Wildfitness is a fitness holiday company with the aspiration to help people eat, move and live in harmony with nature. Find practical tips in our Wild Eating, Wild Moving & Wild Living sections, or go to our Wonderations category for more philosophical musings on nature, the wild, our health, the role of science, the meaning of life etc! Enjoy and please let us know what you think.
Natural intense physical movement – why is it not in the bible?
Most people contact fitness people, like personal trainers or fitness holidays such as Wildfitness in order to get fit (very insightful Tara). They want to get bigger, smaller, faster, or more functional. Most people don’t get in touch with us because they want to find meaning, joy, passion or mastery in their lives.
This is confusing for me sometimes because I have found meaning, joy, passion, mastery and many other weighty things from the physical activities that are named fitness. And this makes me want to write about them. But the problem is that there are people seriously more qualified and authentic to talk about the meaning of life. Jesus for example. Deepak Chopra. David Attenborough.
What has always confused me is that some of these people, my biggest heroes, have not got into one of the most deeply enlightening and life affirming secrets of all time.
Natural intense physical movement.
That is where I feel we at Wildfitness have the edge over some of the wisest people in the world!!
Out of Body Experiences
Sweating, pushing, burning, and then feeling spent, is in my experience something that affirms our humanity and our divinity. Exercising physical precision, dare and agility in the leap, throw, twist, hit or dodge embodies all the thrills of a sudoko victory or poem well expressed. Diving deep in the sea on a lungful of air or balancing on a slack-line, teach us how to foster peace and focus. It feels to me that no human can really get the most out of the strange predicament of being mortal animals on this earth, unless we feel what it is like to use and engage in the physical potential that we all have.
This sense of being alive, the ability to feel your vibrancy in your actual flesh, is not something lesser than spiritual or mental adventure. It is the most basic and the oldest way of getting a buzz out of the heights of life.
Physical Blasphemy
It does seem strange, I admit, that this meta-physical ecstasy can be so packaged in something seemingly as mundane as a workout. And it is also true that you can take physical movement and blaspheme it to the point where it is repetitive, wearing, restrictive, uncreative and lonely. This actually takes a fair bit of work. First you have to create a building that gets people inside and away from things like waves and trees and windy paths and things that inspire movement. Then you have to design equipment that forces people to move in specific ways that no wild human knows how to do. For example lift something with a straight arm. Weird. Then you have to make people believe that this is the best and only way to be physical; and that being physical is unskilled or somehow for people without the brains or ability to engage in the cerebral world.
The feeling of heaving breath, screaming muscles and exertion gives you confidence and a high that is more than endorphin. It is an ancient communion with our bodies. It reminds us that we have them. It reminds our bodies that we feel them.
The first time you jump and land softly like a cat or manage to swing from monkey bar to monkey bar is more than posturally edifying and good for function. It is adding to your intelligence and wisdom. It allows you to be gentle with the objects around you, and rely in the most concrete way possible on your ability to navigate the world. And to experience what Einstein and Newton conceptualised: the natural laws of the universe at play: gravity, momentum, and when you mess up, probability.
Am I crazy to think that maths and science should be taught as a PE class? That wielding your body is a powerful tool to spiritual insight? That the Greeks had their heads screwed on when physical prowess was considered an important factor in leadership and wisdom?
These skewers speak for themselves – they have so much taste and kick that you don’t need to do a huge amount to the other side dishes. I like to serve them with steamed French beans, spinach or courgettes or topped on a leafy salad.
Ingredients
200g King prawns (shelled is preferable)
200g Scallops
Wooden skewers
Marinade:
40g fresh coriander, finely chopped
2 large red chillies, deseeded and finely sliced
4 shallots, finely chopped
Grated lime zest and juice of 3 limes
4 garlic cloves, crushed
6tsp lemon grass, chopped finely
4tbsp soy sauce
2 tbp olive oil
Method
Mix all the marinade ingredients in a bowl.
Peel the prawns, leaving the tail on and wash them with the scallops in cold water.
Add the prawns and scallops to the marinade mix and leave in the fridge for an hour or longer.
