Paleo diet?

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  1. Habanero

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    I have a friend who believes strongly in using this diet to lose weight and clean the body of impurities. There is a 30 day Paleo challenge you can do to jump into the program. This friend has a sibling who had been a fitness trainer for many years in Crossfit which I understand to be connected to Paleo in some way and she says she has helped thousands of clients overcome various medical issues.

    Me being one for empirical knowledge started looking at this Paleo phenomenon and found nothing to support it being healthy. I even read something which suggested that eating an overabundance of beef has zero impact on heart health. The new studies proponents cite to validate their beliefs have very low numbers like 50 or less and they have not been repeated.

    To me it appears to be unmitigated bullshit, a fad diet along with Adkins. Anyone have any experience with this or know someone who has?

    The diet looks designed to kill athletic performance and some of the ideas it contains are simply falsehoods that the true Paleo believers cannot refute so they refuse to address them.

    Interested to see if any of you have either done this or heard about it.
    I am not interested in doing it, I've just been reading a lot about it and amazed by the bullshit it spouts with no replicable results.

    "There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time."
    Malcolm X
    Posted 4 months ago

  2. Cosmic Kid

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    Never done, have no interest in doing it.

    That said, I do think there is some value to it on a macro scale. Eat whole foods as much as possible, not processed or refined foods. Eat food in as close to its natural state as you can achieve for maximum nutritional value.

    Not certain why you think there is an over-reliance on beef in the Paleo diet, however. Lots of fruit, nuts and veggies in the Paleo diet, as I understand it.

    Just say "NO!!" to WCP!

    "Want to get faster? Work harder, eat better, cut the crap. Instead of talking the talk, work the work"
    Posted 4 months ago

  3. Andy

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    I try and follow that old school fad diet. It's called the balanced diet. Exercise more and eat less. Seems to work for me. That said there was a recent news article that said the paleo diet was the most effective of all the fad diets in terms of weight loss. But the article also said almost always the body reacts to calorie reduction by lowering the metabolic rate followed by weight gain when the person inevitably fails to follow the diet.

    Lance who??
    Posted 4 months ago

  4. Serotta94

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    What CK Said. I'm no expert - have not read Wolf's or Cordain's books - but I have spent a lot of time reading articles about it.

    Most of the people singing it's prases had weight to lose and lost it. They were also eating the typical processed carbs/startches,diet that the average American has grown to love. So, in the sense that it basically removes all processed foods (and most processed foods are junk), I think it's a good idea. They are also down on dairy as well which for the most part I think is good.

    I'm not so sure that eating meat is all that healthy for you in the long run though. But the nuts, vegies, and berries part is a huge improvement for the average person.

    If you're interested in learning more check out books by the authors named above or Mark Sisson's website and his primal blueprint book. Also Friel has written a book about paleo for athletes - basically adding back some simple carbs for people who are doing a lot of endurance stuff, as I understand it.

    Posted 4 months ago

  5. Cosmic Kid

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    I'll add that I am a big believer in the "move more, eat less" approach. Doesn't matter what you eat, as long as you burn more calories than you take in. Note that this is purely meant in terms of weight loss. Does not imply that it is healthy or optimum for performance.

    As my fitness increases, I find my preference for "better" foods increases as well. I love junky, sugary kids cereal (bowls of Cap'n Crunch this AM). Also love an occasional run to McD's, etc.

    But I am definitely eating less of the crap now than I was even a few weeks ago. Look at my sig line and that pretty much says it all, IMO.

    Posted 4 months ago

  6. vtguy

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    +1 CK -- I'm relatively flexible about my diet since I live with other people who wishes I have to accommodate (I do the majority of the cooking). Fortunately my weight stays the same no matter what I eat.

    Posted 4 months ago

  7. Habanero

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    For anyone who has read Wolf or Cordain's work, why is the science do flimsy if this is such a solid diet? I go by science and the ability to replicate theories with the same results and I've not seen one thing like that related to paleo.
    I also call bullshit on cutting out grains and legumes and overly relying on meat. There are mountains of studies that prove definitively that increased meat consumption = increased risk of heart disease. Proponents of this diet are quick to cite anecdotal 'evidence' with no scientific backup. To me it smacks of con artists taking advantage of rubes.
    It really is simple in the end - everything in moderation and make sure not to take in more than you burn.
    One final thing - if the paleo diet is as successful as claimed then wouldn't the life expectancy of people in the paleo age be higher? Life expectancy now is roughly twice what it was for paleo age humans.

    Posted 4 months ago

  8. hoshie99

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    THis should solve the red meat vs legumes question for any who had doubts:

    http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/03/red-meat-raises-red-flags/

    I'll stick with this one. I limit red meats (and meat in general) but like others go thru phases at times.

    The more I learn, the more I realize my grandmother was very intentional about health and diet and well ahead of her time. She limited processed foods (and in fact railed against them as having no nutritional value or worse), ate very little meat (but not a vegetarian), always balanced proteins fats and carbs, used spices, took a simple multi vitamin (and sometimes a little extra c) and was a fan of fresh fruits and veggies. I really think it's that simple.

    It's just the discipline to do it which is hard at times for anyone.

    j

    Posted 4 months ago

  9. bodynazi

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    http://Www.meatvideo.com. Let me know what you think.

    The paleo diet is beyond stupid.

    Let's look at some facts.

