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.
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 Every year Tara Wood, founder of Wildfitness, plays the role of guest and completes a Wildfitness course in its entirety – what better way to know exactly what our guests have to go through?! However this year, because of certain circumstances, she was incredibly nervous at the outset. Her experience turned out to be tougher and yet more transformative than even she expected. Here is her story, about a Wild girl who lost her wildness for bit, but then found it again…!
I founded Wildfitness 10 years ago – surely I should be super wild by now? Well, to tell you the truth, I go in and out of the ‘Wild state’. There have been times when I get sucked deeply into my computer as I wrangle with running a small company. I’m a bit of a party whimp, but every now and again I have been dragged to the Kalahari club a few nights running, and there have been other times where I have taken refuge in the love-of-my-life: chocolate. But I have pretty much consistently trained and lived naturally all of my life. Then I hit a point about a year ago where things got on top of me, and I had probably also been over-training (one of the main things that we teach people to avoid at Wildfitness! Whoops!). I decided to stop intense training for a while. I slept about 10 hours a night, went walking and gentle swimming rather than running and got into the most zen sport ever: free diving. This was a truly wonderful break and after a few months I started feeling less fragile and more energetic. However, every time I did anything too intense, I got so stiff and sore afterwards I was convinced I needed a bit more time off to fill up my ‘amazonian tank’.
 A few more months went by and the time started drawing near when I would have to attend the Wildfitness course which I do every year (to make sure I know exactly what we are subjecting other people to!). I started to get nervous. I felt I had to not only complete the course, but there’s also a fair bit of pressure for me to set a wild example! And I worried about donning a swim suit! I had hardly done any intense exercise for almost a year and I was in the mind-set where I thought that perhaps I was past being able to train hard. Maybe I was too old these days, maybe I would need a progressive few months to ease into more training – or maybe I had a case of chronic fatigue and this was something that was no longer appropriate for me! Anyway – there was no avoiding doing my job and I put in my excuses to the coaches in advance…
When the date of my course came around I had come to terms with the fact that I would just do my best and might have to cry off a few activities if I just couldn’t manage it. The group arrived – a mixture of the super fit and the fitness beginner and everyone greeted me with a ‘wow – hello Miss Wildfitness – what an honour – we are looking forward to being inspired by you’. To which I returned rather a foolish smile of apprehension!
The first three days of the course is a mixture of skills and some high intense workouts, that push you further than you think you are able. You don’t ever feel ‘put in the spot light’ but you also really have no option but to put out more physical performance than you thought possible. And the gentle leadership of the coaches guided the vibe of our group into a supportive and playful natural tribe who were inclusive rather than competitive but at the same time challenged ourselves to put in 100%, whatever that might be for each individual, into every session. We soon all felt equal and able to be our authentic selves (a big thank you to my group for being such groovy people!) and I was able to drop the weight of expectation off my shoulders. However, day 3, I was struggling to walk up, and especially down, stairs and could feel every muscle in my body. I’ve always been one of those people who relishes this feeling, but I was far more worried about this resulting in an energy crash. Continue reading Tara’s Story – My WF Course in Kenya
 Jess (author of this post) and her son Jack Yawn! My son Jack was born in May last year and over the last 10 months I have truly found out what it’s like to be sleep deprived and have accumulated a sizable sleep debt. I’m not the only one. These days in our modern lives of electric lighting, the internet, TV, mobile phones etc we are available 24 / 7 and our sleep debts are growing as a result. Here’s why getting enough good quality sleep is so key to your health….
The common sense
We feel crumby without enough sleep but it seems to be just one of those things that people skimp on, and to make matters worse we are seriously lousy judges on how much we get. Several studies have shown that we tend to over report the amount of sleep we get and under report the effect it has on us. So it seems sleep is one area where our instincts, confused by our modern environment, aren’t always as sharp as they should be, and we may need to make a conscious effort to improve the length and quality of our sleep.
