The Paleo lifestyle is centered around eating real foods, exercising right, getting enough sleep, and avoiding overly processed food. The term Paleo refers to the Paleolithic era. We try to eat foods that were similar to what was available to people back then - mostly meat, veggies, fruits, fats, and nuts and seeds. Generally speaking, people who eat Paleo don’t eat grains or legumes (beans and peanuts) or dairy. Some people choose to keep dairy as part of their diets and do their best to avoid low fat pasteurized dairy.
Why no grains, legumes or dairy?
I’m going to tackle this question from two standpoints: history and science.
Living things don’t want to be eaten. Animals have evolved to defend themselves from predators or run from them, seeds in plants are often made to survive a trip through the digestive tract of animals, and nuts have hard outer shells that must be broken open before they can be consumed. It’s survival of the fittest.
Grains can’t run or fight back, and they want to be partially digested by animals so they can proliferate. But grains have chemical defenses. They have gluten, lectins, and phenols, which all mess with a person’s ability to absorb nutrients as well as with their insulin levels. Dairy has other chemicals in it that mess with our digestive tract as well. Most people can’t digest lactose well, if at all. This is why most Paleo eaters don’t eat dairy. Certain animals, birds, for example, can eat grains with no ill effects, and young mammals consume their mother’s milk, but usually only when they’re young. Our human bodies aren’t used to eating like that.
When you eat food, digestion starts in your mouth with your chewing. By the time that food gets to the stomach, it’s been pretty broken up on a macro level. When carbs hit the stomach, especially those yummy, sugary, uber-processed carbs that are already mostly broken down for you, they turn into glucose when they hit the stomach. This prompts the liver to release insulin. Insulin tells the body to absorb food and store it for later use. The body then absorbs the carbs and stores them in fat cells. Funnily enough, fat doesn’t cause the body to store more fat - carbohydrates do that
Let’s switch perspectives. Humans have been around for nearly 150,000 years. Until about 10,000 years ago, we were hunter gatherers. We ate meat, poultry, and seafood that we either hunted down or caught as well as veggies, fruits, tubers, nuts, and seeds that we gathered. Then around 10,000 years ago, we turned into an agricultural society. We settled down and started farming.
When we started farming, our bodies didn’t have the ability to process the grains and humans got smaller and sicker. Think about it - we had to be able to survive for possibly days on end without much food when we hunted, we had to be able to have the energy after that to actually catch whatever animal we were hunting, and we had to be strong enough to take it down. Then we switched to eating foods that our bodies couldn’t chemically process and there wasn’t a need anymore for us to be big strong hunter gatherers. We started adjusting, but it’s only been 10,000 years.
Fast forward to the 1970s, when the American government started pushing a low-fat, high-carb diet. Their evidence that this was the proper way to eat was based off of several small studies with inconclusive results that didn’t take into account other factors such as exercise and smoking. Now we have a nation full of overweight people just eating the way they’ve always been told to eat. We eat toast, bagels, and cereal for breakfast and our blood sugar spikes and crashes a couple of hours later, so we fill up on sandwiches and fast food, prompting another spike and crash so we eat dinners of pasta and pizza, leading to another spike and crash, effective the next morning. If this doesn’t convince you, look up statistics for the last century for diabetes and obesity in the United States. Or check out this lecture (~1 hour) by Dr. Peter Attia about fat and how our standard American diet has changed in the last 50 years.
How does this relate to me?
I can’t relate history and science to you, but I can relate my story to you.
I grew up eating cereal every morning for breakfast, pb sandwiches for lunch, and pasta or homemade pizza once a week for dinner. I love grains. I love peanut butter. I also drank milk at every meal - even at school, where my mom always made sure I had money for chocolate milk. I love milk - and cheese, and yogurt, and ice cream too.
High school is a stressful time, and friends, teachers, classes, family, and figuring what on earth you're going to do for the rest of your life, where you're going to attend college, and finding who you are all took their toll. Going in, I had problems sleeping (insomnia), tummy ouchies that would show up every 3 to 6 or 7 weeks, and no motivation to work out or even set foot in a gym. Later in high school, I would sometimes skip meals, which obviously doesn't help regulate blood sugar, and had problems with irregular moods. At one point, I started losing weight without trying. I realized this, though, made it a goal to eat “right”, got medicine to help with the tummy ouchies, and worked on remembering to take some time to relax.
