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!

Sitting is Killing you!

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, there is one thing nearly all modern North Americans have in common: we sit all the time. Though our great shift towards computer-based work has done great things for productivity, it has, unfortunately, done terrible things for our health. From increased risk of heart disease and obesity in the long term, to sharply hampered cholesterol maintenance in the short term, the negative health effects of sitting are starting to weigh heavily against the benefits. Even the medical field – the greatest advocates of reducing sitting time – is plagued by this new health issue. Though doctors and nurses get plenty of walking time, it usually falls to the secretaries, billers, and coders to do all the sitting. And, as we can see, something has to change NOW.
Via: Medical Billing And Coding

Fast food may damage your brain: study

I was reading through canada.com when I came across this article written by Sharon Kirkey @ Postmedia News.  Old news with a new twist - Another reason to avoid trans fats!  

Researchers have found that there's a part of your body that might actually shrink when you eat too much fast food.

Unfortunately, it's your brain.

People with diets high in trans fats are more likely to experience the kind of brain shrinkage associated with Alzheimer's disease than people who consume less of the artery-damaging fats, the new study suggests.

Those with diets high in vitamins C and E, the B vitamins and vitamin D, meanwhile, appear to have larger brains than people with diets low in these nutrients.

And diets high in omega 3 fatty acids seemed to benefit the small blood vessels of the brain — "and the thinking abilities related to those vessels," said lead investigator Dr. Gene Bowman.

The work — published in the journal Neurology — involved 104 people, ages 65 and older, enrolled in the Oregon Brain Aging Study. All were generally healthy elders, with few smokers or people with diabetes or high blood cholesterol.

When the study was launched in 1989, "the aim was to study the effects of age on dementia risk in people that don't have factors known to increase their risk at the time," Bowman said.

Other researchers have linked diet and dementia. But the usual strategy is to have people fill out questionnaires about the type and frequency of foods they eat — except people sometimes forget. Age can also affect how the body absorbs nutrients.

In the new study, researchers checked blood samples for markers of 30 different nutrients. Participants also did a raft of neuropsychological tests, and 42 had MRI scans of their brains as well. The team was interested in three things: cognitive function, total brain volume and white matter changes thought to be a sign of small vessel disease of the brain.

Small vessel disease, also known as cerebral small vessel disease, is an accumulation of plaque deposits in the small blood vessels throughout the brain. It can lead to stroke.

"We know in Alzheimer's disease that total brain atrophy (or shrinkage) is accelerated compared to people of the same age and same gender that don't have Alzheimer's disease," said Bowman, a naturopathic doctor in the department of neurology at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

Among the key findings:

- The B vitamins, the antioxidants C and E and vitamin D all seemed to be working in concert in some way the researchers can't yet fully explain. But the B-C-E-D pattern was associated with greater total brain volume and better global cognitive function. People who scored low on this vitamin combination turned out to have less total brain tissue;

- People who had high levels of circulating trans fats had less brain volume. They also had poorer memory, attention, language and processing speed skills;

- People with higher levels of omega 3 fatty acids had better executive function — the ability to plan, problem solve, multi-task and perform other functions — as well as fewer white matter lesions on their brain scans.

The findings held after researchers took age, sex, education, hypertension and genetic and other factors into account.

Some trans fats are found naturally, in small amounts, in dairy products, beef and lamb, but the trans fats in the study are hidden in cakes, flaky pastries, potato chips and other fried, frozen and processed food.

Trans fatty acids increase inflammation, make arteries harder and decrease heart rhythm, increasing the risk of cardiac arrest.

But only a handful of studies have looked at the relationship between trans fats and brain function, Bowman said. "I think our study is one of the first to look at blood levels of trans fats related to brain health."

He said the term "brain shrinkage" is a bit of a misnomer, because the researchers didn't look at rates of change over time. And the study doesn't prove cause-and-effect, just an association.

But evidence suggests that trans fats can replace good fats in cell membranes, "and when that occurs it changes the structure and chemical properties of the cell in an unfavourable way," Bowman said.

"Trans fats are known to be bad for cardiovascular health," he said. "It makes sense that they're probably bad for the brain, too."

He recommended avoiding processed foods that list "partially hydrogenated oils" on the ingredient list. "That's trans fat," Bowman said.

I'm not sure about you, but these sure look a lot less appealing to me now (more so that before - which was low to begin with).

...Not Yummy!

Passion Equals Success!!!

Steve Jobs (may his soul rest in peace) explains the rules of success - I believe it!

Harvard Declares Dairy NOT Part of Healthy Diet

Yesterday, I posted the new Healthy Eating Plate.  After reading the diagram, a friend pointed out the near absence of milk.  Here is an article from the Harvard School of Public Health addressing that issue. 

The Harvard School of Public Health sent a strong message to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and nutrition experts everywhere with the recent release of its “Healthy Eating Plate” food guide.  The university was responding to the USDA’s new MyPlate guide for healthy eating, which replaced the outdated and misguided food pyramid.

Harvard’s nutrition experts did not pull punches, declaring that the university’s food guide was based on sound nutrition research and more importantly, not influenced by food industry lobbyists.  The greatest evidence of its research focus is the absence of dairy products from the “Healthy Eating Plate” based on Harvard’s assessment that “…high intake can increase the risk of prostate cancer and possibly ovarian cancer.”  The Harvard experts also referred to the high levels of saturated fat in most dairy products and suggested that collards, bok choy, fortified soy milk, and baked beans are safer choices than dairy for obtaining calcium, as are high quality supplements.

Kudos to Harvard for promoting greater consumption of vegetables and fruits, as well as healthier protein options such as fish, beans or nuts.  And kudos to Harvard for ignoring the lobbyists and showing the USDA what healthy eating is all about. 

This Just In: The New Healthy Eating Plate

I just got this diagram sent to me - The new Healthy Eating Plate!  It was created by Harvard Health Publications and nutrition experts at the Harvard School of Public Health. Too me, it offers more specific and more accurate recommendations for following a healthy diet than the Canada Food Guide or MyPlate. In addition, the Healthy Eating Plate is based on the most up-to-date nutrition research, and most importantly, it is not influenced by the food industry or agriculture policy.  Bon Appetit! 

Motivational Quote:

You learn so much more by losing, than you ever will by winning... don't fear losing, embrace it and allow yourself to grow.


-Kevin Chang