The evolutionary logic
Going back to our primal roots it has been hypothesized that sleep had a number of roles to play in our survival. It was a good way of conserving energy when we once had to work for our food and maintain energy stores to survive. Sleep appears to be important for human learning as well. People who get plenty of deep non REM sleep in the first half of the night and REM sleep in the second half (the difference is explained below) improve their ability to perform spatial tasks. Again highly important in the survival of the human race. Humans, like a number of other mammals, sleep at night. Being inactive at night may have made them less prone to nocturnal predators. In the world of the wild human there were no electric light bulbs, computers, TVs or smart phones to disrupt our circadian rhythms. (Mark Sisson’s has written a great blog on ‘How Light Affects our Sleep’). Shift work and jet lag were not an issue and as the sun went down and the sleep hormones kicked in our ancestors started to wind down into a more low key mode.
 Those unintentional public naps are the first phase of sleep The science
So what moves us to sleep in the first place? Well it’s our internal biological clock, which runs on a rhythm called a circadian rhythm. This circadian rhythm is a cycle of roughly 24 hours (some say 25) that is in the physiology of almost all living beings and seems to be generated internally. As we approach sleep our core temperature begins to cool down and our bodies begin to kick out the sleep hormone melatonin which will reach its peak in the second half of our normal sleep schedule and also when our core temperature is at its lowest point. We don’t just collapse into unconsciousness, although some days it may feel like it, we actually move through stages of sleep and sleep cycles throughout the night. Most of us have heard of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep (which hosts most of our dreaming) and non REM sleep. We actually move through 4 stages of non REM sleep before we hit REM sleep, in a pattern which lasts about 90 minutes all together and is repeated throughout the night. The first phase represents the initial switch in brain wave frequency. This is the stage when you feel like you are under but partially aware of your surroundings. (It’s when you’re having a surreptitious nap in public and your head slips off your hand and you scare the crap out of yourself). The next stage is when you are under enough that any awareness of your environment is gone. Then you move into stages of deep slow wave sleep. Muscle tone is progressively relaxed and is generally non-existent when you reach REM sleep. We tend to experience our deepest sleep early on in the night hence the importance of getting to bed early and our best sleep happens when we stay on course with our natural circadian rhythm. Continue reading Sleep, sleep cycles & 15 ways to improve your sleep
  It’s the hungry gap of the year in the UK as far as fruit and vegetables are concerned but you can still discover some little gems growing in the veg garden or found locally at your farmers market (click here to find your nearest market if you live in London). At Wildfitness, we love eating local and seasonal foods which will have far more nutrients than those picking up miles. Ideally we would pluck fruit and veg straight from the garden but since most of us don’t have this luxury, you can still benefit lots from foods grown as nearby as possible. Ask the guy at the farmers market or if you have the chance try to visit your local farm where the produce is grown. It is interesting to know how they farm and whether they use chemical fertilizer alone, not at all, or alongside farmyard manure, seaweed meal or their own compost. These are natural fertilizers and are great for rebuilding the soil and passing natural nutrients to the produce. Good soil is key as it is the basis of the eco system and will affect the health of all the foods you eat thereafter (from a simple onion to a chicken or an egg). One great way to have a bit more control is through growing your own sprouts which anyone can do – see the next newsletter.
Have a look below at suggestions of fruit and veg that are seasonal to the UK at the moment and therefore most likely to be grown locally. As you can see, it’s the time of year for crunchy salads..
- Spring onions. Great in salads or cooked in stirfrys with other veg.
- Asparagus. Delicious grilled and I love them with garlic.
- Wild garlic leaves. These are found completely wild in certain parts of the country…you’ll know when they are nearby as you can smell them a mile off! I love adding them to salads or cooked lightly like spinach.
- Salad leaves. There are tonnes around at the moment so don’t scrimp!
- Radishes. So tasty and I would keep them raw in a salad.
- Young carrots. Definitely worth eating raw as they are so sweet and tasty at this time of year.
- Young beetroot. These are stacked full of flavours at the moment. I love grating them raw onto salads but they can also be cooked (just make sure you don’t overcook them or they will lose their flavour..catch them as soon as they are soft ).