While you are waiting, put the wooden skewers in a bucket of cold water so they don’t burn when you cook them.
Put 2 prawns and 2 scallops on the skewers. Continue until you have run out.
Grill each skewer for 8 minutes, turning over half way through to cook on both sides.
Serve straight away and sprinkle with a bit of left over coriander.
In the 10 years that Wildfitness has been running, we have cut loose more and more from the tethers of the ‘old paradigm’ of fitness. We have been inspired by the spontaneous and purposeful variety of physical activity undertaken by natural tribal people that results in graceful, skilful and beautiful physicality. And we have become more and more suspicious of contrived, boring and prescriptive training and diets.
From perfection to purpose
Hunting - a purposeful activity with amazing fitness as a side-effect
It wasn’t a drive to get the perfect body or achieve the best race time that animated our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Purpose infused every physical activity. It seems that a feeling of purpose is more animating and robust than personal ambition. And paradoxically it results in a skilfulness and naturalness that has more beauty than the sculpted but unwieldy body-builder. The difference between a body builder and some of the fishermen here in Watamu is in their grace, proportion and realness.
Perfection, Muslims argue, is something reserved for Allah alone. But even if you can get close to perfect, if doesn’t seem to help. The problem is, if you are perfect, the mind-set that got you there is probably making life hell. You can’t eat anything that isn’t perfect, even the birthday cake your mum made you. You can’t miss your daily training session, even if you are feeling run down and have a party to go to.
The amazing posture of many African women is a necessity, not just about aesthetics.
The lessons from our ancestors are clear: Enjoy yourself, rather than better yourself. It shines through as a deeply attractive quality. Engage in the process, not in what your end gain will be. Some quotes:
‘The more beauty you absorb, the more beauty you exude.’
‘Joy is the best make up.’
It is not the message that comes at us from the media, but to be gnarled and real, adds so much more to life than to spend your energies sculpting your perfect self.
Laura’s mum (Laura does marketing for Wildfitness) said it well: ‘We never used to worry so much about ourselves, we didn’t have time, we had to work hard to make sure everyone around was supported. We didn’t have time to think about how we looked or what our dream life would be – and we were a lot happier’.
From motivation to inspiration
There is something dead, corporate, something essentially de-motivating about the concept of motivation. It feels like being pushed from behind.
Being physical, if it needs motivation, will peter out, and has none of the perpetual motion of inspiration.
Dogs don't suffer when the exercise! They love to run, sprint, jump and play.
Perhaps we can blame capitalism for the eternal motivation it gives us in the world of fitness. The best products are the ones that don’t fulfil a need, that don’t actually work – so that you will keep buying more things. The ones that make you feel motivated. Like protein powders, or dumbbells or diet plans.
Here is an extract from ‘Why My Dog is Smarter than Me’ by the brilliant Frank Forencich: ‘[My dog Mojo] sets whatever pace he wants. If he feels like running, he runs. If he wants to stop and sniff the bushes, he stops. On some days he walks, some days he does wild sprints, some days he goes swimming. He mixes these activities up with no regard to periodisation, macrocycles, mesocycles, tapering or peaking. He has no motivation, no ambition and no work ethic.’
If a dog feels naturally inspired to be physical, I think there is hope for us! The key is to love it. Do that activity, whether it is tennis, dancing, walking or boxing, that turns you on. And if none of these things make you feel like doing them spontaneously, look for things that fit more closely with what’s important to you – gardening, biking to work, building. But more importantly, do your thing with the mind set of being lifted, not pushed from behind. Don’t train when you are too tired, or really don’t feel like it. Train with friends, in a spirit of fun or positive competition. Use your own steam to get around or be useful. Learning physical skills adds to your whole intelligence.
From compulsion to peace
One of the key facts that we have observed that support the natural evolutionary diet we teach is: everywhere that a western diet has been introduced, the problems of heart disease, obesity and diabetes have followed.
The humble croissant cannot be blamed for all our problems...
With the exception of France.
Croissants, cigarettes and mille-feuille, and yet the French are incredibly trim and healthy.
