Muscles

Fat is embedded within and around muscle tissue, and this is not a sign of poor conditioning. Wrestlers and weightlifters carry between 24 and 35 percent fat within their muscles, and sumo wrestlers carry a minimum of 50 percent. This level of internal fat is what gives them their strength, their resilience to impact, and their endurance. Aajonus repeatedly pointed to these athletes as evidence that fat, not lean muscle mass, produces peak physical performance.

The body derives 2.5 times more energy from fat per gram or calorie than it does from carbohydrate or protein. When fat is available as direct fuel, the energy is long-lasting and efficient. When the body must convert carbohydrates or proteins into acetate or acetone bodies to use as fat-like energy, the process is complex, produces very little energy, and generates no real endurance. This is why bodybuilders, who deliberately eliminate fat from their muscles before exhibitions, drop dramatically in lifting capacity. Schwarzenegger, whom Aajonus observed at Gold's Gym in Los Angeles, would go from pressing 400 to 470 pounds when fully fat-loaded to pressing only 270 pounds by the time he had eliminated his fat for exhibition. That is a loss of 200 pounds of lifting capacity, explained entirely by the removal of the fat that fueled the muscle.

During training, Schwarzenegger consumed raw eggs, raw milk, raw cream, raw meat, and raw butter in large quantities. This was consistent with Austrian athletic culture, where raw meat, raw dairy, and raw eggs were standard for Olympic-level athletes. He would build up his fat stores and muscle mass together during the training period, then spend six to seven weeks eliminating the outer fat layer before exhibition. At that point his muscles were visually defined, but his strength had declined substantially. If he had continued beyond that six-week fat-restriction period, he would have begun losing the muscle itself, eventually dropping to around 350 pounds on the bar.

Raw meat is, in Aajonus's framework, the irreplaceable substance for building and maintaining muscle. He maintained substantial muscle on his own body without any exercise program beyond occasional roller skating twice a month and carrying luggage through airports. He attributed this entirely to eating raw meat consistently. When he was eating cooked food and not exercising, his muscle disappeared within six months. On raw meat without exercise, it stayed.

He described his experience gaining 50 pounds of muscle within three and a half months after beginning to eat raw meat, raw eggs, and raw dairy on a farm where he worked in exchange for food. He went from approximately 113 pounds to a body that he described as resembling a scaled-down Schwarzenegger, with visible muscle development and a sense of health he had not previously experienced.

The mechanism he described is that raw animal proteins contain all the amino acid structures the body needs to build and maintain muscle tissue. These amino acids cannot be adequately obtained from nuts, grains, or plant foods. Dairy provides some protein but not enough for significant muscle development beyond infancy. Children raised on milk are plump and well-protected, but when they begin eating meat, their muscles develop noticeably. The heart and liver, as near-total muscle organs, also require meat as their primary nutritional support.

He specified that approximately one pound of raw meat per day is the baseline quantity for most people. Reducing meat and compensating with more milk will diminish muscle strength and texture. Eggs maintain existing tissue but do not regenerate or build new muscle. For muscle building specifically, meat is the essential substance, and dairy plays a supporting rather than leading role.

Bodybuilders and weightlifters who train on cooked food, protein powders, and commercial supplements build muscle during their training period, but once they stop exercising, that muscle collapses within six months. The skin sags, the tissue droops, and the structural integrity dissolves. Aajonus used Arnold Schwarzenegger's visible physical decline in later years, when he was no longer eating raw food and no longer training at elite levels, as a direct example. In photographs taken in a bathing suit in his mid to late fifties, Schwarzenegger's muscles were sagging everywhere. Aajonus, of similar age, described having no sagging anywhere on his body except a small area from rapid weight loss after a leg injury.

The explanation is that protein powders and cooked proteins do not provide the structural amino acid integrity that raw protein provides. What they do contribute, particularly in the case of whey protein powders, is powdered lactic acid. This concentrated lactic acid goes into the muscle tissue and draws minerals to it. The result is a muscle that is enlarged but mineral-laden, hard even at rest, inflexible, and structurally degraded. It looks like a large muscle but functions more like a mineral deposit. It has no resilience, no softness at rest, and no durability without continued training.

Lactic acid is the natural end product of muscular metabolism. During physical activity, especially intense activity, lactic acid accumulates in the muscles and surrounding tissues. When the body is working hard and not clearing this byproduct efficiently, lactic acid combines with minerals, and the minerals pack into the muscle tissue, causing stiffness, soreness, and painful cramping, including charley horses and muscle knots in the calves and feet.

