Paleo Diet

Posts: 34
5/14/13 12:30 P

Actually, if you read Wheat Belly you will learn that we are not eating the "grains we've been eating for over 10,000 years." In order to make wheat more hearty, drought, weed, pest-resistant, it's been modified so that it is very different from what our ancestors ate. In his book, Dr. Davis says that "the amber waves of grain" that we picture is no more, and that wheat has migrated to a dwarf variety that is addictive and not very good for our bodies.

I follow a mostly primal diet - not necessarily because I think I need to eat like a caveman or that I believe our bodies haven't evolved. I just think I can do better for myself by eating whole fruits, veggies, and meats than by eating a bunch of processed, manufactured foods that come in 100-calorie snack packs.

Editing my post to add that I agree with the PP about all of the coconut flour, etc. I am not replacing wheat/grains with any other processed fake foods. I'm just sticking to the perimeter of the supermarket - fruits, veggies, meat, dairy. Nothing (well almost nothing) in boxes, bags, bottles, packets, etc. I feel great, and I'm losing weight at a reasonable pace. Works for me. I don't think there's any special nutrient I'm missing out on by eliminating wheat.

Edited by: TRINCHICK at: 5/14/2013 (13:17)

Pounds lost: 14.0

0 8.5 17 25.5

34

SparkPoints: (22,332)
Fitness Minutes: (4,582)
Posts: 964
5/14/13 12:11 P

My biggest issue with the paleo diet is that I think they are very misguided with grains. Yes, a lot of grains are bad, but not all of them. The ancient Romans regularly lived into their 80's eating little more than bread and oil! Furthermore, are you seriously trying to convince me that cavemen had coconut flour? I'm as northern European as you can get. I'm pretty sure I did not evolve eating coconut, let alone coconut flour.

I think it's a good idea in principle, but I prefer my clean eating to include the grains we've been eating for over 10,000 years.

May Minutes: 621

0 250 500 750

1000

SparkPoints: (1,694)
Fitness Minutes: (0)
Posts: 455
5/14/13 11:34 A

I think the Paleo diet is misguided - it is not accurate as to the foods and preponderence of meat in the diet of pre-historic humans. It takes its' cues from the last ice-age which was a time when arable land (for lack of a better term) was greatly reduced, therefore vegetation was less available, however game was more plentiful as it became concentrated in the ice-free regions, which made it much easier for early man to be successful at hunting. Prior to this event it is well documented that primitive man was a poor hunter. His slowness of foot and lack of weapons and skill, meant he had to subsist mainly on gathering. And when you look at the diet of our closest genetic cousins (who share 99% of our DNA) a chimpanzee's diet is in excess of 90% vegetation, mainly fruits.

Edited by: GDBEAR65 at: 5/14/2013 (12:06)

Posts: 213
5/14/13 11:15 A

I don't think taking carbs out of your diet is the way to go. White, refined carbs, yes, but we need carbs to keep our metabolism going. Fruits, veggies and lean proteins are great for you in any amount.

Moderation is the key. I believe that. I just wish i could get in that mind set. Eventually it will happen.

Atkins, Paleo, just like all the "latest diet pills" are not things you can sustain for a lifetime.

current weight: 221.3

231 209.5 188 166.5

145

Posts: 111
5/12/13 1:39 P

I have to agree with the folks here who have observed that everyone is different. I found that Paleo works for me IN MODERATION, because I am intolerant of many foods, including most grains including corn and wheat, dairy from cows while goat dairy is ok, and sugars/sweeteners. I eat organic as much as it is practical, and definitely in the foods that have been raised with a lot of pesticides and herbicides.

In our country at this time, it is difficult to "eat clean" because there are so few "clean" foods left. Many are genetically modified, and their chemicals are consumed by the population. Animals that eat corn and other GMO foods are passing those chemicals on to us. So, in my opinion, it's safer to eat grass fed beef (and costlier) because that is their natural diet and I don't have to remember the odors of the humongous feed lots in Texas and Oklahoma (pe-euw!) Or organic/pasture raised poultry and eggs from chickens that never got antibiotics because they are overcrowded into teeny-tiny cages. Besides, they taste better.

Until the general population insists on "clean foods" we will continue to be flooded with processed, inferior food filled with carcinogens and chemicals. But I guess, if that's what folks want, the money maker at the corporations will be more than happy to provide.

Pounds lost: 78.0

0 29.25 58.5 87.75

117

Posts: 236
10/19/12 8:31 P

(Just as an aside: NEED2MOVE2, I truly wish I could moderate pistachios and pine nuts. I loved them, but they decided not to love me back...)

