How Has Paleo Worked For You?

[Edouard Lynch]

I think Susie's post is, as usual, spot on. Regardless of the validity of its theoretical basis, Paleo is an excellent rule of thumb to identify foods that are actually "real" and foods that are practically impossible to overeat, especially in the industrialized food culture of the US. Fresh dairy products from grazed dairy cows can, in my opinion, form part of a healthy diet. But since 99% of Americans wouldn't have access to such dairy products even if they knew that they couldn't find anything remotely close on the supermarket shelf, Paleo's dairy ban makes perfect sense. A small portion of fresh, naturally leavened, hand-kneaded, whole grain bread is sometimes just the thing to replenish depleted energy stores but in a world where "Jumbo-Family-Size Superwhite Partially-Embalmed Glucose-Injected Wonder Loaf" is what most people consider bread, it's hard to argue with Paleo's ban on grains. Personally, I've gone from being a nutritional moron to a religious Paleo follower to a well-informed eater who can easily sort "food" from "food systems" and "just enough" from "too much" (thank you CrossFit!). For those lacking the knowledge and/or discipline to consistently choose the former instead of the latter as I once did, Paleo is not a bad place to start.

[Alicia Michel]

Hey Kirez, you mentioned central Asia in your response to Robb - were you living in Asia for awhile?

It's very frustrating that for nutrition, nobody does (perhaps, nobody can do) the kind of large-numbers, longitudinal study that would be required to suss out all the variable factors - particularly where it comes to athletic performance. Looking at anthropological, demographic stats is the best we can do. I think this is why we're so often comparing one incomplete *theory* to another.

Nodnod!! One of the theories that I'm confused about concerns the seasonal sleeping and eating theory and whether it applies to people living in tropical climates.

And yeah, eliminating the juice is a good idea!

[Kirez Reynolds]

Alicia -- most recently I lived in siberia for a year and a half. I've spent time in central asia and afghanistan, and it's really quite the same, except siberia is more culturally isolated and homogenous, and colder. Otherwise, my experience with asia is limited --- I walked from the dmz northwest of inchon (in S. Korea) to the southeast coast (past Pusan) in 2004, and in 2006 I hitchhiked across northern China, which only took me a month. I don't feel I know China very well, though I've studied it.

Edouard -- I think it becomes reflexive to think of America leading the world, and thus exemplifying, evil modern technological practices. So we all say these things -- the cliche, "Americans drink too much coffee," etc etc.

The trends we're able to measure right now -- the leading ones are incidence of obesity and diabetes. These involve some lag time.

Even with the obesity, American diets are vastly superior to most of what I've seen elsewhere (with notable and important exceptions, such as Japan and France mentioned above). More importantly, the availability of good food to common people in America is unequaled in all the poorer parts of the world I've been in.

Where I'm living now, I almost cannot buy vegetables, except tomatoes and bell peppers. It's common in the ME to have good, genuine yogurt; I've found here that it's made with milk powder; for real cheese, also, I must drive to Muscat -- only processed slices here. In most of Russia, you won't find green vegetables at all. In Moscow -- most expensive city in the world -- very, very few people can get real milk; everyone else must use the preservatized box milk. Everywhere I've gone, the only available drinks are often marketed as health and sports drinks -- the ingredients universally begin: "water, sugar..."

I've spent time in western Europe as well. Still, I know that for abundant, diverse availability of healthy, real foods, nowhere beats California.

The marketplace learns, and wealthy people are going toward real foods; the rest of the world will follow --- starting with America's middle class. But in economically challenged and regulated environments, processed foods will continue to *replace* costlier, but healthier, foods, and that's going to be bad news for most of the world for a long time to come.

[Daniel Barulich]

I have had great success experimenting with the "Paleo-Diet". I do not follow the strict "Paleo" guidelines i.e. (NO Dairy, NO Grain, NO Sugar, NO Beans). I incorporate organic dairy, cheese, and beans into my diet with no noticeable negative effects. I do, however, highly limit my consumption of pasta and grain. I have found that since eliminating grains from my diet, I am more in tune with my body when eating. My satiety is more alert, probably due to the higher amount of chewing, which leads me to overeat less and avoid the disastrous "food coma" after meals, a staple of poor insulin sensitivity due to the over consumption of processed carbs.

My diet philosophy can most accurately be associated with Arthur Devany (www.arthurdevany.com), a former professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine. His diet guidelines, which he refers to as "Evolutionary Fitness", are a mixture of a Paelo diet (no salt, no beans, no dairy) with the benefits of the oils found in the Mediterranean diet. Intermittency and variation are the rules along the exclusionary guidelines of the Paleo diet. No measuring, vary your proportions and eating frequency based on instinct, pick whole, natural foods, throw in an intermittent fast every few days, and eat until you're satiated, not stuffed. DeVany even enjoys a beer and a glass of wine every few days, not fixated on the carb count, and keeps a page on his website where he photographs his meals. I have found his dietary concept to be highly informative, as he challenges much of the conventional wisdom regarding meal proportions (aka "Blocks"), and gasp...CALORIE COUNTING.

[Gorm Laursen]

1. energy dive
2. restlessness
3. energy returning and being solid and steady – especially mental energy
4. 40 kgs slimmer

[Jack Gayton]

Originally Posted by Gorm Laursen

1. energy dive
2. restlessness
3. energy returning and being solid and steady – especially mental energy
4. 40 kgs slimmer

Hey Gorm - How long did your dip in energy and restlessness last?

