From Phillyburbs.com:

Sunday morning, when the hubby and I were lying in bed, happily contemplating how we just scored a bonus point apiece in our Wrightstown Health & Fitness Paleo Challenge — for adequate sleep; what did you think I meant? — an infomercial came on TV.

Shocking, right? No, and neither is the fact it was for a weight loss program. What’s interesting is, this program, called “Food Lovers” because Infomercial Rule No. 1 is you have to sound stupid and gimmicky, is very similar to the Zone diet we’re doing right now.

Meaning, it’s based on keeping a certain ratio of carbohydrate to protein to fat in your meals. Zone mandates that 40 percent of calories should come from carbs, 30 percent from protein and 30 from fat, which ostensibly will keep your body “in the zone,” or, at its fat-burning, energy-producing and athletic-performing best.

At WHF, we added Paleo to the mix, meaning the food we eat in those 40-30-30 Zone proportions is the kind that sustained our hunter-gatherer ancestors. That would be meat, veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, water and tequila. (My ancestors were lushes. I looked it up.)

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Paleo Diet For Beginners

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Unleash your primal energy through an all-natural prehistoric diet.

About 18 years ago, I started competing in fitness figure competitions and needed to lower my body fat. I had about 22 per cent body fat and needed to reach 16 per cent.

My trainer told me to cut out grains and starches, including bread, pasta and rice, as well as refined sugars. My eating plan consisted of fish, chicken and other meat, eggs, salad, vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds. This was my first experience of the Palaeolithic or ”caveman” diet, which is based on the premise ”if the cavemen didn’t eat it, you shouldn’t, either”.

After overdosing on protein at first, I focused on a plant-based fresh-vegetable diet that included 65 grams of animal-based protein a day. I felt strong and full of energy, and never hungry. I leaned up ready for my competition and placed second. Since then, I’ve based the way I eat (and cook) on the paleo lifestyle.

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From the New York Daily News:

Could Paleolithic man hold the key to today’s nutrition problems?

A growing number of adherents to the so-called “caveman” diet contend that a return to the hunter-gatherer foods of the Stone Age — heavy on meats, devoid of most grains — could alleviate problems like obesity, type 2 diabetes and many coronary problems.

The Paleo diet movement is backed by some academics and fitness gurus and has gained some praise in medical research in the US and elsewhere even though it goes against recommendations of most mainstream nutritionists and government guidelines.

Loren Cordain, a professor of health and exercise science at Colorado State University, said he believes millions in the United States and elsewhere are following the Paleo diet movement, based on sales of books such as his own and Internet trends.

“It was an obscure idea 10 years ago and in the last two to three years it has become known worldwide,” Cordain, one the leading academics backing the Paleo diet, told AFP.

“There are at least a half-dozen books on the best seller list that are promoting this,” he added.

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From BlogCritics.org:

As a former fatso, almost all of the meals I ate came from a restaurant.  It didn’t matter if the restaurant was fast food or fine dining, I probably ate there.  There is no doubt that eating like this was a major contributor to my weight gain.  During week four of my Paleo Diet experiment, I had family stay with me and we were going to be making plenty of day trips.  This meant that I would be eating most of my meals in restaurants.  I was very concerned that I was going to have trouble following Paleo Diet principles.

Through the first three weeks of my experiment, I was able to be Paleo Diet compliant by spending one hour each week menu planning for lunch and dinner.  Unfortunately, family being family, I wasn’t able to plan any activities let alone a menu until my guests arrived.  I felt that I was setting myself up for failure.  Having to eat several restaurant meals was going to make it hard enough to follow Paleo principles.  The lack of menu planning was going to make it that much harder.

Once I accepted my fate that I had limited control over where I was going to eat, I decided that I would control what I ate.  I would simply put the Paleo principles into action when ordering and all would be good.  In reality, this was a little tougher than I thought.

Read more: http://blogcritics.org/tastes/article/my-paleo-diet-experience-fighting-the/#ixzz1UYEArIPk

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Paleo grilling

Agree or disagree?

From the Chicago Tribune:

Would adopting the diet our caveman ancestors supposedly ate allow modern-day Americans live longer, healthier lives?

Proponents of the Paleo diet (for Paleolithic) say that meals packed with fresh fruits and vegetables and heavy doses of lean (preferably wild) meat, fish and seafood will “swiftly improve your disease symptoms” if you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

Not allowed are dairy, grains and legumes (beans, peas and lentils) because these were a late entry to the human palate, appearing about 12,000 years ago, and aren’t foods to which we’re “genetically adapted.”

While the diet has fans — the recently released “Paleo Diet Cookbook” is fourth in a series of books written or co-written by Dr. Loren Cordain, a Colorado State University professor — dietitians argue that eliminating entire food groups is a mistake.

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From ABC News:

By JOHN BERMAN and SARAH HODD

March 2, 2011

You don’t have to carry a club or wear a bearskin to live like a caveman. To keep fit, a number of people have adopted the “Paleo” lifestyle — eating and exercising like our ancestors from the Paleolithic era.