Using the same sentiment from the famous pro-gun slogan: ‘Guns don’t kill people, people do’, we could say – ‘donuts don’t infect people – people choose to eat too many’. Donuts as things, if you don’t eat too many, are harmless.
There is definitely an argument to say that certain modern foods can cause people to over eat; from more-ish e-number flavourings, to the blood sugar roller coaster of refined carbohydrate snacks. But still this doesn’t seem to affect the French.
Moderation is of course the answer, and can be practised anywhere by anyone. Luigi Cornaro, in 1558 in his book ‘Discourses on a sober and temperate life’, wrote with ageless wisdom ‘[do not eat] a greater quantity than can be digested’.
Perhaps it’s not about the diet? Perhaps it is something deeper – a culture, a mind-set that is introduced, that causes these diseases, not merely the fault of the innocent food stuffs.
A fascinating insight into over-eating.
William Leith in his book ‘The Hungry Years’ wrote: ‘Around the world, obesity is concurrent with the increased incidence of these things: TV, mobile phones, cars, multi-storey buildings, computers, pornography, credit card use, cocaine use, binge drinking, celebrity gossip, images of extremely slender female models, images of male models with six pack stomachs, media driven by advertising, depression, increased consumption of serotonin enhancing drugs such as Prozac and Seroxat, increased incidence of self-harm, shopping malls, pain killers in bright shiny packets, and supermarkets with upwards of 20,000 products under the same roof.’
Leith describes his hunger as ‘a pang in the centre of my body that feels like hunger, but also like other things – anguish, loneliness, basic misery. A sort of all-purpose craving.’
An obesity expert was asked: ‘If the government could do one thing to stop the obesity crisis what would it be?’ The man paused and said, ‘That’s the trouble, there is no one thing you can do. You have to do…..everything.’
What do we do at Wildfitness? Everything? Well we do while you are on the course. You have nourishing, natural food that is exactly what your body has evolved to flourish on. You live in a small supportive tribe within the natural rhythms of night and day. You play and train purposefully in pristine nature. You aren’t judged or drilled into the ground in order to achieve some perfect state. You are miles from adverts and images of ideals. You can relax inside and outside and have a chance to stop chasing your tail, stop fighting to be in balance and stop feeling you need to change. For the time you are with us.
But the real world can be crazy, overwhelming. The routines throw your life out of balance, the culture triggers compulsions and the messages form the belief that we need to be more, different, ideal.
All we can say is that we are holding out for a new paradigm, one that is so infinitely more groovy that it seems inevitable that the tides will turn.
Both on our Kenya and Crete courses we have one session where we do a ‘Beach Combo’. This involves doing a combination (hence ‘Combo’) of different natural movement patterns, one after the other, and then repeating the whole sequence… either a set number of times, say 4 – 6, or as many times as you can within a certain time frame. The idea is that the complete circuit is only a few minutes long but during this time you push yourself to the max. You can either do consecutive circuits yourself or create a tag-team with a partner and take it in turns – giving yourself a chance to rest and recover in-between!
Check out the video below,filmed on location during one of our Crete courses in June this year, for inspiration – it includes a sandbag haul, dune sprint, throw, bear crawl, leopard crawl and a swim. It features one of our Wild Coaches, Gareth, but you don’t need to be as buff as Gareth to do a circuit like this! Try and create your own when you are next on hols by the beach. (Thank you to Erwan Le Corre and MovNat for the inspiration behind this session).
Everyday on our courses in Kenya we serve guests a freshly made juice. We alternate zingy and sweet fruit juices with nourishing veg juices. Our manager, Erena, has been experimenting with inspiring new combinations, along with Gushe, our long-standing waiter and all-round Juice Guru. Here is a veggie juice that’s surprisingly sweet given it’s only got veggies in it. You could add a little ginger for extra zing or a little orange for more sweetness. A view of the Indian Ocean while sipping it is not essential, but comes highly recommended!
