Paleo Diet Blog

A typical paleo meal could include grilled chicken with a salt-free herb dry rub, grilled fennel brushed with olive oil and grilled halibut.

From The Press of Atlantic City:

Our Stone Age ancestors lived in an uncomfortable world, spending their 30-year life spans hunting and gathering without air conditioning or heat.

But some say cave men ate better than we do.

That’s the premise behind the Paleo diet, a health and weight-loss trend that encourages people to eat modern-day versions of Paleolithic food.

Several weeks ago, one group of health-conscious Californians took on the Paleo diet and planned to spend nine weeks eating like cave men. That means consuming only animals, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and mushrooms, said Rick Larson, co-owner of CrossFit West Sacramento, the gym running the challenge.

“A lot of people at our gym were getting good workout results, but I knew they weren’t supporting it with their diets,” Larson said. Because other gyms in the CrossFit family have had success with the Paleo diet, Larson decided to test it at his gym. Fifteen people took the bait.

Like any diet, the hardest thing about the Paleo diet is what you can’t eat.

Out is anything humans began eating after the agriculture and animal husbandry revolutions, meaning no dairy, beans, grains or starches and absolutely nothing processed.

“If you can’t eat it raw, then you shouldn’t consume it,” Larson said. (Although, since our Paleolithic ancestors did have fire, cooking food is permissible.)

Read the rest here.

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From The Globe and Mail:

Six weeks ago, I would have smashed you over the head with a club and dragged you by the hair into a cave if it meant I could eat a chocolate bar. Don’t even ask what I would have done for a bowl of ice cream.

I had been warned that the first two weeks of the Paleo diet would leave me feeling, shall we say, sub-optimal.

“You’re going to feel like shit,” said Dhani Oks, director of programming at Academy of Lions/CrossFit Gyms in Toronto.

He was right.

Two weeks into eating like our Paleolithic ancestors, a diet that the body takes time to adjust to, I was feeling terrible. There were headaches. There was a general feeling of ickiness. There was a lack of energy. There was a G.I. incident it’s best we not talk about.

Read the rest here.

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I have two broad goals for the rest of the year. To be under 220 pounds by July 1st, and to be at 200 pounds or lower by the end of the year. Well, today is July 1st. I woke up this morning, got on the scale, and the magic number was:

218.5

Goal #1 has been accomplished!!! 218.5 represents a loss of 30.5 pounds. Remember, this has been accomplished not by being 100% paleo (though that is certainly a worthy goal), but by sticking to the main outline of the paleo plan. If I can do it, then you can do it. Now go eat some raw meat.

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Caveman

From A Sweet Life:

No one would argue that actually living in conditions similar to a caveman’s would be beneficial for health, since lack of shelter, illness, injuries and predators led to relatively short life spans (approximately 30 years) for early man. What the cavemen ate, however, known today as the Paleolithic diet, was very beneficial for health.  It was, in fact, exactly what the human body was designed to eat.  The Paleolithic diet can provide anyone with a healthful eating plan, and holds special promise for diabetics.  I have type 1 diabetes, and for several years I’ve been experiencing its benefits.

What is the Paleolithic diet?

The Paleolithic diet categorizes food into two groups, in and out.

In foods are foods that humans ate prior to agriculture and animal husbandry (meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, tree nuts, vegetables, roots, fruit, berries, mushrooms, etc).  Out, or Neolithic Era foods, are foods that resulted from agriculture or animal husbandry.

This sweeping cut removes a vast quantity of the foods we eat on a daily basis, most notably grains (including pasta and bread), dairy and refined sugars.

The question you are probably asking is why would someone eat this way?

The answer is multi-fold. Many who eat in this manner extol the virtue of “removing the toxins” from their highly processed diets. Others speak of truly “getting back to their roots” in a way unlike any other. The most fundamental reason to consider eating a Paleolithic diet has to due with evolution.

Early man was limited in his ability to eat many of the items in the aforementioned out list because they are inedible in their raw state. Then a wondrous discovery took place – fire.  And with fire, previously inedible foods became palatable.  Then, about 10,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution took place.  At this juncture, our current grain-based diet came to be.  And with time came the modern staples such as flour, bread, noodles and pasta, but the human body was unprepared for such things.

Read the rest here.

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Colds can be treated with honey.  One tablespoon honey with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon taken daily is said to cure most chronic coughs and clear the sinuses. You can also make up a mixture of honey, whiskey and lemon juice.  If it doesn’t clear your cough, at least you’ll get a nice buzz

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As my half birthday unceremoniously passed on June 6th, I realized the middle of the year is a good time to reflect on what  I have accomplished, reflect on what I haven’t accomplished, and redefine my goals for the rest of the year.