- Strawberries. If you are getting into salads, why don’t you chuck a few strawberries on top…not only delicious but they will also make your salad the most beautiful of them all!
- Rhubarb. Even though some eat it raw, personally I prefer it cooked. One tip; cooking them in water makes them rather watery so I prefer to cook them in a juice of an orange with added ginger and honey for taste.
- Spring cabbage. Cabbage might not be the most popular veg but it’s lovely grated into a coleslaw or stir fried with other young vegetables.
We asked Wild Coach, Gareth Roriston, what key training advice he would give someone wanting to improve their fitness. For Gareth it boils down to just two key things. In his own words, here’s what he has to say…
Run and lift heavy things…
…these are two things that every, truly all-round fit person does.
Even elite specialists will include these activities into their regime in some capacity. At some point every top marathoner has lifted weights as part of their programme and every top weightlifter has included running (usually sprints) in theirs. The point is that people in great shape, whether they are a generalist or specialist, realise the benefit of these two physical activities.
I propose that every person you see with a great looking physique partakes in these two activities.
 Gareth running barefoot on the beach in Kenya The benefits of running…
…In all its forms are endless, by now if you’re reading this you are probably familiar with the Wildfitness stance on evolutionary fitness. The views presented here are purely my own but are in line with the WF philosophy.
Running is the default form of human locomotion. As human beings our physiology has been designed so that we can run everyday of our lives at varying degrees of effort and we would have been expected to in our hunter gatherer past – or even present if you happen to be a modern hunter gatherer!
Here’s a summary of some of the benefits:
- Musculo-skeletal benefits such as strengthening useful muscles and sustaining the pliability of these and connective tissues.
- Energy expenditure. All that food you eat is supposed to power something!
- Improving or maintaining the efficiency of the cardio pulmonary system (heart and lungs).
- Psychological benefits include “think time” or “tune out time”, which more experienced runners can relate to, where one enters a state that can be considered meditative during the run.
For example have you ever started running a familiar route and found yourself at a particular point and thought “wow here already”? This is an example of “tuning out” or “thinking about everything and nothing” to quote the band Suicidal Tendencies.
This also happens while walking or driving cars, but in my opinion running hits two birds with one stone the (physical and mental). I believe that this is probably an essential part of maintaining a healthy subconscious. Other psychological benefits are the retention of focus (as a result of sprinting) and general mental robustness from sustained efforts.
To expand on the psychological benefits of running one of my favourite chapters in the movie “Forest Gump” is where life gets all too much and Forest starts running, not understanding exactly why. If anyone has ever experienced the primal and liberating feeling of putting one foot in front of the other, carrying yourself into the world under your own steam, then maybe you know what I’m talking about.
Overall running with correct form is an extremely healing activity, mentally and physically, so keep form and practice your wild running craft.
 Gareth lifting a rather large chunk of driftwood Lifting heavy things…
…Notice I have not said lifting weights. Lifting weights is great, fantastic in fact, but the term conjures images of just dumbbells and barbells which are also splendid, but there’s more…
Resistance is resistance as far as muscles and bones are concerned. When subjected to overload these tissues react the same way. For example whether you deadlift a barbell, kettlebell, sandbag, person, car, caber, keg or rock, physiologically the adaptation that occurs is the same process.
Now of course some of you out there are aware that the manner in which things are lifted affects the type of results: e.g. speeds at which the action takes place, the weight of the load and how many times you repeat the effort. These are all factors in the specifics of building performance characteristics, however the purpose of my writing is not to prescribe a programme for the individual but to highlight what I believe are the two fundamental and admittedly broad in spectrum activities of running and lifting.
In short, Gareth says: All weighted implements are good.
Thinking back to our ancestry we were built to handle and manipulate many of the heavy objects in our environment in many scenarios. Here are few of the objects and some of the movements associated with them as something to think about and also because I find it fun imagining some of the activities our ancestors had to apply their strength to.
- Squatting and deadlifting – Rocks and logs as shelter materials, benches or anvils, also deadfall traps (either sophisticated or as simple as rolling them down a hill to crush unsuspecting game). Lifting infants or the infirm. Collecting water in a vessel, lifting dead game, bundles of gathered foods.
