Paleo Plan

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Even though we have never ever seen one live and in person so to speak, it is not a hard task to visualize a caveman based on what we know and what we have been taught. They are quite an easy stereotype to imagine with their hunter gatherer lifestyle, roaming the lands in a peaceful, simple existence (apart from escaping dinosaurs and sabre toothed tigers!)

Paleo Plan

And what about the physique of these early humans? Do you ever think of them as being fat, portly, chubby, overweight, obese or even morbidly obese? I wouldn't think so! And one of the big reasons why is that Paleolithic nutrition or, the diet of the caveman consisted mainly of pure, natural and healthy foods.

The lifestyle of the caveman before the agricultural age was one of a hunter and gatherer. In the search for fruits and vegetables, nuts, berries, seafood and large game animals these hunter gatherers had to cover long distances resulting in them becoming fit, active and athletic people. It was not a matter of food coming to them, (certainly no home delivery!) and if there was no food available close by, they relocated in search of better and more fertile hunting grounds.

Taken from the Stone Age, Paleolithic nutrition, often known as the Paleo diet eating plan, would have to be one of the oldest lifestyle diets around! Although the Paleolithic era ended around 20,000 years ago, the farming of wheat and other plants as well as animal husbandry only originated approximately 10,000 years ago.

It might surprise you to learn that for a species to fully adapt their metabolism and physiology to new and totally different lifestyles; it can take hundreds of thousands of years. As we have only had 10,000 years to get used to the advances gained from agriculture, it should not be that hard to understand that foods of today, especially grains, dairy products and legumes are a significant cause of many of the digestive problems we face today. Gluten and dairy intolerance is at record levels worldwide and one reason is that we are still not fully adapted as a species to consume these types of foods. These foods just were not available or around in the Paleolithic Era so the link to good health through Paleolithic nutrition becomes very tangible.

A big part of Paleolithic nutrition and the Paleo diet eating plan lifestyle is...

The elimination or at least heavy reduction of all processed and packaged foods. An easy description of these foods is pretty much anything that comes in a box or has been commercially manufactured, altered, created or compromised from its natural state. This is one of the biggest lifestyle changes relating to the Paleo diet and no-no foods include cookies and biscuits, donuts, bread, bagels, crackers and all wheat and cereal grains. The list also discourages all by-products of these foods as well.

Paleolithic nutrition when it comes to the paleo diet eating plan means that if the food was not available to the caveman, it is not available to you while following this diet. Next on the list of no-no foods are Dairy products. Since the caveman did not eat dairy products, the Paleolithic diet eliminates foods like milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, etc.

Do not despair however! While at first, the Paleo diet and Paleolithic nutrition may seem like you are mostly out of food options, nothing could be further from the truth and in fact, there is a massive variety of food which can be thoroughly enjoyed as well as leading you to amazing health benefits. Our earliest ancestors ate quite a lot of animal protein which was perfectly supplemented with plenty of great tasting, nutritionally rich, fresh fruits and vegetables.

Although we eat a great deal of meat in today's diet, the differences to that of the cavemen and Paleolithic nutrition is in the lean cuts as opposed to fatty cuts and creations as well as the fact that the animals being eaten were free range and natural - and not fed a diet of hormones and corn or corn by-products.

Therefore in combination with the lean cuts of meat, the Paleo diet eating plan states that it is vitally important to consume meats off animals that had been pasture or grass-fed. When perusing the aisles of your local supermarket or butcher, lean cuts of meat to look out for include top sirloin steak, lean pork chops and pork loin, butterfly pork, chuck steak, London broil and flank steak. Love minced or ground beef? Well you can even choose that option as well as even extra lean hamburgers so long as all visible fat is removed and that the fat content remains below 7%.

A popular favorite among palates of today is poultry and that is definitely on the right side of Paleolithic nutrition again so long as you take the lean cuts. Breast is best and any poultry such as chicken, turkey and game-hen is good. But what about those organ meat lovers among you? Although not a personal favorite of mine, organ meats such as livers and even tongues can also be enjoyed on the Paleo diet.

The caveman also had access to and therefore ate eggs so as long as you limit yourself to only 6 eggs a week, eggs are definitely up for grabs on the Paleo diet eating plan.

Eating like a caveman and observing the rules of the Paleo diet gives your body the best chance when it comes to absorbing nutrients more effectively. Also, your body's digestive system and processes will slow thanks to a steady diet of fresh plants and lean meats. Two major advantages of this means a much more stable blood sugar level without the peaks and troughs associated with today's food choices and because your appetite is regulated, you feel fuller for longer. Just that last point alone decreases the amount of food you eat severely limiting the chance of you over eating - the primary cause of weight gain.

When you first start out, eating like a caveman can seem extremely limited and hard. However, the more you explore the many options available to you and start to see the health benefits associated with this type of lifestyle, you will appreciate that the rewards gained through Paleolithic nutrition far outweigh the perceived sacrifices.