I noticed the same thing when I first started experimenting w/ the diet a couple months back. I started feeling sluggish and my performance suffered, so I stopped. About a week or so ago, I started up again. It just seems like a good way to live, I guess that's the best way I can describe it.

I haven't noticed a dip yet, but I sometimes feel like I'm not eating enough. It's just plain hard to get all those veggies in every day..

[Jay Cohen]

Originally Posted by Jack Gayton

I haven't noticed a dip yet, but I sometimes feel like I'm not eating enough. It's just plain hard to get all those veggies in every day..

Jack, consider upping the fat. You really don't have to eat more then a few cups of veggies IF you're getting most of your calories from Fat, then Protein, last Carbs. Disclaimer is that I tend to follow a lower then CF average Carb intake, definitely not Zone.

You really need to have great sources of good fat readily available in your kitchen. Walnuts, Almonds, other nuts and nut butters, Olive Oil, Coconut flakes/oil, Tahini, Avocados, etc etc, you get the picture.

[Jack Gayton]

Thanks Jay .. I love almonds, walnuts etc and olive oil is a staple, so I'll have to keep that in mind and try some new fat sources so I don't get burned out on the same stuff..

[Gorm Laursen]

Jack. It went on and off for a couple off weeks. More like confusion and slight dissyness. When it comes to the physical side, I was more tired, but not noticeable. Mainly because I switched during Tour de France = couching alot!

[Jeffrey White]

Originally Posted by Susie Rosenberg

I have been, for the most part. Except for those mornings I woke up feeling the need to eat.

It's only been a couple of weeks, so I'm no expert and I'm willing to change things as I go along.

I've been doing a whole lot of reading lately about longevity and health, including the original studies done on the Okinawans, those people with the highest proportion of healthy elders---including those living to and beyond 100.

What I'm concluding from this reading is that vastly different food cultures have better health indices than the US, ranging from the French, with their diets rich in saturated fat, white bread, and wine, to the Okinawans, who eat white rice, vegetables, fish, a little meat, sea vegetables and little fat.

What the French and the Okinawans do have in common is that their traditional diets are not industrialized: they eat real food, and not too much.

So whether paleo works because it's paleo, or because it's real food, well....the evidence seems to suggest it's the "real food" aspect, based upon my reading.

The problem is, real food is getting harder and harder to find.

Real food might be bread made from fresh flour, yeast, salt and water, but certainly not the stuff that comes presliced, with preservatives and HFCS and lasts for weeks without spoiling.

Real food might be yogurt made from the milk of a grassfed animal that changes its taste over the grazing year, but it almost certainly does not include "go-gurt" in a tube, or Light 'n Fit yogurt sweetened with aspartame or Splenda.

Real food might include slow-cooked whole oats, but it almost certainly is not Cap'n Crunch cereal that also will last longer than your child's infatuation with the stuff.

The rest of that crap in the market is a manufactured edible. It is not real food.

Susie

Personally I believe something like Paleo diet might as well be the "Grapefruit Diet" or any other gimmick. And part of why I believe that was re-enforced by you in this post.

Let me first say that I believe if something works for you, then KEEP DOING IT. I'm not here to "show you the light" and get you stop your diet. I'm just here for the discussion/debate aspect.

I believe that the two biggest problems as to why we have obesity and health problems in this country is that 1) People do not make their own food anymore and 2) People don't understand/care about what they eat and are more concerned with food tasting good than serving its purpose.

Now, one reason I have a beef with the Paleo diet (and others) is that instead of really educating someone on nutrition, it becomes a quick fix. "Eat this, this way and here's some studies to back me up". You can find a legit study to back anything up nowadays.

The other reason is that Paelo diet, "warrior diets", "hunter-gather", etc...are all theories. We have no real idea how our ancestors ate. We can make theories, maybe make comparisons to other "primitive" cultures, etc...but we can't say beyond a doubt that, for example, they didn't eat a lot of fruit or that they ate meat on any kind of regular basis.

To go along with that, unless you are eating raw meat then you are not truly following a paleo diet. Putting any kind of pepper, spice, etc on your food would be breaking it...shoot drinking coffee is breaking it.

If you allow exceptions for these, how can you justify the others? We could go on and on, but what is called "paleo diet" is probably far, far away from what we actually did in paleo times.

Instead of telling someone they shouldn't eat bread because they usually buy the awful supermarket variety, why not teach them how to make bread from scratch with natural ingredients and then teach them about portion control? "Limiting", as done in diets like Paleo, just kind of skirt around the issue, imo.

But that won't make a good diet book. You need a gimmick, a catch.

You are wrong, real food is not getting harder to find...people are just more lazy. People do not want to take the time to cook their own meals.

I agree with a lot of your points. It's just that if you look at why the paleo works, its definitly not because its the diet itself but the same old things that we should all know by now: lower calories throughout the day, we should eat less carbs, eat more fiber, cut out preserves and other chemicals, remove refined and man-made sugar, eat more veggies, more healthy fats, etc...

All the talk from the paleo about severely limited or cutting out carbs is goofy to me. Especialy when talking about fruit. What if, in theory, the reason they lived shorter lives in paleo times was from a lack of carbs? What if their brains and bodies couldn't functionally as well because of not having enough glucose? Maybe that's why we can invent computers and send people to the moon and they didn't. Why would you want to revert back to time when we have no idea how healthy they actually were?

It's just an idea. I would say its more likely we survived that diet than survived because of it.

anyways, just my thoughts. rip away y'all.