- Cleans/clean and jerk/snatches – This would be used in many of the same circumstances as squatting and deadlifting, but would be used specifically to pass, throw or to rack the load into a stable position for sustained carries during activities such as abduction of new spouses (!) or even collecting water.
- Gripping and twisting – Working with supple branches to build and fashion tools with, also dismembering fresh kills and preparing fruits and vegetables.
- Chin ups, rowing and squeeze actions – Heaving ones self over obstacles for the former. Using rowing actions to uproot plants as well as pulling tough materials apart. Hugging and squeezing actions such as those used in holding multiple objects to the chest, squeezing water out of plant materials or simply choking the life out of your enemies.
- Maximal efforts – Showing off! Maximal efforts intimidate would-be competitors and impress the opposite sex! (Wildfitness would like to remind you that these are Gareth’s personal opinions… and that he has a unique sense of humour…).
 Here in Kenya the women need to lift and carry heavy things as part of their everyday life Hopefully what you may have noticed is that when it comes to lifting, all of the above actions focus on movements rather than individual muscles. There are no quad extensions in the natural world nor are there seated concentration bicep curls. The actions listed above hold a practical purpose and we need them in our lives to sustain our physical selves or build on our performance. Just like running, our bodies expect us to do them and rely on the fact that we are going to do them to keep us in a state of well being. Here is a summary of the benefits of resistance training…
- Promotes a healthy lean-to-fat mass balance.
- Maintains or increases strength.
- Improves mobility.
- Promotes bone density.
- Develops awareness of posture.
Conclusion:
There are a number of variations on running practices from intervals, to cross country. There are a plethora of training modes when it comes to resistance work too. But the key thing is that, when performed with good form, they are all good for us.
So there you have it. Next time you see someone in great condition or with a fantastic physique I’ll bet you that they run and lift heavy things in one way or another.
Gareth Roriston, April 2011
Who is to say that you can only eat cereal and milk or toast and butter for breakfast?
These days many grains (including bread and cereals) have been so adapted from their original form that many people find them difficult to digest and feel bloated and lethargic after eating them. Just think “would my great grandmother have eaten this?” when you next go to buy bran flakes or a loaf of soft, ‘fluffy’ processed white bread. Modern grain-based foods are more energy dense and less fibrous than they used to be and therefore are much easier to overeat. In your great grandmother’s day you could have knocked someone out with a loaf of bread! This just goes to show how much grains, especially wheat, have been bred to appeal to our taste buds and are very different from their original form .
To many of us, it may seem like there is nothing left to eat when you cut out cereals and toast at breakfast, but as soon as you get away from this conventional mind set you will find that there are plenty of very tasty foods that give you stacks of energy. Have a look at some breakfast ideas below that we serve our guests at Wildfitness.
1. Fruit, nuts and seeds. There is so much you can do with these ingredients, just experiment and decide what tastes best! Try to find the fruits that are in season at the moment, grate or chop them up and sprinkle with nuts and/or seeds. I love this with a bit of cinnamon but try it with other spices like cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, etc. You might want to add a scoop of yoghurt on top. Go for yoghurt made from raw milk or unpasteurised if possible and full-fat. I find it easier to digest sheep or goats yoghurt; cow products tend to congest me.
2. Omelettes. These are so simple, they take 5 minutes to make and you can stuff them differently each day (mushrooms, onions, peppers and tomatoes, minced meat, etc). Eggs are one of the super foods at Wildfitness and great to eat when doing lots of exercise. They are stacked full of protein and will fill you up til’ lunch. Make sure you eat the yolk too which is full of protein, nutrients and fat (remember fat doesn’t make you fat!)
3. Smoothies. Such a fresh, delicious way to wake you up! Fruit and yoghurt ones work well but you can also get creative and start adding a few greens or spices to the mix and even toss in an egg! Fruit only smoothies have a high glycaemic index; to reduce it, try adding a bit of protein like yoghurt, eggs or nuts. Experiment and see what suits you best. Gushe, our juicer at Wildfitness, came up with a great concoction last week: juiced pineapple blended with banana and coconut milk.