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The Stone Age Diet -- Its Use in Food Allergy

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The Stone Age Diet is a diet which attempts to recreate the way Man ate around 30,000 or 40,000 years ago. It is sometimes also referred to as the 'paleo' or 'paleolithic' diet. Those who use it believe that going back to eating this way eliminates the root cause of many of the chronic health problems we experience today, which respond poorly to the symptom-suppression approach of modern medicine. It is particularly likely to be used in connection with treatment for IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), other chronic digestive problems, and a myriad of health problems connected to food allergies or sensitivities and intestinal yeast overgrowth.

The Stone Age Diet -- Its Use in Food Allergy

The thinking behind the Stone Age Diet is as follows:

Diet and nutrition is crucially important to our health. The complex systems of our bodies need specific nutrients to function properly. Exactly what and how much we need is down to evolution, in the sense that we are only in optimum health when we eat what we have evolved to eat. Evolution is a slow process, measured in not hundreds, not thousands but millions of years. As a result, any radical, sudden change to our diet risks problems until our systems have had time to adapt. Indeed, over the last 40,000 years less than 0.02 per cent of our genetic code has changed. So our bodies are basically still designed to work best with the same foods and nutrients they were getting 40,000 years ago. This principle applies not only to what we readily recognize as our food and drink, but also to any potentially harmful chemicals which we unknowingly or knowingly take in via the air or in our food and water.

In other words, we have as yet only evolved to cope with the conditions that prevailed back in the Stone Age. That is to say, when we were existing on a hunter-gatherer diet of game meat, fish and seafood, insects and grubs, roots and tubers, plants and grasses, leaves, nuts, seeds, berries and other fruits. At that time, we did not have milk or milk products, because we had not yet domesticated animals. We did not have grains (wheat, corn/maize, barley, oats, rice etc) as these came later, when we learnt how to become farmers in the Agricultural Revolution around 5,000 years ago. And we certainly were not exposed to the thousands of man-made chemicals which find their way today into our air and our food and water, such as pesticides, fertilizers and growth promoters, plastics, drug residues, colorants, flavorings and other artificial additives.

There is a wide variation in individual requirements for nutrients, just as there is a wide variation in the ability to cope with potentially harmful chemicals. But taken overall, a population well adapted to its food and environment is generally robust and healthy. On the other hand, a population ill-adapted to its food and environment suffers high rates of chronic ill-health, and this is what we are seeing more and more of today.

The problem for us in our modern age is that we have changed our diets radically compared to what Stone Age Man ate. We have made bread and other grain-based products our staple foods. We have liberally supplemented these with sugar and other refined carbohydrates and with man-made fats, all of which were unknown to Stone Age Man. And we have changed our environment in terms of exposure to toxins and man-made chemicals beyond all recognition. It hardly seems surprising therefore that chronic, degenerative diseases are rapidly rising in the so-called 'advanced' populations of the world. It is illustrative that many researchers on this subject refer to these diseases as the 'diseases of civilization'.

So what are the 'diseases of civilization'? The term is most often used to refer to heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer and obesity. However, there are many other increasingly prevalent conditions which are thought to be linked with this mismatch between our modern diet and environment and the diet and environment we have evolved to handle. These include allergies and food sensitivities, asthma, auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, multiple chemical sensitivities, irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

It is important to recognize that any attempt to recreate the real Stone Age Diet in our modern age can only be an approximation. This is because the nutrient and toxic chemical makeup of the soil is different. Similarly, our plants and animals have been selected and bred for characteristics such as fast growth, superior color or size or keeping qualities. So even our 'natural' foods today are different from those our Stone Age ancestors would have eaten.

In any case, there was no one single diet in the Stone Age, since what was eaten would have been slightly different from one group of Stone Age people to another, depending on location, time of year and availability of particular foods. This is why a modern-day Stone Age diet is probably more correctly termed a Stone Age-style diet. This variation in the composition of our Stone Age ancestors' diet is reflected in the 'Stone Age Diets' prescribed by medical practitioners. Whether using it as a diagnostic or curative tool, they all tend to prescribe their own favored version. What remains constant however is the premise that it is a diet of organic, natural foods based on fish, meat, game, poultry, vegetables and fruits.

There are two main groups of Stone Age Diet devotees. The first consists of people who feel that the modern environment is simply not a healthy way to live, and view a Stone Age-style diet as their best defence against succumbing to chronic disease. The second group comprises practitioners who have specialized in nutritional and environmental medicine (sometimes called clinical ecologists, allergologists or allergy specialists). They very often use a Stone Age-style diet as a means of identifying foods or chemicals that may be causing an individual's ill-health, and also as a basis for a permanent dietary change which may cure or control the illness.

