outer space. They must do
their exercises or they will not last to the end of their mission. Even when
they do exercise they return to earth having lost a good deal of their muscle,
organ, heart, and skeletal tissue (probably brain tissue too).

A couch astronaut does no less to himself. It just takes longer for him
to waste away because gravity is still pulling on him and he has to get up
now and then. The lean body mass of the couch astronaut wastes away even
as he grows in circumference and total mass as he gets fatter. This altered
body composition will age him rapidly because he loses his metabolic fitness.

The hypothesis of the active genotype is one of the ideas I will rely on to
explain the high and rising incidence of chronic diseases. Related to that idea
is gene expression. What we eat and do and think and feel alters the chemical
milieu in which our genes are bathed. Activity and emotions and nutrients
alter hormones, kinases, prostaglandins, enzymes and countless other mes-
sengers. These alter gene expression, the set of instructions your genes issue
to your ribosomes to make proteins. These instructions also tell your cells to
grow or divide. Or to die.

Gene expression is everything. Even though chimps share 98 per cent of

our genes, they are expressed differently. Some are turned on more, some less
and it is this altered pattern of gene expression as well as the genes themselves
that matter. There is more complexity to be found in the cascades of gene
if-then, on-off switches that may ultimately trigger gene expression. Gene
expression is why we do not look or walk like chimps even though our genes
are so similar. This is why the evolutionary adapted active genotype may
express illness when it is bathed in chemical messengers that signal the genes
that “this body is barely alive” because it is inactive. The good news is that
10 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

genes are not destiny; we can alter our gene expression for better or worse.
Nourishment alters gene expression. So does obesity. Exercise fundamentally
alters gene expression. All this is further evidence for the active genotype
hypothesis.

Just to collect the ideas so far mentioned. We have a hard-wired, modular

brain supporting physical mechanisms that encode specific actions. This is
the modular brain, modular actions hypothesis. The fight or flight response
is an example of this brain-body linkage. We have an active genotype and
activity is essential to express health. Inactivity and obesity cause our genes
to express things that make us ill. Our genes are adapted to the world
of the hunter gatherer. They encode behaviors that were adaptive in that
environment that may be harmful today. The incredible accomplishments of
modern humans are the direct or indirect products of those ancient, evolved
adaptations. We were never meant to be scientists or mathematicians or
accountants or farmers, we developed the ability to do these things by using
ancient skills that served a hunter gatherer well. From these fundamental
ideas I try explain modern diseases and why we get fat and suffer so many
chronic diseases when our ancestors did not. These issues occupy us during
the first part of the book. More importantly, these ideas and some knowledge
of how diet and exercise alter gene expression let us develop strategies for
staying young and fit. This is the primary theme of the second part of the
book. There I shall develop the strategies I have used to live a healthy life
as a fit and lean person.

There is another prong to the analysis though. And it is high tech.

Evolutionary Fitness is a fusion of the stone age with the high tech. What
the new sciences of complexity are uncovering and making more precise is
that human life is a far from equilibrium system poised between order and
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chaos. This seems to be nature’s way. I have studied and contributed to this
science and I have brought these ideas into my lifeway and into the science
that underlies Evolutionary Fitness.

When I say that the borderline between chaos and order is Nature’s strat-
egy of organization, I am saying that there are patterns that we can discern
in the movement of wild animals on the Savanna and in the fractal patterns
of the human heart beat. The mass extinctions and vast variety of new life
forms, and their adaptations, are all part of a grand pattern of Darwinian
evolution and complexity. The essence of these sciences is that Nature is
orderly and random, but the randomness is of a form we know. It is fractal,
like the distribution of the height of the forest canopy or the variation in the
landscape. In a fractal distribution, no one person or activity is “normal” and
all patterns occur on a frequency unlike the so-called normal distribution.

In a Normal Distribution kind of life, most events are near the average and
life moves on in small increments. Life is not like that, and neither is human
physiology. Life is full of random events and some of them exert a profound
influence on how our lives evolve thereafter. In life there are transforming
events that condition all the life-paths that flow from that point forward.
I can spot a few and you can too. These are events that, had they not
happened, you would not be in this place now.

