“Longevity is mobility is something I learned from my mother, who worked as a CNA in nursing homes for over 30 years. Most of the longest-lived residents she took care of were still ambulatory until the end. They were mentally sharp, too. That’s why I (nearly) always take the stairs, and I read everything I get my hands on.“
The Primal Blueprint, andthe book of the same name, offers a framework for achieving your personal best health, vitality, and longevity. It is organized into 10 Primal Laws derived from anthropology, sociology, biology, psychology, and common sense. These laws describe the diet, movement, and lifestyle practices that lead to optimal gene expression—the practices that have allowed humans to thrive for hundreds of thousands of years, but which many people struggle to achieve in the modern world.
Today we will talk about the two Primal Laws that describe how to eat according to the Primal Blueprint.
What Is a Primal Diet?
A Primal diet is not a “diet” in the way the word is commonly used. It’s not a rigid set of rules centered around caloric restriction or “allowed” foods, usually prescribed for the express purpose ofweight loss. Instead, a Primal diet honors, approximates, and emulates the spirit of the dietary environment available to humans for most of our history.
To eat according to the Primal Blueprint means choosing foods that provide the body with all the building blocks it needs to function (amino acids, fatty acids, nutrients, and more) while avoiding foods, and modern “frankenfoods,” that erode your health. It means giving your body all the energy it needs to be strong, active, and well.
In answer to the hugely contentious question of which diet—plant-based, vegan, carnivore,Mediterranean, “everything in moderation”—is best, the Primal Blueprint puts forth a simple answer: The best diet for humans is one comprising the foods that humans are designed to eat.
Primal Diet: Ancestral Eating in the Modern World
Despite what you might have heard about Primal, paleo, and the more general ancestral health movement, the goal isn’t to get you to eat “like a caveman.” For one thing, many of the foods that were around millennia ago have been changed by natural evolution and human agriculture. Furthermore, the foods your far-back ancestors ate depended entirely on the geographic location from which they hailed.
The environments in which we eat are also different. Food has never been more abundant and easier to procure. We are more stressed, more rushed, and more sedentary. We are less exposed to dirt and the accompanyingmicrobesthat populate the gastrointestinal tract.
In short, the idea isn’t that we should be eating exactly like our ancestors did. The Primal Blueprint takes lessons from human history and modern science to decide what, when, why, and how (much) to eat—and, importantly, what to avoid. Primal Laws #1 and #2 cover the what and the why. The how and when are discussed extensively here on the blog; I’ll provide an overview in this post.
The Primal Blueprint Diet Laws
The 10 Primal Laws start with diet—what to eat and what to avoid. That’s because of all the environmental inputs we can leverage for proper gene expression, diet arguably has the biggest impact in the shortest time.
Primal Law #1: Eat lots of animals, insects, and plants.
This is the basic description of everything our ancestors ate to get the protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phenols, fiber, water, and other nutrients necessary to sustain life, build strong muscles, expend lots of energy each day moving about, maintain healthy immune systems, evolve larger brains, and raise healthy children.
As you can see, this law leaves plenty of room for you to structure your diet according to your personal tastes, preferences, and needs. Perhaps you prefer to eat relatively more plants than animals, or vice versa. You might be a gourmand who takes great pleasure in creating elaborate dishes and trying new foods, or maybe you’re content to repeat a few simple meals over and over. As long as you prioritize close-to-nature foods from these broad categories, you’re headed in the right direction.
Read more about Law #1 and get specifics about what to eat according to the Primal Blueprint here.
Primal Law #2: Avoid poisonous things.
Humans’ ability to exploit almost every corner of this earth was partly predicated on their ability to consume vastly different types of plant and animal life. Exploring a new environment and trying new foods posed a danger: the new food might contain potent toxins.