Ingredients
(Use roughly an equal weight of each veg, approx 175 g)
Sweet potato – 1 large
Carrots – 4 medium
Parsnip – 1 large
Celery – 4 sticks
Handful of parsley
Cucumber for garnish
Frangipani & bougainvillea to decorate
View of Indian Ocean – highly recommended
Method
Put sweet potato, carrot, parsnip and celery into blender and blend until smooth. Add the parsley after blending and mix in. Pour into an elegant glass and use the cucumber to garnish and flowers to decorate.
This goes out to all of you Wild Ones in the Northern Hemisphere… and those of you in eternally hot places.
1. Get in Wild water
By this I mean all of the outdoor swimming holes you can find near you or on your travels. There are more out there than you think… My flight to Kenya last week was delayed a day and I was put in a hotel in Heathrow next to the air field and a busy road. I went for an exploratory run and found a park with a river running through it and had a most unexpected but refreshing dip!
Although the summer is a comfortably warm time to start this habit, swimming in cold water during the winter is also really good for you. Cold water dips enhance your libido: studies have shown an increased production of testosterone and oestrogen in men and women who regularly take cold showers. They also help increase circulation, stimulate your parasympathetic ‘rest and repair’ system and boost your immune system. Acute cold increases your white blood cell count, which means you are less vulnerable to the flus and colds going around, (that are often attributed to being out in the cold! However if you are run down, then best to keep wrapped up until you feel strong).
And, the rush! Cold water dips stimulate the release of endorphins.
Evolutionarily, we would have been exposed to extremes of temperature and adapted to this. A good way to feel comfortable is to expand your comfort zones… Get cold, get tougher and feel more relaxed in the outdoors.
If you are in the UK, the most well known places to dip in London are the ponds on Hampstead Heath and the Serpentine. Some useful websites for Wild swimming are below. In my experience if you don’t put your head under, (or have any open wounds!) you can swim in loads of places that don’t occur to most people…. Always wear respectable underwear just in case…
Most obviously, you do need to drink more water in the heat and people can forget and get de-hydrated. I’ve just been in London and witnessed a mildly hot day and was bombarded with reminders over loud speakers to remember to drink water!
But the wild insight is that humans can handle stretches of acute dehydration. Particularly if you are used to it. We don’t need to clutch a water bottle and sip from it all day. If we need water, you will feel thirsty. If you have had enough water, you won’t feel thirsty – usually… It is true that if you haven’t been in the heat for a while it might take a few days for your body to give you accurate signals and for you to listen to them. Also diuretics like tea or chocolate might get rid of water faster than your body’s thirst response can kick in. However, once you get familiar with the heat of the place that you are in, you can rely on the simple rule: if you are thirsty, drink.
I quite enjoy going for stretches without water and then glugging down loads of water at once. It’s often more convenient and makes me feel much more comfortable if I do happen to go for a stretch without water (and more familiar with potent pees!). Acute stress is often revitalising and strengthening for your body – chronic stress is what degrades your health.
With long days and without the dangers of the cold, this is the time to explore the outdoors. Hook up with another Wild One (put a post on our Facebook page to see if anyone lives near you) or unsuspecting soon-to-be Wild person. The benefits of spending time in nature are many and profound – see our blog on How Nature Affects Your Health for more info.
- Set off early on your bike to a pub in the country. Sleep under a tree for an hour or two to digest and then bike back.
- Run to somewhere and hitch back. I did this with a friend – found a room in a little village called Alfriston and spent the day running across the South Downs (UK) without maps not knowing where we would end up, we even had to cross a couple of rivers. Then we hitched back along the A27. The human exploratory drive has been studied as something that has significance as an evolutionarily important characteristic, that remains as a drive in us today, that if fulfilled gives us satisfaction.
- Sleep out. Netta (who helps with marketing for Wildfitness) and her family who live on the Isle of Wight keep this practice alive. They have a favourite spot which is softened by a bed of heather and looks out over the sea. Sleeping with the open sky above you gives you a unique sense of freedom and communion with nature. The trick is to take many more sleeping bags and blankets than you think you might need. For an in depth guide on sleeping outdoors if you want to do it regularly, this link is useful.
