Sisson Quotes & Sayings

The bottom line is that you will not lose fat effectively with exercise-driven weight-loss efforts unless your eating habits moderate insulin production. — Mark Sisson

Exercising in the aerobic zone of 55-75 per cent of maximum heart rate should feel quite comfortable, and leave you feeling refreshed and energised after workouts. — Mark Sisson

And who should have the money, indeed, if not your wives? They have everything to do with the money. What idea have you, but to waste it!"
"Women waste nothing
they couldn't if they tried," said Aaron Sisson. — D.H. Lawrence

Begger or rich man, soldier or merchant, Rufus was indestructible, for the man who could laugh at life or death was in the end the only conqueror. — Rosemary Anne Sisson

Maximum Sustained Power (MSP) training is a novel approach that improves absolute power, — Mark Sisson

Strong personal relationships are characterised by an ability and willingness to do each other favors. Strive to put family first, then your social circle, and back off on efforts to be a social media superstar. — Mark Sisson

a significant amount of Conventional Wisdom about healthy eating is marketing fodder that grossly distorts the fundamental truth that humans thrive on natural plant and animal foods or that relies on gimmicks to support the dogma of flawed, manipulated "research. — Mark Sisson

When the topic of food comes up in conversation with family, friends or casual acquaintances, it's fascinating to hear the litany of rationalizations, knee-jerk defense mechanisms, self-limiting belief statements and general confusion or ignorance from otherwise intelligent folks when it comes to eating healthfully. But then again, Conventional Wisdom has often led even the best and brightest minds in nutritional science astray. — Mark Sisson

Once you're sensitized to the negative effects of unhealthy choices, it gets easier to turn down what used to seem impossible to resist. — Mark Sisson

A certain bygone philosophy-which certainly must have quite forgotten all about the real child-used to speak of the child's nature as a tabula rasa, or 'blank page,' upon which experience and training might write what they pleased. As a matter of fact, the child's nature at birth, like that of a calf or a chick, is pretty well scribbled over by the experience of its ancestors. It is far from being blank, for as soon as the little organism comes into the world, it begins to do certain things and do them with much zeal and determination, as every one knows who knows real children. — Edward O. Sisson

That means to push very heavy weight, repeatedly, and to constantly strive to elevate both your baseline numbers and the total weight lifted at the workout - until you start to reach a natural limit relative to your competitive goals. This will deliver improvements in strength and subsequent improvements in endurance performance, and also maximize the hormonal, anti-aging benefits of the workout. — Mark Sisson

Adjust your mentality to make veggies a centrepiece of your meals and snacks. Get comfortable with occasionally consuming larger quantities than typical Western diet traditions call for. — Mark Sisson

Our genes still expect us to eat a higher fat diet; they still see agricultural foods (and modern foods such as sugar), as poisonous; they still see lack of sunlight and exercise as problematic. We haven't genetically adapted to modern life because there is no selection pressure in the civilised world. — Mark Sisson

carbohydrate controls insulin; insulin controls fat storage. Carbohydrates are not used as structural components in the body; instead, they are used only as a form of fuel, whether burned immediately while passing by different organs and muscles, or stored for later use. All forms of carbohydrates you eat, whether simple or complex, are eventually converted into glucose, — Mark Sisson

Rather than strive to 'lose weight,' most people would be better off striving to lose only fat and to build or maintain muscle. — Mark Sisson

Animals (meat, fish, fowl, and eggs) and plants (vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and herbs and spices) should represent the entire composition of your diet. — Mark Sisson

When insulin is high, glucagon is usually low. You don't have energy in your bloodstream, so your brain says, "Eat now! And make it something sweet so we can burn it immediately! — Mark Sisson

It's also important to reject any feelings of compulsion, guilt or negativity about sub-par or missed workouts. — Mark Sisson

Plants and animals are much more nutritionally dense than processed carbohydrate foods, which comprise a large percentage of calories in the Standard American Diet. — Mark Sisson

Studies suggest that overweight kids are highly likely to become overweight adults and consequently suffer from serious health problems and life-threatening diseases. — Mark Sisson

extensive data also suggest a strong link between attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and processed carbohydrate consumption/insulin production. — Mark Sisson