You probably don’t have to fear food-borne illness anymore, aside from an occasional bout with non-lethal food poisoning. Instead, we contend with ubiquitous modern foods that undermine our health more slowly and more insidiously. Whereas our ancestors’ keen senses of smell and taste helped sort out the good from the bad, our ability to distinguish good from bad is now thwarted by food manufacturing and clever marketing.
Understanding what to eat is only half the battle. You still have to translate that knowledge into action. Here are some other factors that come into play.
Macronutrient intake
Protein: Proteintakes priority. The amino acids in protein don’t just go toward making muscle. They’re necessary for all structures in the body, for making hormones and neurotransmitters, and for facilitating enzymatic reactions. Protein is also highly satiating, quelling excessive hunger and the urge to snack around the clock. Most people probably aren’teating nearly enough protein, especially as they get on in years.
Carbohydrates: Primal is a “low-carb diet” in comparison to the Standard American Diet, and similar ilks, in which grains and sugars run rampant. A primary goal of the Primal Blueprint is for you to becomefat-adapted, so fat becomes a primary fuel instead of glucose (sugar). That doesn’t mean Primal is anti-carb. Carbs are fuel, but excessive carb intake leads to chronically high insulin and thehealth consequencesyou can expect as a result. Limit your carb intake tonutrient-dense varietiesand only in the amount that you need to provide glucose to the brain and fuel your activities. (Hint: it’s less than you probably think.)
Fats: Learn to love them.Fatsare the fuel of choice in the Primal Blueprint. Beside providing energy, they are necessary for certain crucial metabolic functions and have little to no impact on insulin. On a Primal eating style, the plurality of your calories will likely come fromhealthy fats.
What about calories?
Most popular diets look at overall calories as the main factor in weight loss, weight gain, and, by implication, overall health. They don’t care about where those calories come from. Despite that age-old Conventional Wisdom mantra that “a calorie is a calorie,”for reasons I explain in depth elsewhere, a calorie is not a calorie. The different macronutrients we eat have different effects in the body, and diets that focus only on calorie restriction miss the point of eating to be healthy, not just skinny.
That doesn’t mean that calories don’t matter. They do. Or rather, it’s important not to intake a lot more energy than you expend over the course of weeks, months, and years. Energy excess is a catalyst for many downstream health issues. I just don’t thinkcalorie countingis the answer for most people.
That’s why the Primal Blueprint doesn’t prescribe specific calorie intakes. Our genes want us to be lean and fit. And that starts with eating from the long list of Primal Blueprint healthy foods and trying to avoid that other list of grain-laden, sugary, processed, and otherwise unhealthy foods.
When: Meal timing, fasting, and seasonal eating
Remember that our genes are accustomed to the way our ancestors ate: intermittently, sporadically, sometimes in large quantities, and sometimes not at all for days. This random or “non-linear” eating pattern kept their bodies in a constant state of preparedness. That said, for newcomers to the Primal Blueprint, what you eat is more important than when. There’s no point worrying aboutcarb cyclingoroptimal meal timingif you’re still eating mostly grains and sugars. That’s all stuff you can worry about down the road.
When you’re ready, I’ve written about intermittent fasting (IF) extensively on the blog. As I’ve said many times, when it comes to health and longevity, most of the magic happens when we aren’t eating. It’s important to give your body time to engage in the maintenance, repair, and building processes that are inherent to health and healthy aging. IF has incrediblebenefits, and you haveoptionswhen it comes to implementation.
Lastly, seasonal eating isn’t mandatory, but it can be a great way to vary your carb sources and keep your food interesting. If you’re shopping at your local farmer’s markets, you’ll naturally find different options in thesummer,fall,winter, andspring.
A Final Word about Food Quality
Although it’s not explicitly covered by the Primal laws, food quality is an important consideration for Primal eating. In a perfect world, a Primal diet would comprise grass-fed/pasturedbeefanddairy products, pasturedchickenand pork, wildseafood, and produce raisedorganicallyor pesticide-free.