Art De Vany, 73, is often called the “grandfather” of the Paleo movement. For De Vany, a workout includes pulling his Range Rover in his driveway.

He compared it to “hauling heavy bison out of a pit.”

“If you think about it, you’re using every single muscle in your body. You’re not going to hurt yourself by overdoing repetitions,” he said. “It’s easy for me.”

De Vany, the author of “The New Evolution Diet,” also eats like a caveman by consuming meat, seafood, vegetables and fruit, but no grains or processed food. He adopted the caveman or Paleo diet some 30 years ago in an effort to improve the health of his family.

The human species during the Paleolithic age, he said, “was probably the epitome of the expression of the human genotype. (They had) large, powerful brains — they gave us all that we have in our world.”

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From The Baltimore Sun:

In remote caves in Europe and Asia, drawings depict ancient battles, cavemen hunting beasts long disappeared from the earth. Anthropologists for years have studied these pictures and the lives of our hairy, thick-skulled ancestors.

But now another group, fitness buffs, is paying closer attention to the caveman. Why?

He wasn’t fat.

What was his secret? Why are 100 million Americans overweight today when the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons who preceded us were so lean and ripped? They looked like, as Snooki would say, “gorilla juiceheads.”

The devotees of the Paleo Diet believe it’s the way they ate.

“The essential principle is we spent 19 million years evolving to eat a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and 10,000 years ago we had the agricultural revolution,” says Lurene Grenier, 28, of Severna Park, who has been eating the Paleo diet for two years. “The upside of that revolution is it helped build up society. The downside is it made us very sick.”

Thus, the Paleo diet is an attempt for humans to “eat the way we did before the agricultural revolution,” says Grenier, who works as a security researcher and trains clients at a Glen Burnie gym, Crossfit BWI.

That means no grains, no dairy and, above all, no sugar. Or, in other words: no Joe Squared pizza, Starbucks’ macchiatos or Sugarbakers’ red velvet cake.

“It’s basically the opposite of the government’s food pyramid,” Grenier says.

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From The Epoch Times:

For many of us, this time of year brings with it generally greater opportunity to eat more than is necessary. While I do not particularly believe in sacrifice or deprivation, I do think it’s useful to be aware of strategies that can be used to prevent over-consumption of food and drink with ease and, importantly, without hunger.

One approach that tends to reap dividends is focusing on eating a diet that sates the appetite most effectively.

For a given number of calories, not all types of food sate the appetite to the same extent. While many factors can play a part, two factors that are particularly important are the protein content of food and its glycemic index (the speed and extent to which it disrupts blood sugar levels).

Generally speaking, protein is the most sating element of the diet, and lower GI foods are more sating than those of higher GI.

One type of diet that fulfills these criteria is a Paleolithic or primal diet, essentially a hunter-gatherer diet based on foods eaten prior to the introduction of relatively novel foods, including grains and dairy products. Such a diet would include meat, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables.

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I’ve read about this guy a few times over the years. There was a great story about him a year or so ago in Men’s Health. Pretty amazing guy. Notably, he is all about the paleo diet!

From Scotsman.com:

Erwan Le Corre is a trailblazer in the world of fitness, but he doesn’t hold with strict routine, or mindless repetition. His way is based on taking people back to nature. Claire Smith tracked him down

• Erwan Le Corre has adapted his urban techniques to the great outdoors, and has devised a training system which encourages exercise in natural environments Picture:Jayne Emsley

HE HAS been called “one of the fittest men on the planet” – but you won’t find him pumping iron or running on a treadmill in a conventional gym.

Frenchman Erwan Le Corre would rather be swinging on a branch, hurling a boulder or running barefoot through a forest than working out in a room full of ste-of-the-art machines and high-energy disco music.

The 39-year-old is the inventor of MovNat, a new kind of workout – which uses natural movements and natural environments to help its followers gain maximum fitness and flexibility.

Le Corre, who recently lectured to Nasa scientists, and gave his first workshop in Scotland this week, says he wants people who use his method to feel “liberated and invigorated”.

“Looking fit and being fit is a totally different business. Looking fit is all about being a mirror athlete.”

“I tell people what I am going to teach is not how to run and jump but more efficient ways to run and jump.

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From TheSunTimes.com:

There’s a buzz in some scientific circles that say we should eat like a caveman.  This of course means – when it is all said and done – we should eat how man in earlier times ate.  
What did early mankind eat?
Scientific research shows that Cavemen, or hunters and gatherers ate a lot healthier than most Americans today
What Did They Eat?
These people ate primarily vegetables, fruit, nuts, roots and later, meat was added to their diet.
Today, these healthy staples have been almost entirely replaced with refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and cereal, breads, including all types of refined grains, potatoes and pasteurized milk products… which do nothing for our health at all.  In fact just look at all the health issues we have today.
Dr. Loren Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet and considered to be one of the world’s leading experts on Paleolithic nutrition, took a look at what they ate, and decided that they had very good nutrition.  Today we have a tremendous lack in good nutrition, even though we have an abundance of food in, fast food, TV dinners, take out, and processed foods.
Although abundant, that type of food is not creating good health for us.

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