What I have accomplished:

Around November of last year, I was first introduced to the paleo diet. I bought the books, did a bunch of reading, and really tried to gain an understand of what it all meant. I decided that starting in January I would commit full time to the paleo lifestyle. My first weigh in had me tipping the scales at 249 pounds. Not acceptable. However, I did my best to stay 100% committed for as long as I could, and after several months I was down to as low as 222 pounds. Not too shabby! I was, and continue to be, proud of this accomplishment.

What I haven’t accomplished:

Life is stressful. Staying paleo all the time is not easy. When you have no one else to do it with, it is even harder to stay on the path. What I haven’t accomplished, for the last couple months at least, is staying on the 80/20 plan (eating paleo at least 80% of the time). It has been more like 60/40. I’m currently clocking in at 226.5 pounds. I’m still thrilled I’m no longer 249, but one can’t help but think where I would be if I had been at 100% for six solid months.

My goals for the rest of the year:

I have two goals for the rest of 2010, and I think they are achievable .

1. Get under 220 pounds by the end of June.

2. Get to under 200 pounds by the end of the year.

These are both doable, and I can’t wait to share with you when I have reached them.

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If you have been into the paleo scene for any reasonable amount of time, chances are you’ve come across Mark Sisson’s blog. Through his company, Primal Nutrition, Mark has dedicated his expertise and experience to designing supplements, eating plans, and exercises that maximize the paleo life style. His book, The Primal Blueprint, is one of the best selling nutrition books of the last decade. In it, Mark lays out what is fundamentally the paleo diet plan, along with some great tips on exercise and general eating habits. His newest book, The Primal Blueprint Cookbook, includes numerous delicious recipes that will keep you on the primal track.

Mark, a recognized expert in the field of supplement design, has created several products that have received nothing but glowing reviews.These include protein shakes, anti-stress formula, omega-3 formula, and more.   Mark designed all these products from a primal/paleo point of view, and according to the reviews…it shows.

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Here is an interesting article discussing the connection between being paleo, and being a libertarian.

From LewRockwell.com:

As a libertarian who discovered the paleo approach to health a couple of years ago, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find a solid contingent of libertarians in the paleo community. I’ve come to call such people paleo-libertarians (the hyphen distinguishes us from the paleolibertarians). Some of the big names in the paleo movement are principled anti-statists, including Kurt Harris,Richard Nikoley, and Don Matesz. Paleo is rapidly gaining popularity, and there are a growing number of paleo-libertarians.

Paleos Against the State

In fact, the paleo health community is astonishingly libertarian, if only unconsciously so. Of course, there are many statists, but the libertarian presence is disproportionately large. Paleos generally reserve a special hatred for the state. After all, the state and its allies in academia and industry are spreading deadly health advice that is responsible for the bulk of disease and obesity, and it continues to do so in the face of a growing mountain of evidence contradicting it. It should have been obvious from the start that the conventional wisdom was bogus – it totally contradicts evolutionary biology. The conventional recommendation to avoid red meat and animal fat, for example, flies in the face of over 2 million years of evolutionary adaptation to eating animals (the whole animal, including all of the fat). The recommendations to eat grains and vegetable oils are also suspect – grains were only introduced into the human diet about 10,000 years ago, and vegetable oils haven’t even existed for more than a century. The state’s health advice is not only wrong, but directly harmful to health. That makes the state responsible for an unfathomable amount of misery and death. For paleos, this elicits a deep mistrust in the state – how can they trust that the state doesn’t screw up this badly in anything else it does?

Read the rest here.

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A couple weeks ago I got on the scale, looked at the number, and realized I had been slipping. I went from 222 to 229. I recommitted to getting back on track, and I did. This morning I weighed in at 222.5.

Remember, it’s ok if you get side tracked. The key is to acknowledge it and address it. It’s never too late to start over.

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From WBUR.org:

The word “Paleolithic” might evoke images from the 1980s film “Quest for Fire” — or, more recently, the scruffy cavemen in those Geico commercials. But Nate Rosenberg says going back in time to eat like a Neanderthal doesn’t make him one.

“It’s obviously not a reenactment of Paleolithic life,” Rosenberg says.

The 27-year-old foraged through his contemporary kitchen in the cute Somerville apartment he shares with his Paleo partner Michal Naisteter.

“We eat modern foods,” he says. “In the Paleolithic era they did not have ground beef or, you know, dried oregano from Whole Foods and stuff life that, which we benefit from. But we try keep in mind our evolutionary history.”

Added Naisteter: “I eat fish, I eat eggs, I eat vegetables and I eat berries and nuts.”

Naisteter and Rosenberg are part of an international fitness and nutrition movement known as “ancestral health.” The theory is that while the food humans eat has evolved and gone “high-tech” through the ages, our bodies have not. Primal eating is pre-agricultural. “Going Paleo” means no processed foods, no sugar, no whole grains, legumes or dairy. But they eat lots of meat. Naisteter gave me a tour of their fridge.

Read the rest here.

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