It’s About Movement, Not Calories
In the case of low level movement, more actually
can be better—as long as your heart rate doesn’t
get too high. Please review Chapter 6 of The
Primal Blueprint for detailed discussion. For now
limit your low level workouts to a range of 55 to
75 percent of maximum heart rate to ensure you
achieve the desired training effect and minimize
risk of Chronic exercise. When you reprogram
your genes to preferentially burn body fat through
your eating style, then any amount of very low
level activity strongly reinforces those pathways
so you can become a fat burning machine around
the clock.
Ironically, we seem to have forgotten our roots. The
past few decades have seen an alarming increase
in the amount of aerobic or “cardio” exercises that
health professionals and even the US Government
recommend in the name of better health and fit-
ness. The truth is we really don’t need to do much
cardio to achieve a fairly high level of aerobic and
cardiovascular health, provided we take advan-
tage of certain synergies from sprints and resis-
tance training. Too many people spend too much
time tracking that little LED screen on the treadmill
or elliptical machine, watching calories mount and
thinking more is better, yet research has proven
that high levels of aerobic (cardio) exercise burn
mostly glucose and glycogen (sugars) and burn
relatively little body fat.Research also shows that most people who at-
tempt to lose weight by burning calories at higher
heart rates will ultimately fail because they’ll end
up slightly overeating to compensate for the lost
glycogen. Do this enough and you reach what I
call “Chronic Cardio,” the no man’s land of aerobic
exercise where systemic inflammation rises, hy-
perinsulinemia (overproduction of insulin) starts
to occur, oxidative damage (the production of free
radicals) increases by a factor of 10 or 20 times
normal, joint pains increase, fatigue is ever-pres-
ent, precious muscle tissue is destroyed as stress
hormones mount, and you actually start to store
more fat. Chronic Cardio is a path to disappoint-
ment and frustration, so make your long, easy
workouts easier!24