There is the possibility that some other food items have a more subliminal, but none-the-less not-greatly-beneficiary effect on those who consume them, than the above two substances now have on me. Perhaps... moderation must be moderated?

Pounds lost: 9.0

0 5 10 15

20

Posts: 1,112
10/19/12 7:31 P

I agree everyone needs to find what works for them. I like everything in moderation. Best of luck everyone!

current weight: 187.0

190 180 170 160

150

Posts: 236
10/19/12 7:12 P

Hmm. Some people DO have to cut out entire food groups. Some are less sensitized or whatever.

The food groups we (as individuals) have to cut out may differ. I have to cut out the "nut" food group. The gluten food group for me also appears to be a bad idea. Others, who never got the lactose-tolerance gene, have a whole nother food group to subtract out.

Some of these culinary restrictions are more apparent in some people than in others. I am certainly on board with cutting out the "processed-food-group", and the "overly-sweetened" food group. I'm certainly on-board with the paleo-primal real food concepts, but I see no problem (except in the excess carbs if taken to extremes) with legumes or healthy forms of dairy. From what I see, eating a good paleo-primal diet is essentially mostly veggies with meat as a supplement for healthy fats. And opposed to the vast aisles of highly processed foods, which, frankly, my great grandparents never glimpsed.

Yes, paleolithic people had a wide variety of geographic and climatic backgrounds they came from, and there was NO cookie cutter recipe. But for those who rightfully remark how hard it was for Paleo Hunter to knock down a huge beast every day -- I sincerely doubt they did this every day or even, necessarily, every month. There were a lot smaller, less glamorous, animal foodstuffs they feasted upon. Not discounting fish, either. I do think vegetable matter was by and large (depending on where located) the prime source of sustinance, but animal foods were still quite frequent. Mastodons might be once a year, but meadow moles? (We get a little finicky in our food tastes in recent generations, but unfortunately NOT finicky enough about PopTarts and other sugar-laden ilk.)

Just thinking.

Edited by: ARTEMISTHEGREEK at: 10/19/2012 (19:16)

Pounds lost: 9.0

0 5 10 15

20

Posts: 1,722
10/19/12 6:11 P

Fascinating posts, PRIM8PHD!

Paleo has its merits, but yeah, it draws some conclusions on science that is misinterpreted, or shaky at best. I just got the Practical Paleo book because I'm cutting down on grains and dairy, though there's nothing that I totally eliminate from my diet. Anyway, the book only has one short passage on why legumes are "bad" and it associates dried beans with processed foods. HUH? I can plant a bean in my back yard, and come back in the fall and get dried beans out of the pods and cook them up for dinner. That's a lot less processed than the almond flour and coconut oil that is used so abundantly throughout the book. I haven't found any other support in the book for eliminating legumes from my diet.

Like another poster said, take what you can use and discard the rest. I feel better when I limit my grain and dairy intake. Most of my carbs come from legumes, fruits, veggies and sweet potatoes.

I don't think we should be eating packaged foods no matter what sort of diet we're following, so in that respect, I don't think paleo is any less realistic than anything else. If there are "poison" foods it's the really processed, packaged foods that have come on the market in recent decades, not traditional foods like beans or cheese.

3 Days until:  High Desert Half Marathon

50 37 25 12

0

Posts: 32
10/19/12 4:10 P

I feel like all you need to do is count calories..theres no need to EVER go extreme and cut foods you love out of your normal "diet". By "going Primal" or following the "paleo" diet you will certainly have to make a HUGE cahnge...and IM sure your body will really be feeling it.

Pounds lost: 39.0

0 12.5 25 37.5

50

Posts: 33,302
10/19/12 3:13 P

Saying "you eat primal? that's dumb" would be "rarely helpful", yes.

However, saying "but cutting out whole groups of food based on a creative interpretation of evolutionary history is just dumb" is scientific and sound.

If you're going to do something like cut out whole food groups, then have a good reason. Eg, "I can't eat just one toast or just one cookie so I'm not eating any" is fine. "I don't eat bread because science proves bread makes you fat" is "dumb".

When people make decisions based on unsound reasoning, that needs to be called out.

SparkPoints: (3,796)
Fitness Minutes: (1,987)
Posts: 60
10/19/12 12:47 P

I tried it for a while and felt great. Didn't lose much weight and it's a very difficult diet to keep up as you can't eat most packaged stuff and I had a really tough time with snacks. Meals weren't that hard. Nuts were just too many calories for me and no dairy allowed so there goes that.