So it’s summer! Seize the season! Take the opportunity to bike, run or walk to work. Open windows to the outside whenever you can, eat sun-ripened seasonal fruit and veg, sign up to outdoor sports and wear very few clothes. We’re sending you all support from Watamu where we know the sun very well. If you need to cool down, come and see us – it is our cooler monsoon season for July and August (it’s still a cosy 27 degrees, but the mornings and evenings are the perfect climate for training!).
(Jess Reinhold has been a Wildfitness coach for 6 years and is currently working on location in Kenya).
One of the perks of my job is that I get to meet and train a huge variety of people but the same questions seem to always crop up. Because of this I decided to try and tackle 3 key questions that seem to be bugging people with regards to their fitness and training techniques.
Erwan Le Corre has enviable abs and wouldn't dream of doing a sit-up!
1. Which are the best exercises for my abs?
I get asked this question a lot, as the six-pack seems to be the holy grail of the fitness industry. Well, let’s see what the abdominal muscles actually do first before we talk about what’s best for them. There are 3 main sets of abdominals, the rectus abdominals, responsible for flexion of the trunk, the transverse abdominals which act like a weight belt and stabilize the trunk, and the obliques which are responsible for rotation and side flexion. All three sets should work as a unit and assist in all sorts of different movements, e.g. breathing, sitting up, laying down, running, jumping, lifting, throwing, catching, well most natural movements really as well as keeping your insides in.
So how do we get great abs? Firstly if you are fit and active and don’t have any major digestive issues or back problems you probably have pretty good abdominals. Whether you can see them or not is a different matter. Unfortunately if you want a six-pack you have to be lean, generally a body fat percentage of less than 10%. To get functional abs that support your back and torso and perform the jobs they are meant to you need variety in your training with natural, whole body movements. I have found one of the best forms of training for the core and abdominal tone has been boxing or martial arts. The training tends to be high intensity (great for fat burning) and involves lots of rotation and stabilization by the abdominals as well as powerful forced exhalations tightening the core. That’s my favourite but any high intensity activity with natural multi-plain movements will do the job. So forget your ab crunches and start throwing your punches!
Barefoot running on a Wildfitness course in Crete
2. If my knees hurt when I run or after I run, should I stop running?
Generally if you were to ask most people in the medical profession this question a large number of them would probably say “yes, running is bad for your knees”. Wrong, running or jogging with bad technique is bad for your knees. Running is one of the three forms of natural human location (walking and sprinting being the other two) and without it we would not have survived as a species. If running gave you knee problems back in the day you would have been lion fodder. So why do so many people now get knee issues when they run? Firstly some shocking stats from the American College of Sports Medicine. 85% of people stop running at some point in their running career because of pain or injury and 60% of women stop running because of knee problems. In other words… lion fodder! These stats are only recent, since about the 1970s when the training shoe industry took off and “jogging” became fashionable. If you want to know more about the difference between running and jogging and why modern trainers don’t help as well as gaining a deeper understanding of efficient running technique check out a fantastic ebook written by Lee Saxby called Proprioception: Making Sense of Barefoot Running. It will give you all you need to know but for now the bottom line is springy, spongy trainers allow people to run with poor technique by reducing feedback from the feet and natural elastic recoil. When this happens the knee and hip joints tend to take a pounding as the structures in the feet and ankles that act as shock absorbers are bypassed. Change the shoes to give you more feedback from the ground and change running technique by improving posture, rhythm and relaxation, and those natural shock absorbers should then be able to do their jobs. Hey presto, no more knee pain, or pain anywhere else for that matter.
Anyone can do pull-ups!
3. I want to be able to do pull-ups, how do I learn?
Pull-ups are a great exercise! They are a precursor to climbing, one of our 12 natural movement capacities and are brilliant for improving upper body strength and stability. They are also hard! Below is a step by step guide of how to develop the strength and proprioception for pull ups.
Step 1. Inverted Rows
Start by doing inverted rows on a bar with your feet on the ground and your palms facing away from you. Try to pull yourself up so your chest reaches the bar. The lower the bar and the more parallel your body is to the floor the harder they are. Aim for 10 reps. If you can’t complete them raise the bar. If you can easily complete them then lower the bar or raise your feet. Once you can do 10-12 comfortably with a low bar or your feet raised move onto step 2.