4. Avocados. Okay, so avocados may not be on your immediate list of breakfast ingredients but trust me, they are a great way to start the day and prevent cravings. We serve them on their own, with a drizzle of lemon or combined with other ingredients like eggs (mashed avocado and lemon on top of halved eggs are amazing), carrots and even in smoothies to form deliciously thick creamy textures.
5. Nut & Fruit Pancakes. This is a favourite at Wildfitness and you can actually get quite creative with them! Our most popular this season were the coconut pancakes but once you have mastered these, try adding different spices or maybe other ground nuts like almonds instead of coconut. Our latest creation was banana fritters.
Netta Pakenham-Walsh – April 2011
 10 dead lifts, 10 overhead swings, 10 thrusters, 10 clean 'n jerks, poor Colin was certainly tested against the King of Kettlebells! We don’t ask for much from our coaches; they just have to be hard-working, qualified, motivating, fit, knowledgeable, inspirational, experienced, patient, fun, understanding, creative, respected, …….…. AND have a sense of humour (as we realised on the beach a couple of weeks ago!) Our new activity “Challenge the coach” became more like “humiliate the coach” in the guests’ attempt to seek revenge on the coaches after 2 weeks of 6am wake-up calls and burpees!
The group were put into groups of 3 or 4 and asked to come up with their own combo (circuit), each doing 1 leg against one of the coaches who had to do all 4 legs. They were given guidelines to follow for each leg, like “the sea”, “a coconut” or “a sand bag”. Whatever their guideline, they had to incorporate it into a leg of their choice. So for example, if they were given “a sand bag”, they could either lift it over their heads and run with it over a distance or drag it to a certain point, etc.
The three teams came up with some fantastic and very imaginative combos and best of all, each coach (Colin, Gareth and Joash) was dressed up in their own special outfit. Gareth seemed very pleased with his pig tails, but not so pleased when he lost!
 Joash isn't the most likely water baby, but he does us proud by diving through the boys' legs dressed up in a helmit and kikoy!  That's brave choosing to race Joash at running! But Joash is still dizzy from having to spin round first... clever thinking!  And make sure you choose something that gives you a chance against the coach, like the splits...!  Tough one and requires plenty of coordination. Joash finally manages to hit 5 golf balls out of the court with the foam roller  Oh yes Colin, looking good!
Following on from last month: Is there anything we should consider when choosing between all the ‘natural foods’ on offer? We are often told starchy plants, particularly grains, should be avoided. What is the truth in this?
We can be healthy eating pretty much anything edible…
Humans evolved to eat every animal or plant that wasn’t actually toxic (and, after cooking, some that to greater or lesser degree were). Evolutionarily our species has eaten every seed that was worth collecting: grass seed, legume (bean-like, pea-like, peanut and others), and any other seeds that were sustaining and productive. We also ate any edible tubers, root vegetables and starchy fruit that we could find.
Practical Tip: As long as something is from a plant or an animal, is edible, and has been reared or grown in natural circumstances, we can probably eat it and be healthy.
 Celeriac and celery were bred from the same plant If you want to get leaner
The food species we eat today have been bred intensively since cultivation began. Most of them are unrecognisable from their ancestors. For example, celery and celeriac have a common ancestor from about 400 years ago! So all the vegetables, fruit and even animal products, may be just as ‘new’ to our systems as the grains and pulse species we eat.
For many people today the problem is that our food has been bred to be much more energy dense than it used to be, plus with processing we can digest it much more efficiently. Combined with being less active, this can make us less lean than we want to be.
A good gauge of how much useful energy we can get from food is its glycemic load, which measures the sugar released into the blood stream after eating food. Starchy plants like grains, pulses, root vegetables and tubers can carry a high glycemic load. This is particularly true if they are processed and refined – peaking in things like white bread and pasta. Therefore the most sensible way to eat if you are aiming to be leaner is to choose starchy plants that are whole, less processed or more ‘ancient’ e.g. chick peas, brown rice, spelt. Having starchy vegetables as the smaller part of a meal also means that the glycemic load of the whole meal is balanced.