It will not be easy to let go of your deceased mother, who stands in her kitchen slicing potatoes and roast, who hacks ice from the sidewalk with shovels; she is marrow and bone, a kernel of morals, values, and lessons compacted like some astronomical amount of matter into tablespoons, one with sugar for your cereal, another, for your fever, with a crushed aspirin and orange juice. You love her. You mark time and space by her: she is someone you are always either near to or very far from. — Jill Sisson Quinn

the Primal Blueprint is really about improving body composition, instead of just losing weight. This means a reduction in body fat percentage and an increase or maintenance of muscle or lean body mass. — Mark Sisson

Good is good and bad is bad, and nowhere is the difference between good and bad so wide and so fateful as in human character. For character makes destiny in the individual and in the race. — Edward O. Sisson

The "active couch potato syndrome" is an actual observed scientific phenomenon whereby devoted fitness enthusiasts - who conduct daily workouts but live otherwise inactivity-dominant lifestyles - are not immune to the cellular dysfunction and metabolic disease patterns driven by inactivity. Statistics referenced by James Levine, MD, PhD, a Mayo Clinic researcher, international expert on obesity, and author of Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It, — Mark Sisson

your need to consume calories on a regular schedule will diminish substantially when blood glucose levels are moderated and you start burning fat and ketones more efficiently through low-insulin — Mark Sisson

Your Primal efforts must be fun, energising and easy to maintain at all times, otherwise, you are destined to fail. — Mark Sisson

Self-respect is the very cement of character, without which character will not form nor stand; a personal ideal is the only possible foundation for self-respect, without which self-respect degenerates into vanity or conceit, or is lost entirely, its place being taken by worthlessness and the consciousness of worthlessness; and that is the end of all character. It is often said that if we do not respect ourselves no one else will respect us; this is rather a dangerous way to put it; let us rather say that if we are not worthy of our own respect we cannot claim the respect of others. True self-respect is a matter of being and never of mere seeming. As Paulsen says, "It is vanity that desires first of all to be seen and admired, and then, if possible, really to be something; whereas proper self esteem desires first of all to be something, and' then, if possible, to have its worth recognized. — Edward O. Sisson

Exercise stimulates an increase in appetite and calorie consumption such that it results in a draw when it comes to weight management. — Mark Sisson

We are all predisposed to disease if we mismanage our genes. — Mark Sisson

When your liver and muscles become filled with glycogen, any glucose remaining in the bloodstream that isn't used in "real time" by your brain or muscles (such as during an intense workout) gets converted into triglycerides in the liver and sent to fat cells for storage. — Mark Sisson

Aaron Sisson was the last man on the little black railway-line — D.H. Lawrence

The key [regarding sprinting] is to focus on the brief, intense, all-out aspect and refrain from a prolonged session that leads to exhaustion. — Mark Sisson

your genes want you to be healthy, and you deserve nothing less than the very best your genes have to offer. — Mark Sisson

There is no correlation between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol levels. Framingham residents who ate the most cholesterol, saturated fat, and total calories actually weighed the least and were the most physically active. — Mark Sisson

I don't eat a single bite of food that I don't absolutely love. — Mark Sisson

We now know that these outdated and unwarranted suggestions to eat 300 or more grams of carbohydrates each day has contributed greatly to the destruction of human health. It's not unusual for an average American now to consume 500 or 600 grams of insulin-generating, fat-storing carbohydrates daily. — Mark Sisson

Eating Primal Blueprint style for the rest of your life is much cheaper than long-term prescription drug regimens or extensive doctor visits or hospital stays for cardiac bypass surgery or cancer treatments. — Mark Sisson

Excessive insulin is also now believed to be a central catalyst in the development of atherosclerosis. — Mark Sisson

Unless you deplete lots of muscle glycogen every day, there is no physiological reason for you to consume high levels of carbohydrates. In fact, carbohydrates are not required in the human diet for survival the way fat and protein are. — Mark Sisson

Your original 'factory setting' is to be an efficient fat-burning beast! — Mark Sisson

The deepest-lying and most pervasive part of character is disposition: it accompanies us everywhere, and shows itself in all we do. It is the attitude of the soul toward life, the way in which we accept our situation and our daily experiences. On the inner side it gives color and tone to our own conscious life: on the outer side it pervades and modifies our conduct toward others and our reactions to events. A good disposition is indispensable to good character, though of course not all of character; without it one cannot hope for perfection; even with it one may fail through lack of higher elements. It is a sort of foundation layer. — Edward O. Sisson