Step 2. Negatives
Negative or eccentric pull ups are when you concentrate on the lowering phase of the exercise. They are great for developing strength but beware, because you are lengthening contracted muscles, they can make you sore. Stand on a box and start at the top of the pull up. Slowly lower yourself down for a count of 6 and repeat. Aim to do as many as you can without a break in between and again work up to 10 reps.
Step 3. Assisted Pull Ups
Once you have mastered the Negatives move onto Assisted Pull-ups. Use an elastic band rather than an assisted pull-up machine. The movement carry over is better and you will get stronger quicker. Place your foot or knee in the band depending on how much assistance you need and perform your pull-ups. Again aim for 10 and for a great upper body session working on grip-strength “superset” Assisted Pull-ups with Negatives e.g. 5 Assisted / 5 Negatives x 3 sets with 60-90s rest.
Step 4. Pull-Ups!
By this point you should be able to start doing pulls without assistance. Start low and work up in number, for example if you can only do 3 then on your next session try for 4. Frequency is also important. The more you practice the better you get. Try to practice at least 3-4 times per week and in no time you will get to 10 and beyond.
The next level……
After you have developed the strength and coordination for pull-ups the next level is to learn a kipping pull-up and then a muscle up. The kipping pull-up is a little more sophisticated than the deadhang pull-up. It involves a hip snap that radiates up the spine and into the arms, effectively lifting the body with minimal upper body pulling. From a movement-standpoint, it is a much more efficient technique for elevating the chin over a bar. The muscle up follows on from the kipping pull-up by then bringing the elbows up above the bar and pushing the whole body upwards as if you wanted to climb over the bar. Elasticity and momentum are the key aspects for these more advanced natural movements.
Broccolis are everywhere at the moment and sometimes it’s hard to know what to do with them. I have been experimenting with various recipes over the past few weeks and this is my favourite one by far! I was so amazed at how creamy it turned out using just the ingredients below (no added cream or milk, etc). Since the rain has kicked in recently (here in the UK), I have been craving warm, indulgent foods so this has been a deliciously healthy alternative.
Ingredients
1 broccoli
2 onions
2 crushed garlic cloves
2 tsp crushed ginger
1 lemongrass stick
1/2 chillies (to taste)
1 tbsp fresh coriander
2 pints boiling water
4 tsp bouillon powder/vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste
Method
Put the chopped onions into a saucepan until they soften.
Stir in the crushed garlic, ginger, chillies and lemongrass and stir over a gentle heat for 5 minutes.
Make the stock by adding the bouillon to the boiling water.
Add the stock to the onion mix and stir.
Roughly chop the broccoli and add it to the saucepan. Leave the broccoli to cook on a medium heat for 10 minutes.
Take off the heat and stir in the coriander. When it has cooled a little bit, put the mixture into a food processor and blend it up until it forms a smooth texture.
You can start slackrope walking using a guide rope above...
... then when you advance you can balance with no hands! (Colin our coach is showing off here!)
After 10 years of honing the Wildfitness course programme we’re pretty proud that we’ve achieved the perfect balance of activities for a fitness holiday: intense workouts and skill sessions, learning and fun stuff, routines you can follow back home and wild adventures in beautiful natural settings. We’re not too proud however to sit on our laurels… we’re always assessing the course, learning from experts, listening to guests feedback and making the most of the incredible skills and enthusiasm that our Wild Coaches bring. For those of you who haven’t visited us in a while here are some of the new things we’ve added to the programme over the past year:
Balance and perception
We have included a new session where we explore our different senses and our body awareness – something we would need to survive in the wild. It is this subtle understanding of how our senses affect our movement, and can be honed to be sharper, that makes the difference between just moving and being an athlete. Our Coach, Colin Holding, has devised a series of exercises to awaken our proprioception (sense of where our body is in space), sense of touch, sight and hearing. He has also strung up a ‘slack-line’ (link – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacklining) (a very long piece of nylon webbing, 1 inch thick, that you string between two trees or other anchor points) to practice balancing. It’s challenging but brilliant fun too.