The world isn’t perfect, of course, and the “ideal” foods aren’t always available or budget-friendly (although it’s worth pointing out that few things are a better investment oftimeand money than high-quality food). The goal of a Primal diet is to eat the best foods you can, understanding that you might need tocompromise on organic or buy conventionally raised meat sometimes. Don’t sell yourself short, but also don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
I started Primal Kitchenin order to make healthy eating easier and more delicious. What started out as justmayohas blossomed into an entire line of better-for-youcondiments,sauces,oils, anddressings. Selfishly, I was sick of having to make all my own condiments at home. I also heard over and over from people in the Primal community that convenience was a major barrier to fully embracing a Primal way of eating. So, I made products with avocado oil and without refined sugar, seed oils, or other questionable ingredients—products that make meat and vegetables taste good. Now, if you do have to compromise, it won’t be on flavor.
As I said, I think diet is the foundation of good health. If you’re new to the Primal Blueprint, start with Laws #1 and #2. To learn more about the other pillars of health, check out the Primal Blueprint movement and lifestyle laws.
I’m not a fan of overeating. In fact, I think consistent overeating is one of the unhealthiest things a person can do because it places you in a state of constant energy excess. Excess means you can’t handle the food you’re taking in. It means your cells are literally full, your organs are overworked, and hormones aren’t functioning the way they’re supposed to function. Overeating is actually inflammatory, so if you’re doing it every single day you are chronically inflamed. And that’s not even mentioning the impact it has on obesity.
But we are humans—we feast. Whether it’s for a holiday like Thanksgiving or a birthday celebration or just because we feel like it, sometimes we like to eat a big meal. Sometimes we like to overeat.
How do we make it safer? How do we mitigate the negative effects of overeating and possibly even turn it into a positive input?
Let’s find out:
A hard workout
A hard workout prior to a large meal will improve nutrient partitioning by several mechanisms. First, by clearing out the glycogen in your muscle cells, you will increase insulin sensitivity and open up safe storage space for all the carbohydrates you’re about to eat. Hard exercise prior to eating increases something called insulin-independent glucose uptake, which means you don’t even need to increase insulin levels to store the glucose as glycogen. You can store the glucose while still preserving lipolysis, or the release of body fat for burning.
Hard exercise also upregulates muscle protein synthesis so that any protein you eat is preferentially directed to muscular hypertrophy and recovery. In short, a big workout before you eat allows you to consume more food without incurring the same metabolic consequences you would otherwise.
The most effective workout for these purposes will be a full body one that incorporates strength training and cardio or metabolic conditioning. Think a CrossFit workout, a combo of sprints and lifting, or circuit training.
Take berberine
Try berberine 30 minutes before the meal. Berberine is a powerful anti-hyperglycemic supplement that improves lipid numbers, metabolic function, and, when taken before a meal on an empty stomach, postprandial blood sugar. You will improve blood glucose levels if you take berberine before eating. Another helpful effect of berberine is mitochondrial uncoupling, which means it increases energy expenditure and “makes room” for all the incoming energy during a big meal by increasing metabolic rate.1
Eat vinegar
Eating vinegar 20 to 30 minutes prior to a large meal containing carbohydrates improves glucose tolerance and reduces the usual glucose response.2 This is actually part of the reason why vinegary salads are traditionally consumed before meals. It’s not just because they taste good—although that’s part of it—but because it preps your body for better glucose utilization.
Fast before
Eat lightly or not at all throughout the day leading up to your big meal—the best meals I’ve ever had have come at the tail end of a fast. It doesn’t have to be a full-day fast. It could just mean skipping breakfast and having a light lunch. And I wouldn’t recommend eating just one meal a day in perpetuity, as I think that can have negative long-term consequences for energy levels and metabolic flexibility. But if you’re about to eat a big meal and it’s a one-off, not eating in the hours leading up to it will help mitigate most of the negative effects of overconsumption while maximizing your enjoyment.