A US study showed that rats exposed to invisible television rays (screen was blackened) for six hours per day became hyperactive and extremely aggressive for about a week, then suddenly become totally lethargic and stopped breeding entirely. — Mark Sisson

Give up grains and fried restaurant foods. Doing that pretty much gets you most of the way there. — Mark Sisson

Because insulin's job is to transport nutrients out of the bloodstream and into the muscle, liver, and fat cell storage depots, its excessive presence in the bloodstream inhibits the release of stored body fat for use as energy. — Mark Sisson

Regular consumption of fish has been shown to exert a strong anti-inflammatory effect, reduce risk for heart disease, help protect against asthma in children, moderate chronic lung disease, reduce the risk of breast and other cancers by stunting tumor growth, and ease the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and certain bone and joint diseases. Nursing and pregnant women enjoy a host of benefits from fish consumption, including support for fetal and early childhood brain and retinal development and a lowered risk of premature birth. — Mark Sisson

Our ancestors went for days without anything to eat, and carbohydrates were extremely scarce for two million years. The truth is, fat is the preferred fuel for human metabolism. — Mark Sisson

Eat your food slowly and chew each bite completely (20-30 chomps is ideal) to facilitate proper digestion. — Mark Sisson

Perhaps the most widely accepted and damaging element of dietary Conventional Wisdom is that grains are healthy - the "staff of life" - as we've been led to believe our entire lives. — Mark Sisson

Instead, choose decaf for your second cup of the day, engage in good sleeping habits, moderate insulin production in your diet, exercise Primally and boost energy naturally with cold water plunges, deep breathing sequences, napping or quick exercise breaks after long periods of inactivity. — Mark Sisson

Our ancestors, who were able to survive and reproduce under unimaginably harsh environmental circumstances, refined and perfected the human genetic recipe. — Mark Sisson

Maximum Sustained Power workouts are much less taxing on the cardio endurance component and instead focus on going for max power or going home. Literally, you end your mini-sets when you can't lift the heavy bar again due to accumulated fatigue. Or, in the case of vertical jumps or calibrated exercise equipment, you stop the set when you fall materially short of your baseline absolute power performance standard that you started the workout with. — Mark Sisson

While Primal eating is low-carb in comparison to the Standard American Diet, it advocates abundant consumption of nutritious carbs such as all vegetables and certain fruits. — Mark Sisson

Oily, cold-water fish from remote, pollution-free waters (anchovies, herring, mackerel, salmon, sardines) are some of the most nutrient-rich foods on the planet: no other food comes close to their omega-3 levels. — Mark Sisson

nearly all of us have experienced similar results following the Conventional Wisdom of our time: weight-loss efforts doomed to a 96 percent long-term failure rate, workout programs leading to fatigue and increased appetites for sugar, and medications that exacerbate the underlying cause of pain while barely alleviating symptoms (not to mention the unpleasant side effects). — Mark Sisson

The advent of agriculture and civilization caused life expectancy to drop significantly, reaching a low of 18 during the Bronze Age of 3,300 B.C. to 1,200 B.C.. Life expectancy remained low (between 20 and 30) through 1500 A.D. and then climbed only gradually, reaching ~30 in 1800 and ~40-50 in 1900 in the USA and Europe. — Mark Sisson

Every man whose tastes have been allowed to develop in wrong directions, or in whom the best tastes have failed of higher perfection, loses thereby from the inner joy and outer value of his whole life. Every good taste is a source and guarantee of happy healthy hours and days, and thus of the enrichment and elevation of life. A reasonable capacity to appreciate music and art quite suffices to enrich life and exercise a wholesome influence upon character. The taste for good reading is inseparable from a taste for good thinking. — Edward O. Sisson

Eating cholesterol and bad fat will contribute to heart disease if and only if you bathe them in a massive lifelong overdose of insulin and glucose. — Mark Sisson

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur. — Edward O. Sisson

A 2004 article in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition referred to numerous studies suggesting that a low-carbohydrate intake and the resulting mild ketosis may offer many benefits, including reduction of body fat, minimized damage from insulin resistance and free radicals (caused by metabolizing a high-carbohydrate diet), and a reduction of LDL cholesterol. — Mark Sisson