Elasticity
Running is 30% more ‘efficient’ in the amount of energy that it uses than it should be, when studied from a scientific point of view. How is this? It is to do with the body’s elasticity. This is the storage and recycling of energy in the body’s elastic structures (one of the largest ones being in the Achilles). Using our elasticity makes us more efficient, graceful and ‘bouncy’ when we move and stops us getting injured. Elasticity is something that you can train and an awareness of how it works helps you immediately. Timing is critical e.g. running at a cadence of around 180 steps / minute maximises elasticity, jumping from rock to rock as if the rock were red hot means you get maximal recoil. Jess and Colin (long-term Wildfitness coaches) have introduced an elasticity class to make you tigger-tastic. Rope skipping – fast – is one of the best ways to get started. Continue reading Wild Moving – The Physical Programme
The most important way to eat? Eat natural foods. As shown by the physique of this local guy from Vanuatu (pictured with Laura's Mum on her hols!)
The question always comes up on our courses – is it natural to be a meat eater or a veggie? One of the things that is most striking if you study natural people living today and our natural origins is how incredibly adaptable we are as a species. Humans can thrive on diets consisting almost exclusively of the raw fat and protein of marine mammals (e.g. Arctic Eskimo) as well as diets composed largely of a few wild plant species (e.g. Australian aborigines of the Western Desert) and there are an almost infinite number of successful dietary permutations between these two extremes. It is when the diet become ‘unnatural’ that problems start.
SO, our menus on our Wildfitness Holidays follow these principles:
1. They are designed so that at most meals guests can choose a vegetarian only option, a little bit of meat with the vegetarian option or a majority meat meal.
2. The vegetarian options are designed so that they have enough fat and protein, to be sufficient for people doing intense exercise.
3. The vegetarian options have some grains and pulses but these are gluten free and low glycemic. This is because many people (but not all) are intolerant to wheat and feel great when it’s cut out. Also many of our guests are keen to get leaner while they are with us and keeping the glycemic load of the meal low helps this. (See our blog on ‘starchy foods’ for more info).
4. Starchy vegetables or grains are usually mixed in with lots of salad so that the combined meal is low glycemic and so that the starchy vegetable is not the main part of the meal.
5. We need some starchy vegetables, especially if we are very active, but we tend to serve these during the day and not at night so the body uses up the energy while you’re still active. For vegetarians we’ll use eggs, nuts, oils and sometimes dairy to provide the main substance of the meals in the evenings.
6. Dairy is used sparingly, but is included with some of the vegetarian options as most people are not intolerant to dairy and it is a very useful modern source of non-meat fat and protein. But we can easily provide dairy-free menus for you.
These principles mean that you get as much energy and nutrients as your body needs but there is no danger of eating more energy than your body requires.
However one thing that we also discuss with our guests is that if you are sick, run down, stressed or have a compromised digestive system for some reason, it may be best to cut down on meat for a while. Meat is the hardest thing to digest and can cause problems in the digestive tract if it isn’t digested well enough. So in this case we’d recommend eating more of the veggie options on the course. Continue reading Wild Eating – Our Menus & the Veggie Question
Out of Body Experiences
The feeling of heaving breath, screaming muscles and exertion gives you confidence and a high that is more than endorphin. It is an ancient communion with our bodies. It reminds us that we have them. It reminds our bodies that we feel them.
Everyday on our courses in Kenya we serve guests a freshly made juice. We alternate zingy and sweet fruit juices with nourishing veg juices. Our manager, Erena, has been experimenting with inspiring new combinations, along with Gushe, our long-standing waiter and all-round Juice Guru. Here is a veggie juice that’s surprisingly sweet given it’s only got veggies in it. You could add a little ginger for extra zing or a little orange for more sweetness. A view of the Indian Ocean while sipping it is not essential, but comes highly recommended!
This goes out to all of you Wild Ones in the Northern Hemisphere… and those of you in eternally hot places.
2. Hydration
3. Adventures in the outdoors