Athletes who drink large quantities of plain water during activity worsen this problem. Water contains no nutrients and, if given to a dehydrated body that is already starving for electrolytes and mineral compounds, triggers cramping that can be severe enough to incapacitate. Feeding water to someone severely dehydrated can cause cramps so intense they become life-threatening.

The correct substance, in Aajonus's framework, is raw whey. Whey contains natural lactic acid, and when this lactic acid enters the muscles, it reacts with the accumulated metabolic lactic acid without triggering further mineralization. It helps dissolve the mineral-lactic acid complexes and move them out of the tissue rather than hardening them further. Whey also carries electrolytes that serve the muscles in the way water cannot.

He described two high school tennis players, Val Mysyk and Walker Kieran, who were ranked as the top U.S. high school tennis champions in 2009, both of whom used this principle in their athletic recovery.

For people who are hard laborers or intense athletes, Aajonus recommended drinking whey in place of water throughout the workday. For people experiencing muscle cramps, dehydration-related cramping, or post-exercise soreness, raw goat or cow whey addresses the lactic acid accumulation directly. He also noted whey is beneficial for women after childbirth, when muscle cramping from exertion and lactic acid buildup is common.

The whey-based sports drink formula he described uses three cups of base liquid, which can be any combination of at least two of the following: cucumber puree, tomato puree, watermelon puree, liquid fresh whey, or milk. The full recipe makes approximately one quart of fluid. He noted that milk can substitute for whey if more energy is the priority rather than lactic acid removal, and that eggs can be added to sustain energy and hydration through prolonged activity.

Fibromyalgia, in Aajonus's framework, is a condition where chemical compounds, specifically uric acid, lactic acid, and mineral crystals, have accumulated within the muscles and joints. These crystals are not inert deposits. They are sharp enough to slice through veins, nerves, and muscle tissue at a microscopic level, causing soreness, bruising, and internal bleeding throughout the affected tissue. The pain and stiffness that characterize fibromyalgia are the direct mechanical result of this cutting action going on continuously in the soft tissue.

He noted that exercise in people with fibromyalgia increases lactic acid production from muscular metabolism at a rate that the body cannot clear, which is why people with fibromyalgia often find that exercise makes them dramatically worse rather than better. The accumulated lactic acid from the effort adds to the existing crystal burden rather than resolving it.

Vinegar was identified as helpful for dissolving these crystalline compounds. Raw whey was also identified as a tool for removing lactic acid accumulation. The distinction from powdered whey is critical: powdered whey contains denatured, concentrated lactic acid that adds to the mineral-crystal problem rather than resolving it, while fresh raw liquid whey assists in clearing the accumulation.

He gave a case study of a man who was 56 or 58 years old when he came to see Aajonus, thin all his life at approximately 130 pounds at six feet tall, always wanting to be a bodybuilder but unable to exercise because any exertion produced severe fibromyalgic response from the lactic acid buildup. After two years on the Primal Diet, he gained approximately 20 pounds, bringing him to around 150 pounds. He was then able to exercise without the debilitating lactic acid response.

The distinction between a genuinely healthy muscle and a mineral-loaded muscle was something Aajonus demonstrated physically during workshops and consultations. A healthy muscle is soft and pliable when relaxed, firm and responsive when contracted. It is flexible. A mineral-loaded muscle is hard even at rest, giving the appearance of constant tension or development, but this hardness is not strength. It is rigidity from mineral deposits.

Bodybuilders who use protein powders and cooked foods tend toward mineral-loaded muscles. Their muscles feel solid at all times, which is actually a sign of accumulation rather than health. Aajonus's own forearm muscle, soft at rest and firmed on demand after seventeen years without formal exercise, was his physical demonstration of the difference.

He also noted that in people who are severely toxic and deteriorating, the muscles can become so hard that they will not relax at all. In extreme deterioration, the person loses muscle tissue entirely, becoming both rigid and wasted.

For someone actively trying to build muscle on the Primal Diet, Aajonus specified eating large quantities of meat and fat simultaneously. The key metabolic point is that if meat is eaten alone without accompanying fat, the body converts a large portion of the protein into fuel rather than using it for tissue construction. When fat is consumed in large quantity with the meat, the fat serves as the primary fuel and the protein is directed toward building tissue.

His specific protocol for muscle building involved eating up to two cups of raw meat at a time alongside a full lubrication formula. He described a client who came to him at 61 years old after being on the diet for several years, tall and lean, who wanted to understand muscle building. The approach was to eat the meat and fat together in larger quantities so the fat handled the energy demands while the protein went to construction.