This is true of human physiology, metabolism, and the organization of

the human body. After all, there are trillions of cells, each with their own
lives to live. How could they be organized in a way that ensures some kind of
cooperation and order so as to create a viable human being? We are simply
vast colonies of cells, each with their own kind of function and independence.
There are at least 3 billion neurons in our brains, each composed of thousands
or millions of cells. Biological numbers even exceed the national debt of
12 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

France in magnitude. They are beyond our comprehension.

There is no way to predict or even understand more than a small part

of the vast organization of billions of cells that comprise the human body.
How could there be a fitness guru who could tell you all you need to know?
It is not possible. The only way to come to grips with these vast numbers
and mind boggling complexity is to know something about the science of
complexity and to see the patterns that exist in complex systems.

They do have patterns and this is an opening to true understanding.

One of the patterns that is neglected or ignored in current fitness practice
and theory is the pattern of intermittency. Another is the synchronization of
hormone cascades to the diurnal pattern of light and dark. Intermittency is a
pattern like a flickering light of a candle or a Quasar. There are bursts of very
bright light, with periods of quiescence and then bursts of other sizes. There
is no standard or normal light emission; they vary all over the scale, just as
the movements of wild animals vary. The statistical distribution is, again, a
power law, the deeper pattern of intermittency. We know also that ancestral
lives were intermittent, with bursts of high activity, much rest and leisure,
and many other activities of all scales. So, here in intermittent patterns we
find a fusing of the stone age with the high tech and this informs the activity
and eating patterns of Evolutionary Fitness. Intermittent training is a high
tech idea only now receiving attention in fitness research and the results are
compelling. The same thing is true in diet; intermittent alteration between
anabolic and catabolic states is the technology of creating lean body mass,
a high power to weight ratio, and life extension.

Synchronization is another new idea, but one deeply rooted in complexity

science and in the ancestral living pattern. It is known in complex systems
theory that oscillators that are physically coupled in some way, say by being
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in the same room, will synchronize their frequencies to the most unstable
frequency. This is called the slaving principle, describing the attraction of the
other frequencies to the unstable one. Pendulums, even in separate rooms,
will eventually beat together. Female college room mates will coordinate their
menstrual cycles. There are many other examples of this synchronization of
dynamics. It happens too in the human hormonal system. The underlying
cycles are driven by night and day, but the other cycles coordinate with
the diurnal pattern. Cortisol, growth hormone, adrenalin, insulin, and a
host of other hormones are driven by the light cycle and by activity and
eating patterns. Cortisol rises in the morning to prepare you for the day.
Growth hormone rises during deep REM sleep. Insulin responds to food
intake. Adrenalin to stress, food intake, and activity. These patterns are
not steady, they are spiky and intermittent. If there is too little variation in
activity, sleep, and food intake and if they are out of sync with day and night,
these hormonal patterns break down and lose their fine coordination. And,
in accordance with the slaving principle, they tend to lock onto the most
unstable of these oscillations. Activity, sleep, and healthy eating patterns
along with light exposure bring these hormonal oscillations back to a healthy
rhythm.

The Darwinian perspective is part of the science of understanding these

things and complexity science is the other part. Evolutionary Fitness is
a fusion of these sciences. From this fusion we distill such strategies for
cardiovascular health as chaotic variation in heart rate. This is so easy to
see in this perspective that it is almost a no-brainer, but you will find few
who understand it. This will be part of your arsenal of tools if you follow
Evolutionary Fitness.

So what is the issue here and why is a lot of fitness advice far off the
14 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

mark? It is this: a healthy heart exhibits a chaotic variation of the intervals

between beats. It is not a clock, but a natural system that is organized
through many, decentralized, controllers. In a healthy heart beat the beat
intervals are random. But they obey a pattern which is a fractal distribution.
A metronomic heart rate is an indicator of heart failure. A healthy heart is
capable of adapting to the situation. In contrast, a jogger’s heart beat is
more like a metronome, highly periodic and trained to a narrow frequency
range. That, and the stress and damage to heart muscle, seem to explain the
high rate of heart fibrillation, cancer and death among joggers. Oxydative
damage from too much aerobic exercise is another source of damage from
jogging. Jogging is almost sacroscanct among health professionals. There
are many reasons for this, though few are any good.

Another high-tech idea is that the human mind and body are non-linear
dynamic systems poised in a far-from-equilibrium attractor. Health, fitness
and diet are dynamic concepts. Linear, static thinking (counting calories con-
sumed and expended) is completely inadequate for devising effective strate-
gies for health and fitness. Another is the concept of the active genotype; a
genotype made to express health and fitness when activities and diet trig-
ger the right messengers to the DNA. A sedentary life of poor nutrition and
poor body composition cause the genes to express themselves in ways that
are deleterious to health.

