You may have been wanting to improve your health and fitness or lose weight and stumbled across the "paleo diet." So what, exactly, is the paleo diet? Good question and I hope I can give you a good introductory overview in a few hundred words.
Let me start by saying that the scientific evidence supporting this diet for health and weightloss is substantial. This is NOT some fad diet that was dreamed up as a gimmick to sell a book. From what I have been able to ascertain, the rational behind this method of nutrition is very sound.
In a nutshell, it is what man ate thousands of years ago. Easy, but what does that mean? If you think about what the paleolitic era humans would have access to eating, it includes:
- Lean meats
- Fruits/berries
- vegetables (non-starch variety)
The paleo diet does not allow for any legumes (beans, peanuts, green beans, lentils, etc) or starches (potatoes, rice, etc) or grains (bread, wheat, oats, etc). That may sound like a dramatic departure from mainstream dietary recommendations and I would agree. However, Dr Loren Corain proposes several arguments for this that seem very well researched. I won't go into the details now (that will be the topic of future posts) but these foods have toxins & irritants that affect our bodies adversely.
The quantities you may eat of these foods is unlimited. Think about that. You can eat to your heart's desires within those foods. The arguement is that if you are eating high quality foods, you will be full far sooner than you'll take in too many calories. All of the foods on the paleo diet are more nutrient dense and less calorie dense than the foods that are 'banned' and this prevents excessive caloric intake. Plus, you get all the nutrients you need. He goes into some detail in his books about the acid-base balance that certain foods promote which have a number of physiologic consequences (such as calcium excretion).
There is evidence that sticking to the paleo diet could decrease the risk of numerous diseases to include, but not limited to, cancer, heart disease, strokes, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, obesity, Crohn's disease, and many more.
Dr David Rahm, author of "The Wellness Prescription" and noted nutrition expert, is a fan of the paleo diet due to its positive health implications. The Crossfit guys are also big advocates. In the fuis dture, I will cover more information on why I believe this diet is so beneficial for health AND weight control. I highly recommend this diet to anyone and everyone. It can be a big change BUT if you want to maximize your health and body habitus, you should strongly consider the Paleo Diet!
Wouldn’t our ancestors have encountered the entire animal with both lean and fatty meats? I doubt our ancestors just at the lean cuts. How do you feel about animal fats?
That is a great point Ashley and I’m glad you asked! Yes, I believe that the whole carcass is beneficial, including the fattier cuts of meat. Fat is essential for health & energy and we simply cannot survive without it. We generally recommend ‘lean’ cuts for 2 reasons:
1) Most meat that people eat today is from Confined Feeding Operations (CFOs) with a much less favorable Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio (around 8:1) and lower levels of other healthy fats such as CLA. Therefore, we want to minimize consumption of the unhealthy fats by decreasing the fat intake associated with some of these cuts of meats.
2) Getting people over some of these hurdles is hard enough. Throw in the idea that you can eat fat and it’ll send some of them over the edge, so to speak. Once we can get past some of the other issues then we start to introduce the concepts that fat is actually healthy (if it is natural, unmolested, grass-fed, etc) and not the proverbial devil.
So, if we are eating natural, grass-fed, free-range, hormone free sources of meats then the fats are not necessarily a bad thing.
Hope that helps!
- Doc