How to make Paleo work for you: Part One

For the last week I've been reading and hear about the difficulties of staying on the paleo diet - i'm always hungry, i'm craving bread, etc.  Remember in today's world, it is not essential that you follow a diet to the "T", this will only lead to a "yo-yo" effect (lose the weight, put the weight back on).  Instead, make some adjustments to the diet in your favour so that it is more sustainable for your lifestyle, it is okay to include items such as dairy or grain (in small amounts) as long as you feel no negative effects.  By tailoring the diet, you will feel a sense of control again with what you are eating.


Few tips provided by Jordan @ Strength Beyond Strength


1. You can strip the rules down to 'Eliminate Grains'. Having had people plug dairy and legumes back into their diet with no noticeable difference I think that so long as you know you don't have an issue with those two items, you're fine. I know that I do, so they stay out.

2. Observe cultural traditions. Trying to force your clients of Asian or East Indian descent to give up rice most likely will not work. There is a deep rooted cultural epicurean tradition there that will not be denied. Particularly as I haven't seen much negative effect from leaving rice in, no reason to make something already difficult emotionally harder.

3. Watch out for substitutions. This bit a bunch of people in the early days. They would knock down the sugar intake and then start eating a pound of fruit a day, replacing one sugar habit with another. Same with with nuts. Eating a quarter pound of almonds a day will not work out well for most people. Many seem to love throwing out phrases like "The more fat I eat the leaner I get!" Yeah, to a degree. Be reasonable. It's useful to be able to recognize catch phrases for what they are.

4. Don't s**t can something that is working. I've noticed a trend of people coming up with excuses to bag Paleo, not because it is not working, but because their will finally broke and they want some damn bread! This is a big one for me, because starting Paleo actually allowed me to not need to be on 3-5 medications for 'unexplained' allergic reactions that ended up being all wheat, sugar, and dairy based. Now if I slide off it hits me like a hammer.

5. It will hit you harder if you lapse. This is common for people who have GI issues or allergic reactions to grains, dairy, or legumes. After you have cleared our your system via Paleo for a while you will be waaaay less tolerant to those things. I had an incident where I had been pretty strict for a few months and then had two beers one night. This caused an inflammatory reaction in my right foot that basically crippled me for the night. No joke. So if you experience something like this it doesn't mean 'Paleo is bad' (see number 4) it means that you're running a lot cleaner now and have less tolerance for poison. We should all have such a horrible problem.

Everyday Fact of Life:

"To maintain a healthy diet, you MUST DO SOME PREPARATION so you won't make a poor choice in a rush. Your ancestors did not have fast food!"
                                                                       
                                                                      - Steve McMinn

Eat Like A Caveman To Lose Weight - True Story!

Everyone seems to asks me - What is your diet like?  My response is "the closes thing to it would be the paleo "caveman" diet."  I often follow it up with a few reasons why and why I add a few extras to it (to accommodate my active lifestyle better).  Though new to the general public, news of this diet have now traveled to most people.  Unfortunately for most, there is not much literature to back this diet up.  So much so, when my new doctor ask me about my diet, after explaining it to her, she requested that I eat more grains and drink more dairy.  NEVER!


Here is a useful article that I found Written by Rupert Shepherd that address the diet (and its benefits) quite well.  Enjoy!  


Researchers from UCSF say that their research has shown people on a diet of high protein and plenty of vegetables show dramatic health improvements, including weight loss without exercising profusely and lower blood pressure. In short it's the diet of our caveman ancestors thousands of years ago who were what is termed "Hunter Gathers".

Dr. Tim White a paleobiologist from University of California Berkley says : 

"Our Biology is still basically the same biology that we had as hunters and gathers 100,000 years ago in Africa."

Dr. White says that the constant physical activity that cavemen had to undertake to hunt and find food, not to mention cutting up animals or pounding grains or root vegetables to make the edible, using only very basic tools, kept them fit, lean, muscular and active. Their diet consisted of large amounts of lean meat, and basic vegetables. Fruits would have been highly seasonable and salt, pure sugar, and large amounts of carbohydrates in their diets pretty much impossible.

The problem today is that we just consume whatever and whenever we want, and generally speaking the food is heavily processed and high in sugar and salt compared to anything natural our ancestors would have eaten.

Dr. White continues :

"We don't have to pound it, we don't have to cut it, we don't have to break into the bones, we just consume it and there is very little energy that goes into that consumption ... and we are paying an enormous health cost for that."

Dr. White didn't want to confirm that obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, andcancer are directly caused by poor diet, his area of specialty is not concerned with the present day. However, researchers at University of California San Francisco tested out the diet on volunteers. 

Dr. Linda Frasetto, MD. and her team selected people who were unhealthy in one way or another. They were given a specific diet of lean meat, fish, fresh fruits and vegetables. The diet includes only healthy fats, such as those in nuts and seeds, as a caveman faced with an entire carcass and no refrigerator would have been likely to go only for the best cuts in as much quantity as he could physically eat before the meat went rotten or attracted scavengers or predators.

Frasettoconfirmed the results : 

"Everyone's blood pressure went down. In two weeks everybody's cholesterol and triglycerides got better and the average drop was 30 points ... That's the kind of drop you get by taking Statins for six months. "

Robert Lustig, MD. an endocrinologist at UCSF, said that people on the diet have experienced a regression of their diabetes as a result, to the point they are effectively cured.

Dr. Kim Mulvihill, a reporter from CBS tried the diet herself and doctors recommended she should stay on the diet permanently. Her cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels dropped dramatically over a few weeks. After seven weeks she was no longer pre-diabetic, and by combining the so called paleo diet with a weight loss program she lost thirty pounds.

Robert Lustig, MD. says : 

"The bottom line is we are killing ourselves ... We have 66 million obese adults and 20 million obese kids in this country ... They are not all going to go on the Paleolithic diet."

He says the solution is not to be extreme, rather to get back to basics, effectively run our bodies on the correct fuel they were designed to burn : 

"Low Sugar, High fibre and you've got it nailed. That's something you can do and its called ... Eat ... Real ... Food."

The one thing you can't really do is to be on the paleo diet and vegetarian, because so much of the diet comes from meat and fish.

Lets not lets this happen anymore - only you have the power to change it!