I gave up on it as it might have been a good diet but was just too hard to do. Now I just try to eat healthier in general and it's much less stressful than worrying about what our ancestors allegedly ate.

current weight: 189.5

204 186.75 169.5 152.25

135

SparkPoints: (4,921)
Fitness Minutes: (4,040)
Posts: 74
10/19/12 10:56 A

Underinformed people's choices aren't dumb. Exploitation of scientific data definitely is. Fad diets absolutely are.

Avoiding high GI foods actually is based in sound scientific data, so of course eating highly processed grains and sugars is going to have an effect on hunger levels, so avoiding them is definitely a good idea. Cutting out whole plant-based food groups isn't.

Pounds lost: 20.0

0 11.5 23 34.5

46

SparkPoints: (8,951)
Fitness Minutes: (22,499)
Posts: 518
10/19/12 6:20 A

Any diet that puts a huge emphasis on eating lots of vegetables and fruit is good in my book.

I personally do much better with very limited grains in my diet. I eat more of a Primal diet though.

Posts: 564
10/19/12 6:20 A

I'm trying to eat primal for a variety of reasons. I don't think grains or lentils or beans are poison. I'll eat them in small amounts. The same for tubers. But bread and sugar are, for me, very very bad. I can't eat just one cookie, or one piece of toast. So I'm not eating any. The paleo/primal diets I've seen don't say no fruit, so I'm not sure where that's coming from. I am trying to limit fruit because I am trying to break the sweets addiction.

I will say that being judgmental and calling people's choices "dumb" is rarely helpful.

current weight: 205.0

212 192.5 173 153.5

134

SparkPoints: (3,114)
Fitness Minutes: (5,730)
Posts: 643
10/19/12 2:57 A

My response to the original post question: I watch what works, educate myself on it, and implement changes based on that acquired knowledge. I believe what I see.
I think it is important to remember that we are all individual. It is a large collection of factors that determines one's health and thus what way of eating will best fuel them.

current weight: 99.0

110 107.25 104.5 101.75

99

SparkPoints: (11,084)
Fitness Minutes: (7,214)
Posts: 330
10/19/12 1:24 A

I do find it funny that many of the eating styles that I have recently read about conclude that if one thing is really good for you then that must be the only thing you should eat. Like the raw diets, yeah eating a lot of raw food is good for you but in order to survive humans have always found ways to cook or preserve food to survive. I believe that the ancient people ate meat in moderation because it can be very challenging to get a kill daily. Can you imagine going out with a spear and taking down a large animal? It is not that easy. I also think that the ancients just didn't feast when food was available because they might not have food tomorrow. I think they moved to areas where vegetation was available and knew when to move on. There may have been times when food was scarce and then they may have feasted when they could get some. Also, if you ever have been truly hungry, then all of a sudden things like insects become very palatable. I also find it very funny that some of the authors of the Paleo diet look at a lentil as some sort of poison. I have taken what makes sense of these diets and incorporated into my own version of eating healthy. Basically I eat whole foods and lots of variety.

Pounds lost: 13.0

0 6.75 13.5 20.25

27

Posts: 177
10/19/12 12:49 A

I have a friend who swears by Paleo, but she's constantly super stressed about not eating any sugar, grains, or fruit, and any weight lost is immediately gained back when she's off of the program.

It seems to me like Paleo is the Atkins diet of the whole foods movement. We're omnivores, so take advantage. Plus bread is delicious, and someone can pry the baguette out of my cold dead fingers.

current weight: 164.0

230 212.5 195 177.5

160

SparkPoints: (4,921)
Fitness Minutes: (4,040)
Posts: 74
10/19/12 12:32 A

Oh, also, pet peeve #2 of the paleo diet is the assumption that our bodies have stopped evolving in response to changes in diet. NOT true, not by a long shot. Case in point: lactase persistence, which allows us to consume lactose-containing dairy products, has evolved independently in at least 3 geographic loci, and all within the last 10-20,000 years. That is crazy recent, but still, bodies can do that. Alcohol metabolism is another good example here. Incredible dietary breadth is a perfect example of primate traits scaled up into uniquely human adaptations, so I don't know why we're selling ourselves short here.

Of course, there are huge problems with processing our foods into what they've become--the ratio of sodium consumption relative to potassium being among them--but cutting out whole groups of food based on a creative interpretation of evolutionary history is just dumb. Ultimately, I've always liked the suggestions, 'don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food', and keep it largely plant-based, with lean proteins, whole grains, dairy and alcohol in moderation--you really can't go wrong there.