One of the latest gadgets for health and longevity is caloric deprivation;
living in semi-starvation. Actually, many of us do in terms of some key mi-
cronutrients. We eat so poorly that we may be chronically deficient in some
key nutrients. But, caloric deprivation is another matter altogether. It is
a strategy for life extension that aims to turn down our metabolic rates so
that fewer free radicals and toxic substances are created in our bodies. Fat
 15

is a powerful emitter of toxic and aging hormones. Evolutionary Fitness had

this worked out long ago; our ancestors lived with episodic caloric depriva-
tion (sometimes they went hungry for lack of food, but they didn’t starve
chronically; that came with the introduction of agriculture and crop failure).
Non-periodic cycles of abundance and deprivation existed for all of human
existence but for the last century. This meant our genes expressed factors
in both abundance and deprivation and this is the rhythm to which human
metabolism and gene expression are tuned. As it turns out, episodic caloric
deprivation, rather than chronic deprivation, seems to have all the life exten-
sion and health benefits of living semi-permanently with mild starvation.

This is one of the most powerful confirmations of the fusion of high tech
and stone age concepts in Evolutionary Fitness. I have practiced episodic
caloric deprivation, alternating high activity and mild caloric deprivation,
with rest and moderate feasting for at least 20 years, ever since I worked
out these ideas. Evolutionary Fitness also uses the idea of invoking caloric
deprivation through activity, rather than limiting food intake. This is the
ancestral way, so why would it not work? And, here again, recent research
has focused more on the caloric imbalance between energy expenditure and
intake as the likely source of the benefits of caloric deprivation. The fusion of
high tech and the stone age analysis seem to be vindicated with the latest and
most sophisticated research pointing to energy imbalance rather than caloric
deprivation as the likely source of longevity and health benefits heretofore
ascribed to caloric deprivation. It turns out that deprivation is just one of
the ways to invoke the energy deficit response encoded into our genes.

Another fusing of evolutionary concepts with new technology that you

will find spelled out in this book is the idea that oxygen is our friend, but it
also kills and ages us. Our bargain with oxygen is a Faustian one. We gained
16 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

energy efficiency when we let those little mitochrondria, oxygen furnaces, into
our cells. But, we let in the free radicals that come of aerobic metabolism
in the bargain. So, we gain energy, but we age more rapidly as a result.
Not a bad trade off, for so much of life depends on our energy and humans
are high energy mammals because of our high level of social interaction,
an energy-demanding activity not shared by many mammals, but one that
makes us what we are. In Evolutionary Fitness you will find ample strategies
for dealing with oxidative stress, allowing you to exploit the high energy of
oxidative metabolism while turning down the damage. The very latest anti-
oxydative strategies are developed here and the best technologies for doing
so are an important part of the anti-aging approach of Evolutionary Fitness.

In one sense this is another no-brainer that an evolutionary perspective

would help you see. Our ancestors were extraordinarily well-nourished by
modern standards. They ate nutritionally dense foods that were relatively
low in energy. The wild plants they ate were extremely high in antioxidants,
phyto-chemicals, flavonoids, and other plant chemicals that are biologically
active and beneficial. Again, the Stone Age and the High Tech come into fu-
sion in another Evolutionary Fitness strategy of an effective defense against
aging, disease, and cancer through nutritional and antioxidant strategies.
Cutting back on aerobic exercise is part of this anti-aging defense. Our
strategy is to do more anaerobic exercise, briefly and intermittently to build
lean body mass while creating far less free radical load on our bodies. We
want to build exercise capacity, not just do exercise for its own sake. This
builds true endurance, which is the ability to generate intermittent high force.
When the difference between the most you can do and the least you can do
merges, you are dead. When you have large metabolic head room or exercise
capacity you are young, physiologically. Exercise capacity is the best pre-
 17

dictor of longevity. Evolutionary Fitness builds metabolic head room, high

force capability and high recovery ability and these are the truest measures
of fitness in the real world.