Prioritize protein
If you know you’re going to overeat, make sure to load up on protein. It’s Thanksgiving? Get plenty of turkey. Christmas dinner? Have your fill of lamb leg. Eat protein first, let fat come along for the ride, and then finish with carbs. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient, so starting with it means you’re less likely to overdo it on the rest of the food. Feasting is wonderful, but no one enjoys the feeling of overindulgence.
One study even found that overfeeding with low protein intake increased fat mass but not lean muscle, while overfeeding with a high protein intake increased the same amount of fat mass with extra lean muscle mass.3 No one wants to gain fat, but I’d argue that gaining muscle alongside the fat is better than gaining just body fat.
Eat gelatinous foods or collagen during the meal
Both collagen and gelatin are rich in glycine, an amino acid that’s been shown to reduce blood glucose levels.4 If you’re going to be eating a ton of carbs, far more than you usually do, including some gelatinous foods—like gravy, bone broth, skin, and connective tissue—or even just a few scoops of collagen will improve your glucose response to the meal. It will also offset the methionine load you’re getting from muscle meat.
Drink red wine with your meal
Red wine during a large meal has several health benefits, in addition to tasting great and improving the subjective enjoyment of your food.
It reduces the oxidation of your blood lipids and inflammatory gene expression that normally occurs after a big junk food meal.5,
It can reduce the rise in blood pressure that often occurs in overfeeding.6
It can reduce post-feast markers of oxidative stress.7
Early dinner
If you’re going to be eating a large amount of food, start the meal earlier than normal. Don’t have a giant dinner at 10 PM, then expect to fall right to sleep and get a great 8 hours. You need at least 3-4 hours after the meal to take your walks, digest your food, and get everything processed internally before trying to sleep. Everything digests better when you give yourself a few hours.
Drink coffee after
A cup of coffee or an espresso after the meal is a traditional way to boost digestion and settle your gut. Concerning coffee as a post-meal digestif—no, I wouldn’t tell someone with caffeine sensitivity to have an espresso after their meal, especially at night. If you know that coffee keeps you up, then don’t drink it then, or go with decaf (which works almost as well). But if you can enjoy a bit of coffee without it affecting your sleep, then after a big meal is the perfect time for it. The bitterness helps with digesting the food you’ve just consumed.
Go for a walk after
A 20 to 30-minute walk, or even just 10 minutes if that’s all you can spare, right after a meal aids digestion and reduces the spike in both blood glucose and blood fatty acids that normally occur after eating a giant meal.8 Personally, if I eat a big meal and sit around, I don’t feel great. I feel better if I go for a walk afterwards. That’s part of the appeal of the walkability of a place like Miami. When Carrie and I go out for dinner, we walk there and back, and that post-dinner stroll to our house is just right for triggering the beneficial effects on blood glucose levels, free fatty acids, and digestion.
There you have it: the ten things you can do before, during, and after a big meal to reduce the negative effects of overeating. Don’t make big meals a habit, but if you’re doing it for a special occasion, this is how to make it work for you rather than against you.
“Leptin, schleptin. My biggest bouts of ‘overfeeding’ have occured around the family dinnertable during all-out holiday meals. The benefits have less to do with weight gain or loss, more to do with community and fun. Blood sugar surges aside, I’ll never regret second slices of my mom’s apple pie.“
“Mark is 100% correct.
I’m a doctor and I can assure anyone who might be concerned:
Acquired diabetes (as opposed to being born with Type 1 diabetes), does NOT happen secretly or suddenly like cancer might. (Cancer of the pancreas – the insulin producing organ, might suddenly cause diabetes, but that is cancer).
Acquired type 2 diabetes is very definitely something one can look at day by day and know if one is heading towards it or away from it.
Weight loss, lowered blood sugar levels, lower triglycerides, better exercise tolerance and fitness, are all easy, everyday indications that one is reducing the chances of diabetes, not increasing it.
