Art De Vany and Evolutionary Fitness

If you want to do some (r)evolutionary reading on fitness, check out Art De Vany's blog (warning: 447K and growing). Even as a zealous convert to low-duration, high-intensity, varied training, it was (and is) still hard for me to wrap my mind around the possibility of such short workouts being effective. But before excerpting further, let me lead off by noting it's hard to argue with results (from his introduction):

Here are the parameters of my recent physical at the age of 65: blood pressure 111/72; pulse 58. My low density cholesterol (ldl) is 118 (below the recommendation not to exceed 130). My high density cholesterol (hdl, the good cholesterol) is 87, far above the suggested 45 or more. Together, these indicate zero cardiovascular risk. My glucose tolerance is excellent, but it is possible to be glucose tolerant and still be insulin resistant. So, I prefer to test for blood insulin, the lower the better. My blood insulin is almost unmeasurable at 3.4 relative to the ``normal'' range of 6 to 27. Insulin is the aging hormone in all species; my low insulin is one of the many factors that slow my rate of aging.

Based on body composition, strength, flexibility, reaction time, and blood profile, a research institute rated my biological age at 32 a few years ago. I don't take this seriously, but it is consistent with how I feel. My body composition and hormonal profile are 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 because they retain their metabolic fitness.

65. Damn. Granted, he's just one guy and might be a genetic freak of nature rather than a pure product of his health regimen, but still...

The basic premise of De Vany's work is that evolution took three million years to mold us into hunter-gatherers, but that the pace at which we've changed our environment—moving to an agricultural model around 10,000 years ago and an industrial model around 200 years ago— has put our stone age bodies dangerously out of step with the times. The pathway to health lies in emulating hunter-gatherer patterns of long periods of rest punctuated by periods of high-intensity work...

Mechanistic prescriptions fail because they do not present the metabolic challenges and variety of the ancestral environment for which our bodies are designed. If your personal trainer is working you out three days a week, doing three sets of the same exercises, or, worse, 5 or even 6 days a week, find another trainer. Working out 5 or 6 days a week doing many sets of exercises per body part and spending over an hour per workout imposes a chronic load on the body for which it is poorly designed to adapt. You are flooding your body with hormones that consume lean body mass. These hormones also preferentially consume fast twitch muscle, the very substance you are after for strength, lean mass, and vitality. You are draining your adaptive capacity so that you cannot build, or even keep up with the load. Worse still, you are compromising your immune system. Virtually all the body's adaptive mechanisms are designed to deal with acute, not chronic, stresses. Exercise should mimic the activities of our ancestral existence; we are adaptive organisms that thrive on variety, not machines designed for high volume routine.

... and a diet that emphasizes fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats, while eschewing simple carbohydrates (e.g. sugar, pasta).

Homo sapiens is an omnivore; your diet must contain an ample variety of fresh plant foods and lots of amino acids and essential lipids. The only universal characteristic of ancestral and living hunter-gatherer diets is the almost complete absence of grains and simple carbohydrates. There were no simple carbohydrates like sugar and pasta in the evolutionary past. The Ice Ages were times of protein plenty and scarce fat and carbohydrate. Fruits were tough and fibrous, not the refined, sweet stuff we have today. The closest thing to a simple carbohydrate was honey that was rare and guarded by wild bees. There were no grain or cereal sources of carbohy21 drates in the ancestral diet. Hunter-gatherer diets contain an enormous variety of plant foods and are high in protein (the median is about 35 per cent of calories from protein). Human metabolism cannot handle protein levels above 35 per cent over a long term. Cofactors, in the form of fat or carbohydrate, are required in order to utilize protein. So, variety and quality are the key objectives of the Evolutionary Fitness Diet.

This is laid out in more detail in his paper, Evolutionary Fitness (PDF), a thought-provoking read through-and-through, and De Vany is currently expanding into a book. I could excerpt something from every page, but I'll content myself with just one more bit:

We are hunter/gatherers in pin-stripe suits, living a sedentary life and it is killing us in ways our ancestors never experienced. Virtually all the degenerative diseases-atherosclerosis, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, declining muscle mass-of modern civilization are unheard of among hunter-gatherers and were not part of our ancestral experience. Most modern fitness prescriptions are static and agricultural. These programs model the body as a machine, not as an adaptive organism.

Anyone who's been following my fledgling site knows I'm very happy with the results I've seen from ditching longer cardio work in favor of shorter, more intense workouts. So of course I was thrilled to discover De Vany's ideas support this model. Having read The Stone Age Present 10 years ago or so probably made me particularly receptive. And evolution and fitness are two favorite topics of mine. A good fit all around.