My WEEK of PRIMAL LIVING

I’m pretty comprehensively on board with the primal lifestyle. I disapprove of processed foods (but eat them anyway) and perpetually intend to get rid of my smartphone (but use it anyway). So yes, I was on board with a week of primal living, right up to the very first moment: dawn.

Paleolithic man rose with the sun, you see, and thus I had to do the same. I left my shutters open as I went to bed. A little before 4am, dawn broke and entered my hitherto unmolested Monday morning.

I would like to say that I sprang out of my mossy bower, grabbed my spear and roused my fellow hunter-gatherers to join me in hunting a tree sloth, but – alas – I myself was the slothful one. I fell back into sleep. Rising with the sun, I concluded, is desirable but, at least in summer, all but impossible to achieve.

But there was lots of other paleolithic activity to get on with. I went down to two meals a day; I find that I’m better-focused when I skip breakfast. The food (pastureraised lamb, wild venison, grass-fed liver, eggs, kefir, avocado, broccoli and kimchi) was enjoyable, easy to digest and filling.

I had to keep using a computer during the day in order to work, but was glad to turn off my phone earlier than usual and read instead. (Books aren’t authentically Stone Age, obviously, but analogue entertainment felt more in keeping with the challenge.)

An important part of primal living was pursuing challenging goals as a group. So I invited my friends for a barbecue of elk, wild boar and venison, on the condition that they first join me for a barefoot sprint and pull-ups workout in the park. The heavens opened. Those of us who worked out were soaked. When we attempted the barbecue, the pair who had wisely skipped the workout were soaked too. Despite the rain, and to some extent because of it, we had a novel and vivifying evening. Well I did, anyway.

Maybe my guests were just cold and annoyed. Our ancestors might not envy modern man’s diseases of lifestyle, but they would envy our ability to go indoors, turn on the heating and put a ready meal in the oven. Which is exactly how we ended up needing the primal movement.

Two Meals a Day: The Simple, Sustainable Strategy to Lose Fat, Reverse Aging, and Break Free from Diet Frustration Forever by Brad Kearns and Mark Sisson (£20, Grand Central Publishing)

Tom cooks elk sausages indoors