Then I got to college. My insomnia had been gone, but with lots of deadlines, midterms, and other stressors, it sometimes came back. I started skipping meals occasionally again, because I had too much work to do and felt I couldn't afford the time it would take to go to the dining hall to eat. Then I figured out the dining hall was a great place to do homework, and that helped me continue my "eating right" journey. Eventually, I started going to the gym with Super A. I had been ashamed of my lack of athletic abilities in high school, so it was pretty tough to get myself to go at first, and he had done sports for a few years in high school, so he was definitely better than I was. With time it got easier to go, and going to the gym was a nice way to spend some free time. Then I had a friend challenge me to run a half marathon with her. At that point I still struggled running a single mile, but she persisted I sign up with her.
I did it. Starting the summer following my freshman year, I trained every day, or nearly every day, running once or twice a day for 4 months. I went from 0 to 13.1 in about 16 weeks. Running became my stress relief. It was my Nirvana. I would even go by myself in the mornings when my running buddy was indisposed from late nights of homework and not enough sleep. After the half, I joined the school’s triathlon team (not because I was anywhere close to good, but because I was looking for the next challenge and I knew some people on the team). I'm very glad I joined, and I've done two triathlons solo and one relay (where my relay team got second place in women's relay). I have no regrets about joining and I haven't looked back.
That following spring was the first time I heard the term Paleo. Super A was trying it, and wouldn’t stop talking about it. After a month or two, I caved and tried it. My adjustment period included a three week long low-carb flu, where I felt tired, weak, grouchy, and hungry a lot of the time. But I was sleeping better within 10 days (not a transition from bad to good, but from good to well). Around the beginning of week 3 though, I realized the low carb flu grouchies had gone away and the irregular moods, too. The next week I was due for the tummy ouchies, and when they arrived, they were infinitely better than before. My skin got clearer and it was easier for me to focus. I started waking up before my alarm in the mornings and didn’t need caffeine to stay awake. I miss a meal it’s because I’m simply not hungry and I don't worry about being "hangry". I’ve also noticed that I don’t get ravenously hungry every four hours like I did before. I’m excited about what I eat and about trying new foods (eggplant and cauliflower are now weekly staples, tomatoes and avocados are on the list of newly yummy foods too).
All in all, I wish I had started exercising and eating Paleo sooner. As of the time of this writing, I’m only in the beginning of week 9 of my Paleo journey, so I’m sure I’ll keep feeling better the longer I live this way.
What do you eat now that you don’t eat grains or legumes or dairy?
I usually eat eggs or sometimes Paleo pancakes (bananas and eggs are the only ingredients) for breakfast, a nice salad with some meat or hard boiled eggs for lunch, a handful of nuts and maybe fruit as a snack, and then I have fun with dinner. Some easy favorites are eggplant or chicken parm (sans breading, of course), stir fried veggies and chicken, turkey burgers topped with pineapple or avocado, fish and zucchini noodles, but I’ve also become a huge fan of cauliflower pizza and fried rice that uses riced cauliflower instead of the grain. I have largely retained dairy, mostly in the form of cheese, butter, and Greek yogurt from Trader Joes . I have generally stopped drinking cow milk (although I still consider it part of my 80%) and have tried coconut milk and almond milk instead (I have to say, unflavored almond milk tastes remarkably similar to cow milk). When I bake (because who doesn’t like some baked goodies every now and then?), I use almond flour and avoid added sugars as much as possible.
On days when I can’t completely comply to eating this way, I sometimes grab a protein bar (leftover from a care package, not sought out), granola with oats, walnuts, and chia seeds, and maybe a potato or some rice (rice and potatoes are considered safe starches). On the days when I really go all out no-Paleo, I’d like to get a large pizza with extra cheese, bacon, and spinach, mac and cheese or some sort of alfredo pasta with protein, or ice cream. These cheat days don’t occur very often, and even when I go out with friends I opt for a salad or some meat and veggie entree instead of the pasta dishes I used to choose (yes, even just before a race when everyone else is carb-loading). I have asked for salad to be substituted for fries and a burger without the bun. If this is something that makes you nervous (asking for a bunless burger), think of it as you have a sensitivity (read: if it was worse it would be an allergy) to a certain food. If you were allergic to it, you certainly wouldn't be eating it.
What is this 80% you mentioned?