Evolutionarily we have always had some form of starch from plants whether it is from root vegetables, tubers, grains or pulses, as an important contribution to our energy needs. If our ancestors had cut starchy foods outs completely they would have withered away!
Practical Tip: If you want to get leaner, make starchy plants the smaller part of your meal.
Practical Tip: When choosing starchy plants, go for the least processed option.
 White bread... highly processed & refined, with a high glycemic load. Probably best to eat very rarely, if at all. If you have intolerances
The most common food intolerance in the category of starchy plants, is wheat. This may be because wheat is one of the most heavily bred plants so has changed most radically in composition from its wild ancestors. If you are intolerant to wheat, it doesn’t mean you are intolerant to other gluten containing grains, but it may do. Intolerances to other grains and pulses can happen, but they are just as common as intolerances to other foods. NOTE: gas from eating beans does not count as an intolerance! (Gas from beans happens because our guts don’t breakdown a certain sugar called an oligosaccharide found in them, which are broken down in the small intestine by bacteria releasing gases. This is not necessarily a bad thing – depending on which way you look at it…)
Practical Tip: If you notice uncomfortable symptoms after eating something, it may be worth cutting that food out of your diet. Wheat statistically is the No. 1 candidate, but many of us are completely fine to eat wheat.
At Wildfitness our menu has some starchy plants every day, but usually only once a day and in small portions. For some of our guests who are lean already and are training hard for prolonged period of time, we may offer more starchy plants.
We serve lactose-free and gluten-free foods so that those with intolerances feel great.
In Kenya, we are reminded of the bountifulness of our modern foods because the monkeys are getting ever more kamikaze at stealing mangos and bananas from the our breakfast table in preference to the fibrous tart forest fruits growing wild around us….!!
 The monkeys at Baraka prefer our sweet, bred fruits to anything wild!
 Served here with mange tout, avocado salad and okra. Okay, so this pic may not make it look so yummy but believe me it tastes goooood! This recipe has been a favourite out here in Kenya for a while and makes a great tasty lunch. Serve with a variety of veg and crunchy salads and surprise your freinds with how yummy healthy, wholesome food can be!
( Recipe serves 4)
Ingredients
6 Chicken breasts
1.5 tbsp Tomato Paste
3 Carrots, cut into thin strips
20ml Raw Honey
3 sticks of Celery, cut into thin strips
20ml Sesame Oil
3 Onions
2 tbsp Parsley, chopped
60g Raw Cashew Nuts
½ tsp Curry Powder
Method
1) Toast cashew nuts on an oven tray for 5 mins.
2) Heat oil, add chicken and cook until the chicken is browned and just tender. Remove from pan.
3) Add the carrots. Cook until almost tender, add celery and onions and cook until onions are soft.
4) Return chicken to pan, add parsley and combined honey, tomato paste and curry powder.
5) Serve hot, sprinkled with cashew nuts.
One thing we aim to do on our courses is to help Wild Ones assess the fitness and diet fads out there and arrive at a few simple truths about healthy human eating. There has been lots of debate about the pros and cons of raw-food only diets and of cooking, so here are our thoughts…
 Raw food
Some raw food in our diet is essential. The best evidence for this is the fact that we humans are unable to make our own vitamin C. Primates are rare in the shared trait of not internally manufacturing our own vitamin C, whereas most other animals do. Which is why on long sea voyages, humans would get scurvy and rats wouldn’t! Cooking destroys vitamin C and other essential vitamins and minerals that the body can’t make. This means that some raw foods are essential in our diet, especially those that are rich in vitamins and minerals like fresh fruit and vegetables.
Practical Tip: It’s essential to eat some raw foods in your diet.
Cooked food
On the point of cooking our food, Darwin observed: ‘hard and stringy roots can be rendered digestible, and poisonous roots or herbs innocuous’.