Among many other technologies that you will find here I will mention
only one more and leave the rest for your discovery. It is this and it is
a prized and joyful technology: wild animals and all wild humans live in
the region between order and chaos. This is true of their mental as well
as their physical lives. This is the process for which the human mind and
physiology are designed. This is the Evolutionary Fitness Way. What does
this mean? Well read on, but know this: the music of Bach and Mozart,
the movement of wild animals, the height of mountain ranges and of the
forest canopy, the human heart beat, neural patterns in the brain, and the
organization of all decentralized social processes have the same signature
— the signature of a fractal statistical distribution called a power law. It
is Nature’s pattern of intermittency. This is another merging of the Stone
Age with the High Tech for it is known that the attractor of the statistical
dynamics of evolutionary and natural processes is a power law distribution.
If you follow the Evolutionary Fitness Way, your activities, your work, and
your thoughts will begin to merge with this greater, natural order of things
and your health will glow while your thoughts soar.

As you begin this book, realize there are many life pathways that lead
from this moment forward. You cannot control which one you will take, but
you can create the conditions that lead to favorable pathways. Your only real
possessions from this point forward are your mind and your body, and they
are one. The first principle of Evolutionary Fitness is that your mind and
body are your most prized possessions. This philosophy is held by hunter
gatherers whose only possessions are their minds and bodies. Many people
18 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

treat their bodies, and their minds, like they despise them or as though they
are foreign objects for which they bear no responsibility. You must treat
yourself with all due respect.
To treat yourself with respect, you must honor your body and your mind.
And, one must understand the evolutionary basis of our instincts and de-
sires. With that understanding comes an acceptance and respect and a
tolerance that will help you make healthy changes. Drastic diets do not
respect the body and damage it. Forget the Soviet, command and control
approach where you force yourself to exercise or diet. The command and
control method is disrespectful to your mind and body and is doomed to fail.
You have no control. Let it happen.

The Way Ahead

In Chapter 2, Evolution and the Human Lifeway, I examine the evolution and
lives of our ancestors. How did they earn a living? What adaptations to the
Stone Age served them well and how do they set the problem of health and
fitness in this world? I make the crucial distinction between a mechanistic
explanation of human physiology and an adaptive one.
In Chapter 3, The Evolution of our Diseases, I look at the evolution
of our diseases, comparing those that afflicted hunter gatherers and those
that inflict us. There are dramatic differences, driven partly by our recent
adaptations to agriculture and the industrial and information revolutions. I
begin the task of showing that modern diseases are the result of evolutionary
adaptations going wrong in the modern world.
In Chapter 4, An Evolutionary Model of Health and Fitness, I begin the
development of the evolutionary perspective in health and fitness. I develop
the concept of the active genotype, how it evolved and what it means for
 19

health in a modern world. I explore the adaptive value of insulin resistance

to our ancestors and the problems it presents today.
In Chapter 5, The Modern Killers, I expand the evolutionary model to a
range of modern diseases. The disposable soma idea of evolutionary theory
is a central part of the explanation for many of the diseases that begin in
middle age. Sacropenia is shown to be a central, modern illness. One that is
easily overcome with great benefit.
In Chapter 6, Aging, I carry on the disposable soma theory and explore
the role of lean body mass in longevity. I show that a good deal of modern
aging is more like a disease than a natural process. The loss of hormone
synchronization in the aging process is modeled. And the role of activity
and eating patterns that produce a cycling of metabolic states is shown to
be central to life extension and health. Metabolic head room or exercise
capacity is shown to be the explanatory variable for longevity.
In Chapter 7, Why Diets and Aerobics Fail, I show how the far from
equilibrium systems point of view explains why the most prominent diet and
exercise programs are deficient. They are linear in their perspective and
machine-like in their prescriptions, not the stuff of life.
In Chapter 8, Metabolic Fitness, I define and explain the concept of
metabolic fitness. Here we begin our more deliberate development of tech-
nologies for achieving health and fitness. We lay out goals for achieving
metabolic fitness, lean body mass, and high exercise capacity.
In Chapter 9, The Evolutionary Fitness Diet and Eating Patterns, I dis-
cuss what kinds of food to eat, how much of it, and in what pattern. It is not
a diet in the conventional sense of counting calories; it is a natural pattern of
eating that results in excellent nutrition, high antioxidant levels, and healthy
hormonal profiles. The pattern of eating is as important as what you eat and
20 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

that is discussed in some detail, carrying forward the cycling of metabolic

states idea from and Aging chapter. We want excellent nutrition, adequate
bulk and calories, delicious food, healthy hormonal responses, proper body
composition, and life extension properties from our nutrition.