Pounds lost: 20.0

0 11.5 23 34.5

46

SparkPoints: (4,921)
Fitness Minutes: (4,040)
Posts: 74
10/19/12 12:09 A

I'm an evolutionary biologist and an anthropologist, and after spending a short time living with the Hadza in Tanzania, I'm consistently amused by just how wrong people get it. The biggest problem comes from people mistaking the hunter-gatherer diet as being excessively high in meat. The "man the hunter" paradigm championed early on is largely at fault, but guess what? Careful examination of the ethnographic record shows that actual hunter-gatherers (e.g., the !Kung, the Hadza, Mbuti) subsist on a diet that is largely plant-based, with some 67% of caloric intake coming from what is gathered, NOT hunted. Also, they eat honey, legumes, and grass seeds, and dig tubers that are very high in starches and natural sugars--things that would be taboo in most iterations of the "paleo" diet. Only a small (though significant) proportion of the diet is animal-based; even in the Kalahari they know better than to eat all the animals (or there will be no animals left!).

Of course, this doesn't hold true among Arctic hunter-gatherers, where they eat a diet very, very high in animal products sustained through low population size, but the jury's still out on health issues in those populations since they largely can't be teased out from the perils of modernity (high rates of contact in circumpolar groups = diabetes, alcoholism, increased rates of cancer reflecting tobacco, and higher rates of death by infectious diseases due to immunonaivety/lack of selection on certain disease-resistant phenotypes, etc.). Still, we're typically basing our assessments on African hunter-gatherers, since that's considered reasonably close to the environment of adaptation.

True, average life expectancy is less, but that's usually due to accidents (e.g., falling out of baobab trees when trying to get at bee's nests for honey), infected wounds, and infectious diseases (malaria is a major problem, and so are polio, measles, and everything else you've been vaccinated for). Heart disease, stroke, and diabetes are uncommon, so there's certainly something to be said for living a non-sedentary life on a plant-based diet with meat in moderation--but most people know this without ascribing to a fad diet.

Pounds lost: 20.0

0 11.5 23 34.5

46

Posts: 33,302
10/18/12 11:14 P

The thing with Paleo is that it's not saying cavemen were healthier or anything. Just that we should probably eat the kinds of foods that our bodies evolved eating, rather than the kinds of foods we invented in the 20th century.

There is a lot of sense to that!

Eating clean and unprocessed foods in their natural state is certainly generally healthy.

However, remember that many foods are more nutritious cooked or processed in some way, and also many food processing advances have made us MORE healthy than our ancestral counterparts. We no longer lead the same lives, so that we should eat exactly as they did doesn't necessarily make sense.

So take from all plans what you want to take. If you think the plan offers reasonably sound advice, try it out. See how you go. Almost all approaches to diet "work" and very few are significantly unhealthy for you. So the worst that can usually happen is that you find this plan doesn't work for you and leaves you feeling lethargic or unsatisfied.

Just so long as you're not following a totally restrictive plan like the master cleanse or something... :)

SparkPoints: (12,053)
Fitness Minutes: (120)
Posts: 1,966
10/18/12 11:01 P

A lot of the principles of the Paleo diet make sense... ie eat whole unprocessed foods, etc etc. But I can't get on board with the no grains thing :)

I do know a few folks who like it though, it's helped w/ some of their health problems... probably due to eliminating the gluten.

current weight: 138.0

188 175.5 163 150.5

138

SparkPoints: (5,012)
Fitness Minutes: (7,324)
Posts: 58
10/18/12 10:05 P

I totally agree it is crazy. Eggs are good for you, eggs are bad for you, no actually we had it wrong, eggs are good for you...Where will it stop??

After years and years of yo-yo dieting and using severe calorie restrictions and trying every diet under the sun, I have finally discovered that MODERATION is the best diet to have. Eat what you want so long as it is only small quantities. Fruits, veg and lean meats are all good food but even those is high quantities can be bad for you.

I guess whatever works for you. I read articles and then use a bit of common sense (like if an article says living of macdonalds every day for 3 years is good for you I will probably question it). I try and adapt to eating smaller portions of everything and limit the amount of "junk" I eat. For me, any restrictive diet doesn't work. I end up binging until I'm sick so portion sizes are the only thing that have helped me lose weight and keep it off for 7 months (a new record for me). No stupid Paleo diets for me

current weight: 126.0

158 146 134 122

110

SparkPoints: (11,084)
Fitness Minutes: (7,214)
Posts: 330
10/18/12 9:09 P

Just heard about the Paleo diet, it almost sounded like a joke so I decided to look it up. They not only have a Paleo Diet, they also have a primal diet. Of course many authors cannot agree on what you should eat just what you should not. Are we really trying to go back to the caveman days for better health? Are there any foods that we all can agree on that are good for us? The more I look into a healthy diet the more conflicting and what appears to be absurd recommendations I am finding. How are you sifting through all this information?

Pounds lost: 13.0

0 6.75 13.5 20.25

27