Richard Wrangham, author of the recent and acclaimed book ‘Catching Fire,’ believes we have been cooking our food for 1.8 million years and notes: ‘cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from our food’. He has studied the anatomy of our jaw and mouth and studied our digestive system and concludes: ‘humans are adapted to eating cooked food in the same essential way as cows are adapted to eating grass, or fleas to sucking blood, or any other animal to its signature diet.’
The Giessen Raw Food study concludes that humans just can’t get enough energy from a raw food-only diet to be completely healthy.
Practical Tip: If you aren’t feeling well, cooked food is easier to digest and can help you heal faster.
 Raw vs. cooked?
At Wildfitness we have some raw food and some cooked food at every meal. Our key belief at Wildfitness, that ‘humans are very adaptable within the parameters of nature’, tells us that the optimum ratio is probably very flexible. You can still be healthy on a predominantly raw diet or on a predominantly cooked diet, and we shouldn’t get too het up about it! However, erring on the side of maximising your raw food intake is a good idea as even “fresh” supermarket produce can be low on vitamins, and vitamin C intake is particularly important to support your adrenals, which take a beating with hard living in the city.
We have to eat some cooked food to have enough energy in our diets to be healthy, but increasing the ratio of raw to cooked food can be a way to get leaner if you are not as physically active as our ancestors.
Practical Tip: Err on the side of including as much raw stuff in your diet as possible, especially if you are not very physically active.
Update on the ‘evolutionary diet’
It has only recently been accepted that cooking our food has been done so far back in our species’ history. Previously, evolutionary diets have proclaimed that foods that need to be cooked to be edible are recent in our diets and therefore best left out. The new understanding of the role of cooking in our evolution changes the kinds of foods which can be seen to be ‘evolutionary’ and which we are adapted to.
Practical Tip: If you follow an ‘evolutionary diet’, this can include some foods that must be cooked, like grains, pulses and tubers, but they would not be the predominant part of our diet.
Evolutionary diets also have put emphasis on meat-eating based on the belief that our evolution from ape to man was made possible by our ability to better hunt big game. Richard Wrangham argues that learning how to cook our food may have actually been the key turning point in our evolutionary history. Either way, meat may well have been a key part of our diet, but periods without meat were inevitable. Our ancestors, at times, may have eaten predominantly cooked gathered food for their energy. At Wildfitness we offer a vegetarian and meat option.
Practical Tip: If you follow an ‘evolutionary diet’, this does not need to be predominantly meat-based.
There is more to know about the above points which is important to be aware of, mainly because of the way we have bred and changed our ancient food sources over the years. We’ll expand on this more in a separate article next month, so watch this space…!
  Us girls were trying to teach the Wildfitness boys how to be a bit more romantic ready for Valentine’s day, but neither Colin nor Gareth seemed the least bit interested! We had to find a way to grab their attention and what better way to their hearts than with something deliciously tasty!? It had to be a breakfast dish so they could have the whole day to think of something equally romantic to do in return…
Everyone on our recent courses have adored this recipe and it’s definitely worth a try be it Valentine’s day or not! And it really is easy to make. Obviously since I (Netta!) was trying to impress, I cut each pancake into heart shapes but this is yummy whatever the shape!
Ingredients for 2:
1 cup of grated coconut (or desiccated coconut if you don’t have fresh)
1 tbs honey
2-3 eggs
Pinch cinnamon
How I made them..
- I gave Alfred (our head chef) the job of grating the fresh coconut. He didn’t seem too thrilled as it is apparently the woman’s job out here in Kenya and he didn’t think it would do much for his street cred if he was caught. This is why we hid outside away from prying eyes. It’s hard work actually but great for a bit of natural arm toning! If you don’t have fresh coconuts and a coconut shredder, use desiccated coconut.
- We beat the eggs into a bowl and mixed in the coconut, honey and cinnamon…easy!
- On a hot pan, I put a smidgen of oil and then poured half the mixture onto it. It can burn easily so I turned the heat down a little bit.
- As soon as it started to harden, I flipped it over and heated the other side.
- Once it resembled a pancake, I put it on a plate and cut it into a heart shape (if you have one of those heart shaped moulds, it might be a lot easier!)
- Serve with a kiss!
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