In Chapter 10, The Evolutionary Fitness Activity Model, we tie a lot of

the technologies and ideas from the earlier chapters together. Understanding
the role of intermittency and how to achieve it are central issues in this
chapter. I link activity and eating patterns and use the concept of energy
balance to explain the interrelationship of energy intake and expenditure to
lean body mass and life extension. I lay out the primary exercise technologies
of Evolutionary Fitness and how to do them.

In Chapter 11, Stage One: Getting Started, we get started applying all
the preceding ideas and technologies. We begin with an assessment of your
present state and how to move forward from there. We set some goals, but
not the usual ones—I want to lose X pounds, I want to bench press X pounds,
and so on—our goals are more basic than these superficial measures. We want
to improve the basic biomarkers of health, our functional capacities, and to
improve our symmetry and appearance dramatically as well. I set out several
exercise and nutrition programs that lay a foundation for a new way of life.

In Chapter 12, Stage Two: Power Law Technology, I bring additional

technologies to the task. Now we use the power law technology fully and
deeply to lean out and develop a dense, satisfying musculature for men and
a flowing body shape for females.

In Chapter 13, The Power Athlete, I first examine how an ancestor would
stack up to a modern athlete. They would be formidable I show by detailing
some evidence on their strength, cunning, and power. They would also be
beautiful with dense, straight bones and teeth, clear vision and skin, lean
 21

bodies and symmetrical musculature, and a posture and flexibility and ability
to move that should inspire us all. To try to emulate these magnificent
humans, we ramp up our technology to mix pure power movements into all
our other technologies. And we introduce very complex movements into our
training.
In Chapter 14, The Evolutionary Fitness Lifeway, I try to learn some-
thing of how to live a more satisfying and stress-free life with a mind and
body evolved and even optimized to live life as a hunter gatherer. It seems
to be true that when the ancient sources of our hopes, fears, and dreams are
acknowledged it leads to a more healthy acceptance of and deeper under-
standing of our humanity. If you learn to recognize that your genes are bent
on their reproduction whether it is good for you or not, then you begin to
recognize the basis for some of your best and worst decisions. Understanding
the risks of ancestral life makes us more tolerant of our fears and helps us
to see why it easy to error when making decisions with uncertainty. Settling
our minds into the vast evolutionary web of life grants a bit of perspective
that is calming and inspiring.
22 CHAPTER 1. DARWIN AND FITNESS

Notes to Chapter 1

The broad perspective developed in this chapter pervades this book. To

gain a deeper understanding of some of the issues I recommend beginning
with S. Boyd Eaton, M. Shostak and M. Konner, The Paleolithic Prescription
(1988) Harper Row[?]. Though I was not aware of this book for quite a
few years, as I worked out my own ideas, I gained valuable knowledge and
insights from this classic. You would have to say that it started it all as far
as a Darwinian approach to health and fitness is concerned. Loren Cordain’s,
The Paleo Diet (2002) John Wiley & Sons[?] is another land mark in this
literature and is an excellent guide to eating a Paleolithic diet, as far as this
can be taken in our modern world.

Other books in this vein that are well worth reading are Randolph Nesse
and George Williams, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian
Medicine (1994) Times Books[?], Marc Lappe’s, Evolutionary Medicine: Re-
thinking the Origins of Disease (1994) Sierra Club Books[?] investigates new
habitat and drug resistance as modern sources of disease. On the genes of
chimps, humans and daffodils see Jonathan Marks, What it Means to be
98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and their Genes (2002) University of Cal-
ifornia Press. It doesn’t mean a whole lot and a lot of bad arguments by
genetic-determinists are based on this similarity that ignores a lot of genetic
information and, besides, one can easily see that chimps are not human.

The eye opener book on exercise physiology is Per-Olof Astrand, Textbook

of Work Physiology: physiological bases of exercise (1986) McGraw Hill.[?]
On ancestral life expectancy; it would be as good as ours if they lived as we
do. And here the lab animal versus wild animal difference in life expectancy,
being three to one, matches the difference in our life expectancy, nearing 90,
to what has been calculated of our ancestors, about 31 years. Life expectancy
 23

declined with the advent of cities and agriculture. In ancient Rome it was
23 years and in the London of Shakespeare’s time not much better. See The
Evolution of Our Diseases chapter.