As can be seen, a strict Stone Age-style Diet is very restrictive and compliance by patients used to our grain- and milk-based staple foods is likely to be poor. Therefore, some practitioners prescribe a 'modified Stone Age Diet' which may include some grains and dairy produce. However, these modified versions virtually always exclude the grains that we normally eat, wheat and corn/maize in particular. They are also likely to specify duck eggs instead of our usual eggs from hens, and goat's milk instead of cow's milk.

One of the most problematic aspects of embarking upon a Stone Age-style Diet, particularly a modified one where the individual is asked to include uncommonly eaten grains such as millet, quinoa, gram (chickpea) flour and buckwheat flour, is how to incorporate these items into palatable meals. All too often, the patient simply ignores those foods. However, this can result in an unnecessarily restricted dietary regime which increases the likelihood that the patient will abandon the diet before he has had a chance to benefit from it. Cookbooks which contain recipes specifically for these uncommonly eaten grains do exist, but they are few and far between. One such example is the 'Stone Age Diet is Easy Cookbook'.

Copyright GoodDietGoodHealth.com 2007

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Slow Carb Diet Basics - All You Need To Get Started

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The Slow Carb Diet was introduced in Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body book - his long-awaited guide to 'hacking' the human body, for improved results in weight loss, muscle building, better sleep, better sex and countless other subjects.

Slow Carb Diet Basics - All You Need To Get Started

The diet was developed by self testing and refining other approaches, with a pragmatic and quantative twist - building on whatever worked and constantly tweaking and adjusting until the simplest and most effective principles could be readily distilled. Readers familiar with different diet plans will recognise elements of low carb/high protein plans, with some paleo, glycemic index/glycemic load theories, and other styles... But although much of the doorstop-sized tome relates to the slow carb diet in some way, the rules for Slow Carb 101 are actually very short and sweet:

Avoid ALL white carbohydrates, or carbs that can be white (even in the non-white form). So that means ALL bread, cereals, rice, potatoes, pasta, and any fried food that is breaded. The only workable exception appears to be cauliflower, which is actually very low in carbs and high in fiber.

Eat the same few meals over and over Ferriss is a bachelor who doesn't like to cook! So this element has been a bit controversial and doesn't suit everyone. And since the publication of the book a wide canon of recipes and general slow carb literature is exploding across the blogosphere... You can of course make your meals as varied as you like provided you stick to the rules, but Ferriss' intention was to simplify ruthlessly down to first principles, making it easy to shop, plan a head, keep on track, and not fall off the wagon because you have no suitable food in or you have bought the wrong stuff.

The main thing with food is that you have to get food from each of the following groups, in every meal

- Protein - such as lean meat, eggs or fish (no dairy, except cottage cheese in small amounts)
- Legumes and beans - such as lentils, black beans, haricot beans, pinto beans, soybeans, kidney beans... any kind of beans are good!
- Vegetables - especially green vegetables... Ferris particularly recommends spinach, but anything green is good, cooked or raw (salad)

Don't drink calories - that includes milk or soy milk, juice, cans of soda, beer, and so on. Ferriss permits himself up to two glasses of dry red wine per day, but confirms that this is optional rather than a requirement! The main message is, it's way too easy to overlook the amount of calories and sugar you are knocking back in liquid form without a second thought...

Don't eat fruit This is because of fructose, the natural sugar in sweet fruits (and the ban does not apply to non-sweet fruits like tomatoes and avocados). Fructose contributes directly to fat storage via trigyceride formation, and they are generally high in glycemic load. This aspect of the plan many people find shocking at first, because fruit is generally recommended on most healthy eating plans. But as Ferriss remarks, most of the fruit we eat today would not have formed part of our ancestors diets in Northern Europe. Vegetables yes, but fruits are a more recently acquired habit, and as such are not what we are evolved to thrive on.

Final rule:

Have a day off once a week! - cheat day, binge day, dieters gone wild day... once a week eat fruit, bread, cake or whatever you like, as much as you like.

This has two purposes - spiking your calorie intake once a week resets your metabolic rate and reassures your body that you are not starving! It stops your weight loss from slowing down as a result, and your body simply becoming more efficient at managing on fewer calories. This is the main factor behind rebound weight loss, when people return to eating 'normally' after a restricted plan...

The second purpose is behavioral. Knowing that 'cheat day' is never more than six days away makes it easier to stick with yet another bowl of beans. Because slow carb is NOT about a quick fix - whilst weight loss can be dramatic at first or if you have a lot to lose, for optimal results you will have to stick to this plan for some time. When you have a blowout day to look forward to (and that you can adjust the date of to suit social occasions and so on), it is so much easier to still to a less varied and indulgent diet the rest of the time

That really is it, for the slow carb diet - everything else is just refinements. Do these 4 things, consistently over time, and you will lose fat and build a leaner body. You have nothing to lose but your excess pounds!

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