He stated that for general maintenance, one pound of raw meat per day is the baseline, with meat consumed in portions of half a cup to two cups at a time depending on body size, digestive capacity, and goal. He suggested eating meat after fresh juice, then cheese, then an egg, then the meat meal. For bodybuilding, the meal is two cups of meat with a full lubrication formula.

For people who want more muscle tissue and are naturally high-activity individuals, he recommended combining eggs with red meat, or eating some fish or poultry alongside the red meat meal, to support tissue regeneration.

Aajonus made clear that fat distributed within muscle tissue is a sign of strength and health, not excess. He described how sirloin, his preferred cut of beef, has fat more evenly distributed throughout the muscle tissue in a way similar to the distribution found in poultry, where fat circulates evenly through all the tissues. Rib eye has distinct fat striations. The fat permeated throughout the muscle fibers is what he described as being present in the blood and tissue, fueling cellular activity rather than sitting as a separate depot.

He noted that the fat in the muscles of wrestlers and weightlifters, 24 to 35 percent by volume, is not cosmetic. It is functional. It lubricates joints under extreme loading, cushions impacts, provides the sustained energy that allows for the prolonged exertion of performance, and prevents bruising by buffering the impact forces that travel through the body during contact sports. Without that fat, the same falls and blows that wrestlers absorb with relative ease would cause significant injury.

The adrenal glands, which sit above the kidneys, contribute to muscular energy by producing the hormones that drive physical exertion, including adrenaline and the other physically motivating hormones. In emergency situations, adrenal output can produce strength two to three times beyond the person's normal capacity, as in cases where someone lifts a car to free a trapped person. However, this emergency output comes at a cost. The end product of burning that much adrenaline is something resembling a severe flu state, with extensive tissue damage and toxin release that requires increased protein intake for recovery. Aajonus specifically recommended fish as the protein of choice immediately following trauma or emotional crisis, because of the high rate of tissue damage that occurs during those events.

Under normal conditions, the adrenal glands provide steady physical energy for muscle function. If the body is depleted, damaged, or fatigued to the point where the adrenals cannot produce sufficient hormone, the body may attempt to convert thyroxine (thyroid hormone) into an adrenal substitute, which is a taxing and inadequate process that signals deeper systemic dysfunction.

Aajonus made the specific claim that singing is the most strenuous exercise available to the human body. Twenty minutes of singing is equivalent in muscular demand to one hour on a treadmill, because singing requires simultaneous fine motor control of the throat muscles, the muscles of the mouth aperture, and the muscles governing breathing, all coordinated to produce specific tones and pitches. This is an extremely complex and demanding muscular coordination that most people do not associate with physical exertion.

He pointed out, consistent with his fat-as-fuel argument, that there are no skinny opera singers. Opera singing demands so much sustained muscular effort and generates so much metabolic activity that fat is absolutely necessary to support it.

The amount of exercise a person actually needs is, in Aajonus's framework, visible in the iris through what he called activity rings. Neurologists call these nerve rings, and some iridologists call them stress rings, but Aajonus reframed them as indicators of physiological energy production driven by testosterone, adrenaline, and other physically motivating hormones. Each ring corresponds to approximately one hour of required physical activity per day. Athletes typically have seven to fourteen rings. People with seven to fourteen rings must be physically active seven to fourteen hours a day or the hormones accumulate and cause stress, emotional volatility, and physiological damage.

Aajonus himself had no activity rings in the body portion of his iris, which meant he required no physical exercise. His muscular development was maintained entirely through diet. Someone with fourteen activity rings who is sedentary is in a very different situation, and their muscles are both demanding exercise and being stressed by hormonal accumulation in the absence of it.

Muscles do not operate in isolation. Tendons attach muscles to bones, allowing force generated by the muscle fibers to translate into bone movement. Ligaments hold bones together at joints. Connective tissue, which is substantially collagen, holds the different layers together: muscle to skin, muscle to bone, and the various tissue layers to each other and to the fluid systems. Cartilage buffers the impact at joints during movement, acting as a flexible cushion that is neither brittle nor swollen.

Collagen is not replaceable when lost, which is why cooking food is so damaging in Aajonus's framework. Cooking destroys collagen, and the body cannot reconstruct it from denatured materials. Elderly people with sagging, wrinkled skin have lost collagen. Raw food preserves and supplies the collagen matrix that keeps connective tissue functional and keeps the muscular system integrated.