A glucometer purchased cheaply at a drugstore can give great everyday data re our blood sugar response to food and meals, if it’s a real concern. (Just be sure to read about the normals and parameters so the results can be interpreted correctly).
If one is heading towards diabetes, as evidenced by higher blood sugars, significant weight gain, higher triglycerides, etc, then stopping all red meat is NOT going to help that situation.
Increasing exercise, eliminating all sweeteners and simple carbs, and decreasing caloric intake, WILL improve one’s situation and reverse the trend. It really is that simple for acquired type 2 diabetes.
It is a travesty the way the “survey” studies are taken and discussed the same as real, original, double blind experiments with actual measurements and data.
The problem is the average person doesn’t know the difference and can’t really be expected to sit down and learn that while raising a family and working two jobs.
I would expect more of journalists though, because it’s their job and responsibility to report accurately.
It’s so irresponsible what they are doing here.
And I suspect the vegan mega-industries know that and are taking full advantage. I wouldn’t put it past them to even be paying journalists to report the way they do.
These corporations can’t wait to eliminate real meat and take the markets and profits from substituting fake, manufactured, chemical-filled, proteins.
Grrrrr :^{.”
I’m a grandpa now. Twice over. My daughter Devyn has a girl and boy. I have a granddaughter and grandson. Over the last couple decades, it’s represented the single most impactful change in how I view myself in the grand scheme of things—far more even than the sale of Primal Kitchen. I still remember the day I met my granddaughter. Looking down at that little girl, barely aware of anything going on, I realized that something enormous had happened. Things would never be the same again.
We talk a ton about gene expression around here. The entire Primal Blueprint is designed around leveraging the environment to create the best possible stimulus for your genes. Genes turn on and off based on the environmental stimuli they encounter—the food you eat, the sleep you get, the sun you expose yourself to, the exercise you do, the chemicals you interact with. What might look like a “bad gene” on paper can be mitigated, nullified, or even turned into a positive with the right environmental stimuli. And more often than not, emulating an ancestral environment will trigger those positive changes to gene expression and set you up for good health, fitness, and happiness.
If something as simple as the oil you use to cook can alter gene expression, what about meeting your grandkid for the first time? Because having kids yourself is one thing. It’s very cool, extremely transcendent, changes your life, and you’ll never be the same, but there’s a real generational transition of the mind that takes place when your kids have kids.
Your genes finally have a sense of closure. “You’ve made it. You’ve really made it.” Because after all, from a natural selection perspective, having kids yourself isn’t enough. Passing on your genes to the next generation isn’t sufficient. No, your genes want to see themselves carried over to the next-next generation too, just so you “know” that the line will continue. It hasn’t just made it one more generation—it’s made it two more. That presages good things down the line. That’s the promised land for your heritage. You mean to tell me your genes don’t sense the shift?
The first thought is how quickly life passes. It feels like Devyn was 12 only a few years ago and we were attending soccer games, working on class projects and boogie boarding with her brother Kyle at Zuma Beach in Malibu. Now she’s a wife and a mother and on her way to building her own family. The time compression that occurs retroactively in the mind seems almost unfair. Did I give enough? Did I appreciate or enjoy it enough in real time? And then, of course, here I am now at 70 playing Ultimate Frisbee and standup paddling and fat tire biking and getting after it in the gym. So at another level, my Primal mind fights the reality that I’m a grandfather and that maybe it’s time to back off a bit. Because becoming a grandfather is a big signal that you’ve done your part, fulfilled your role. And then what comes next?
The second thought is how miraculous life is; how this six pound bundle of joy and love came to be a person so quickly and perfectly. I didn’t give it as much thought – or perspective – when my own kids were born. Now all of a sudden it boggles my mind and prompts deeper reflection on the real meanings of life, love, responsibility and purpose. And this from a guy who is all about biology, evolution and epigenetics, and who has always had an answer based purely in science for just about everything.