I’m trying to live by the 80/20 rule, proposed by Mark of Mark’s Daily Apple. The idea is that you should be able to eat 80% Paleo and then you have 20% left over for special occasions or emergencies. For me, this means when I cook for myself, I eat lots of red meat, poultry, seafood, fish, eggs, salad (spinach or romaine, iceberg is not nutritionally dense), veggies (especially carrots, spinach, and squash), nuts, and fruit, with some yogurt (preferably Greek), milk, cheese, and sweet potatoes as part of my 80%. I handle lactose pretty well, so yes I'm keeping it as part of my 80%, too. Oh, and fat. Fat helps keep me full. This is what I eat on a day to day basis. The fruit and sweet potatoes are included because I’m in college and I’m an athlete. You need some carbs for your body to recover from a workout or a race. You also need healthy snacks and most pieces of fruit are already in perfect snack form. My 20% is for pasta, pizza, soft pretzels, french fries, cookies, peanut butter, banana bread, and delicious food my family makes for holidays that is certainly not Paleo. It’s for occasional stuff, for eating out or for when there really are no other options or for cheat meals.
... Paleo diet....
Ok, this isn't a question, but it's something that comes up every now and then. The "Paleo Diet" isn't a diet. Not if you do it right. It's a lifestyle. It requires taking care of your body, including exercising and getting enough sleep. I'm not doing this to loose weight. I'm doing it to be healthier, to solve the minor issues my body has with overly processed foods and possibly grains, to be happier, to feel full after I eat a meal, to not worry about calories or gaining fat. I'm doing it for myself and the kids I want to have someday, because I want them to be healthy. I'm doing it to be an example of how you're supposed to eat for my parents and my brothers, because I want them to be healthy, too. Crash diets and not eating don't help you loose weight. Living right helps your body adjust into the form it was meant to be.
Where's the proof that eating Paleo is better for you?
A good amount of research has been done about the best foods for the human body to process as well as the best foods to optimal athletic performance. Ultimately, you gotta figure that eating veggies is going to be good for you, and eating food whose ingredients you can actually pronounce can't be bad while avoid food whose ingredients you can't pronounce might be a good idea. If nothing else you've read on this page so far makes sense, I hope that does. If you're still not convinced, check out these links.
- This is a ~hour long lecture by Dr. Peter Attia primarily about fat and how the eating habits of Americans has changed over the last 30+ years. (also posted above)
- Mark from Mark's Daily Apple outlines the basics of Paleo with some easy to read articles that are backed up by science.
- Cave Girl Eats has quite a few links to more scientific sources in her What is Primal article. I recommend checking some of them out.
It is possible, but it's hard. If you really have something against eating poultry and red meat, I'd recommend at least being pesca-Palean. If you don't like/are allergic to seafood, still give it a try. If you're vegan, I'm not sure that it's remotely possible to also be Paleo.
Um, what can I get at the grocery store?
There's lots of Paleo shopping lists out there. I've been sort of shopping per the meals I want to try each week, but here's one I'm planning on using once classes start again and I might not have time to plan every week and coordinate with my fellow cavemen chefs. With this list, I'm taking into account that organic, free range, and grass fed are not always going to be qualifications that fit in my budget. Also, it's for the Whole9/Whole30 program, so it might be stricter than you want. Sidenotes at the bottom of mine would probably include cheese and Greek yogurt. I like that it has the best fruits and veggies for you in green and bolded.
Um, what can I get at the grocery store?
There's lots of Paleo shopping lists out there. I've been sort of shopping per the meals I want to try each week, but here's one I'm planning on using once classes start again and I might not have time to plan every week and coordinate with my fellow cavemen chefs. With this list, I'm taking into account that organic, free range, and grass fed are not always going to be qualifications that fit in my budget. Also, it's for the Whole9/Whole30 program, so it might be stricter than you want. Sidenotes at the bottom of mine would probably include cheese and Greek yogurt. I like that it has the best fruits and veggies for you in green and bolded.
Here's some people who know way more about eating Paleo than I do:FYI: they might have a stricter definition than I do of what's acceptable and what's not, or different dietary restrictions for health conditions, so consider yourself forewarned. They also have more information though, and more recipes. Some of them have books, which I have probably not heard of at the time of this posting, and I am only posting them because I have used/will use their websites/blogs as references as I move forward in this eating adventure.
Civilized Caveman Cooking
Mark's Daily Apple
J. Stanton's Gnolls
Juli Bauer's PaleOMG
Michelle's NomNomPaleo
Paleo Parents
Primal Palate
Melissa's The Clothes Make The Girl
The Spunky Coconut
Taylor Made It Paleo
Civilized Caveman Cooking
Mark's Daily Apple
J. Stanton's Gnolls
Juli Bauer's PaleOMG
Michelle's NomNomPaleo
Paleo Parents
Primal Palate
Melissa's The Clothes Make The Girl
The Spunky Coconut
Taylor Made It Paleo
No comments:
Post a Comment