Getting Paleo Fit...Take Steps to Manage Your Inheritance Wisely©

 

 

Author’s note -- I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

  

To read part one “Getting Paleo Fit...The Why!©” go HERE

 

Humans, like bears, are omnivores and can eat either plants or animals, what is eaten often depends on what is available.  However, ever since Homo erectus, 50,000 generations, or 1.5 million years ago, humans have become more carnivorous, in fact anthropologists, believe “...that meat-eating has played a significant role in the evolution of Homo, not just Homo sapiens”. 

 

To get the meat that we needed to survive, humans evolved to maximize their stamina and brainpower.  This allowed us to use a hunting strategy called “persistence hunting”.  This method is also called “endurance hunting” and was described by anthropologist  Eugene Morin as the “spook and run” technique.  To run our prey down, humans evolved bipedalism, an increased capacity to sweat and decreased body hair to help cool our body while running, a complex respiratory system, long legs, plantar arches and long Achilles tendons that both work as leg springs and a large proportion of slow-twitch muscles fibers, which are slow to fatigue. 

 

Up until the end of the Ice Age, 390 generations, or 11,700 years ago, humans were apex predators, and the world was full of megafauna: mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, cave bears, and more.  In modern hunter-gatherer societies today, big-game hunting is generally a male behavior; but before the end of the Ice Age, it would have required the participation of everyone, whether driving or dispatching large megafauna.  So, Great Grandad and Great Grandma, 84,000 years ago, would both have been buff marathon runners!

 

We evolved for movement and exercise and the body remembers, even if we’ve forgotten.  So, what did Great Grandma and Great Grandpa do, all those generations ago, to keep strong, healthy and fit?  To start with they got up and walked, everywhere, all the time, every day! 

 

So, get walking.  Get a step counter and see how many steps you take in an average day, and then set a goal to increase it.  Work up to at least 10,000 steps a day by adding in blocks of 2,000 steps.  10,000 steps in one go is a walk of an hour and forty minutes, so break it up and spread it out throughout the day.  And get outside to get your steps in, outdoor exercise gives you sunlight that will stimulate vitamin D production in your skin.  If possible, walk in a natural setting, since research shows that a 60 minute walk in nature improves memory performance and attention span, compared to the same length of a walk in an urban setting.  And an hour and forty minutes of walking outside on trails or grass will burn about 400 calories, which over seven days of walking is about ¾ pounds (340 grams) of fat.

And don’t forget that this is only about half of what modern hunter-gatherers walk every day.  And that there are other things that you can do to build fitness and burn calories during your day.

 

 

Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Getting Paleo Fit...Learning How to Stay Alive!©”, where we will talk about what to look for in an exercise plan to get paleo fit!

 

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Sources

 

Agam, Aviad; Barkai, Ran; “Elephant and Mammoth Hunting during the Paleolithic: A Review of the Relevant Archaeological, Ethnographic and Ethno-Historical Records”, Advances in Quaternary Studies: The Contribution of Mammalian Fossil Record, 2018, Vol. 1, No. 3, https://www.mdpi.com/2571-550X/1/1/3#, accessed November 23, 2024

 

Banksy; “Fast Food Caveman”, from Pyramid America Framed Plexi Posters on Amazon.com, https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Pyramid-America-Caveman-Graffiti-enmarcada/dp/B01NBC0CIB, accessed November 12, 2024

 

Ben-Dor, Miki; Sirtoli, Raphael; Barkai, Ran; “The evolution of the human trophic level during the Pleistocene”, Yearbook of Physical Anthropology Article, March 5, 2021, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24247, accessed November 20, 2024

 

Herzig, Ilana; “From Hunter to Marathoner”, Archaeology, September/October 2024, page 19

 

Hora, Martin; Pontzer, Herman; Wall-Scheffler, Cara M.; Sládek, Vladimír; “Dehydration and persistence hunting in Homo erectus”, Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 138, 2020, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248419300077#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20argued%20that,et%20al.%2C%202009), accessed November 19, 2024

 

Hora, Martin; Pontzer, Herman; Struška, Michal, Entin, Pauline; Sládek, Vladimír; “Comparing walking and running in persistence hunting”, Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 172, 2022, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248422001075?via%3Dihub, accessed November 19, 2024

 

Mayo Clinic Staff; “10,000 steps a day: Too low? Too high?”, [© 1998-2024 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research], https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-depth/10000-steps/art-20317391, accessed November 23, 2024

 

Nuffield Health; “The truth behind walking 10000 steps a day”, [© 2024 Nuffield Health], https://www.nuffieldhealth.com/article/walking-10k-steps-a-day-fact-fiction#:~:text=The%20idea%20of%20walking%2010%2C000,and%20the%20idea%20caught%20on, accessed November 23, 2024

O’Keefe, Evan L., Lavie, Carl J.; “A Hunter-Gatherer Exercise Prescription to Optimize Health and Well-Being in the Modern World”, Journal of Science in Sport and Exercise, Vol. 3, 2021, pages 147 to 157, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42978-020-00091-0, accessed November 14, 2024

 

O’Keefe, James H., et al.; “Achieving Hunter-gatherer Fitness in the 21st Century: Back to the Future”, The American Journal of Medicine, Volume 123, Issue 12, pages 1082 to 1086, https://www.amjmed.com/article/s0002-9343(10)00463-8/fulltext, accessed November 14, 2024

 

O’Keefe, James H., et al.; “Cardiovascular Disease Resulting From a Diet and Lifestyle at Odds With Our Paleolithic Genome: How to Become a 21st-Century Hunter-Gatherer”, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Volume 79, Issue 1, pages 101 to 108, https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)63262-X/fulltext,

 

Pires, M. M.; “The Restructuring of Ecological Networks by the Pleistocene Extinction”, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, May 30, 2024, Vol. 52  No. 1, pages 133 to 158, https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-earth-040722-104845, accessed November 22, 2024

 

Shideler, Karen; “10,000-step approach to health really works”, The Hour, July 2, 2002, page A7, https://books.google.com/books?id=5g4hAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA4&dq=%2210,000+steps%22&article_id=4151,144153&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizzKar7vKJAxVsMlkFHSwvId8Q6AF6BAgMEAI#v=onepage&q=%2210%2C000%20steps%22&f=false, accessed November 23, 2024

 

Stein, Jeannine; “10,000 steps add up to good health”, The Daily Gazette, November 24, 2002, https://books.google.com/books?id=AHwuAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA39&dq=%2210,000+steps%22&article_id=6179,5934209&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizzKar7vKJAxVsMlkFHSwvId8Q6AF6BAgNEAI#v=onepage&q=%2210%2C000%20steps%22&f=false, accessed November 23, 2024

 

The Walking Site; “10,000 Steps A Day”, [© by TheWalkingSite.Com 1998-2023], https://www.thewalkingsite.com/10000steps.html, accessed November 16, 2024

 

Wikimedia; “imagen”, by Sandritaverooka, June 10, 2015, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ejemplo_evolucion.jpg, accessed November 13, 2024