Holding that little girl made me believe miracles do happen. I still don’t know the provenance of those miracles, I don’t know the source or whether they can be explained in rational terms, but they absolutely exist.
Becoming a grandparent also thrusts new roles upon you. You’re a parent again, but a different sort of parent. You have a new job to do, and you’d better make the most of it and do the best job you can.
Stay fit
You don’t want to be the grandparent that’s relegated to a walker or a hospital bed or a wheelchair, or even just the couch. You want to be the vigorous grandparent who can play with their grandkids. Throwing the football around. Getting down to play tea party. Throwing them in the air, taking them on adventures, going on hikes.
You need to stay fit, stay active, and stay strong. Be neither feeble nor frail.
Pass it down
The classic role of the grandparent is to pass down knowledge. That could be physical know-how—teaching skills like fixing cars, carpentry, or cooking. That could be wisdom—imparting important life lessons and transmitting advice from an age now lost to time.
This is more than tradition and culture. This is the biological role of the grandparent. It’s why grandparents were preserved in the human species. It’s why we don’t just drop dead once we cease being reproductively viable. We still have a role to play, and imparting knowledge and wisdom to our grandkids is it.
Fill that role. You made it this far, which means you have something to pass down to your grandkids. Figure out what that might be, and make it a point to pass it down.
Spoil wisely
One important role of the grandparent is to spoil the grandkids, but you have to do it properly.
Spoil without spoiling. Expose them to the finer, more pleasurable things in life without making them sick of it or overdoing it. You want to make them happy, provide stuff that mom or dad won’t, without over-saturating them. And when you spoil, use only the best quality.
Give high quality ice cream instead of McDonald’s fake ice cream.
Give good chocolate instead of chewy candy that sticks to your teeth.
Watch a classic kid’s movie with them on the couch instead of plunking them down in front of Netflix.
Create a warm environment of peace and solace
“Grandma’s house” is more than a physical space. It’s an emotional one, a barrier from all that is difficult in the world. If a child’s home is both a place to shelter from the world and be challenged to dominate it, where the child trains to rise in the world, Grandma’s house is purely a shelter. Peace and warmth distilled, refined, concentrated. Grandma’s house is just comfortable. comfortable, warm, inviting, and safe.
Be a good parent, too
When you can, take the grandkids for an evening or overnight. Without enough free time to cultivate their marriage, the marriage suffers and the family (your grandkids) suffers. Help out with childcare whenever possible so that your son or daughter have the space needed to keep their marriage strong.
Are you a grandparent? I’d be curious to hear your tips on Primal grandparenting and insights on what the role has meant in your life.
The Primal Blueprint, and
As you can see, this law leaves plenty of room for you to structure your diet according to your personal tastes, preferences, and needs. Perhaps you prefer to eat relatively more plants than animals, or vice versa. You might be a gourmand who takes great pleasure in creating elaborate dishes and trying new foods, or maybe you’re content to repeat a few simple meals over and over. As long as you prioritize close-to-nature foods from these broad categories, you’re headed in the right direction. 
You probably don’t have to fear food-borne illness anymore, aside from an occasional bout with non-lethal food poisoning. Instead, we contend with ubiquitous modern foods that undermine our health more slowly and more insidiously. Whereas our ancestors’ keen senses of smell and taste helped sort out the good from the bad, our ability to distinguish good from bad is now thwarted by food manufacturing and clever marketing.
I’m a grandpa now. Twice over. My daughter Devyn has a girl and boy. I have a granddaughter and grandson. Over the last couple decades, it’s represented the single most impactful change in how I view myself in the grand scheme of things—far more even than the sale of Primal Kitchen. I still remember the day I met my granddaughter. Looking down at that little girl, barely aware of anything going on, I realized that something enormous had happened. Things would never be the same again.