    Apx 60 billion animals are killed in the US per year for food consumption. 8-10 billion are land animals. What regulations are in place for the slaughter of sea animals? Anyone? Right.. zero. Every time you have fish, shrimp or lobster you're eating an animal that suffered in a horrible way - suffocated, crushed or gutted\boiled alive. The dairy industry is based upon lactating cows. All mammals want to spend time with their young. Ever seen a cows "joy" when it's newborn is taken away? Cows do feel pain, loss and suffering. There are 8 million dairy cows in the us. Even organic free range cows are unable to do the only thing they want... Spend time w it's newborn. Watch the movie "Earthlings" It's on YouTube in full length.

    There are laws that prevent 1) publicly stating that animal flesh/products are bad for you (Operah was sued via this law for talking about the ills of ground beef). .. And 2) there are laws preventing pictures or documentation of factory farms and slaughter facilities. (opinion here: That speaks volumes about the animal flesh industry.)

    Right now were experiencing global climate change not seen in recorded time. One of the largest contributors of CO2 is animal production. A mere 400+ gallons of water is needed to produce 1 lb. of bovine flesh. 13 lbs of grain are used to produce 1 lb of beef. Raising animals for food is using 30% of the earths land mass. Are there any areas with draught issues or starving people? It takes 11x as much energy to create a calorie of animal protein vs. a calorie of plant protein.

    Healthcare costs have more than doubled in the past 10 years. The top several leading causes of death in the US can be avoided with a plant based diet. Cholesterol is only from animals. There is nothing dietary that animals provide that plants cannot provide.

    So, if you choose to eat animals and/or animal products you are contributing to 1) animal suffering you can't imagine, 2) environmental destruction at unprecedented rates, and 3) food that is clearly unhealthy for you.

    Can you eat a small amount of animal flesh/products and be healthy? Of course yes. You can also do a small amount of coke/meth/H and live healthily [presuming you've the discipline to not get addicted]. People can argue the health aspect to some degree (when is the last time you heard of an animal product being "good" for you? .. Like kale, berries, oatmeal and a litany of studies showing plants are preventative of X bad health issue?).

    Why contribute to such an awful industry? It is liberating to choose to step away from ~60 billion animals dying annually. For me, it is better for love, my spirit or soul and body.

    Posted 4 months ago

  10. Cosmic Kid

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    Life expectancy now is roughly twice what it was for paleo age humans.

    But you can't attribute that (solely) to diet. Even simple things in modern medicine such as anitbiotics have significantly increased life expectancy for modern man. let alone the significant reduction in predators, etc.

    But I still think you are lumping a Paleo diet in w/ an Atkins diet. They are not even close to being the same thing. yes, they are both a "higher protein" diet, but that is about it.

    Posted 4 months ago

  11. C2K_Rider

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    The key benefit of a "paleo" diet is he absence of simple sugars or a preponderance of starch that is easily converted to simple sugars. Sugar is at the root of many health problems caused by the modern diet.

    Obviously (if you think just a few minutes about it) there is no one "paleo" diet. It all depends on where a "paleo" person lived. Eskimos ate (eat) mostly meat and fat. The fact they can do it does not mean that is the "best" diet - they simply ate what was available. On the other hand, tropical dwellers eat a lot of fruit. Again, that does not mean eating all fruit is the best. The human digestion system is a marvel that can use all but it works best when there is a mix rather than one kind of food. These days we can have it all, but as in most cases, too much of any one thing is not beneficial in the long run.

    "The stone age didn't end because the earth ran out of stones, and the oil age won't end because the earth runs out of oil" -- Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute, rmi.org
    Posted 4 months ago

  12. bodynazi

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    Uh, if you think fruit is "worse" than dairy or animal flesh & causes "more health problems"... I have some awesome ocean side property available...

    Posted 4 months ago

  13. 79pmooney

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    Does the paleo diet reflect the reality of the original diet? That there are long spells of no meat and eventually deep fasting. (Know to the ancients as starvation, when weather changes/doesnt' cooperate and animals move elsewhere, etc.) Lifespans were generally not very long.

    Ben

    Posted 4 months ago

  14. Frozone

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    I do a modified "paleo" diet. I alter it by consuming healthy fats in abundance and huge amounts of organic raw vegetables, mostly as smoothies in my Vita-Mix. In general, I think Paleo goes too far with the red meat and not far enough in the direction of organic vegetables. I eat almost zero sugar and no grains or beans. I weigh the same as I did as a Junior in high school and I'm almost 46. I'm in a profession where I have extensive blood work done regularly and all of my health parameters are perfect. Now that said, if I'm training, about to train or recovering from training I eat sugar and carbs. I'm also a big proponent of intermittent fasting. Fruit is fine but some fruits are much better than others for health. I've known vegans who went on all fruit diets and ended up hospitalized, no joke. If you want sky high triglycerides then try an all-fruit diet and you will get it.

    Posted 4 months ago

  15. Cosmic Kid

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    I would recommend Allen Lim's cookbook for anyone who is interested in good tasting, healthy meals that check all the boxes re: protein, carbs, etc.

    I made my first batch of Rice Cakes today to eat on the bike. Holy gawd are those things good!!

    Posted 4 months ago

  16. Inferno7

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    @ck- agree on the rice cakes I make mine in a muffin tin makes for12 nice sized cakes.

    As far as Paleo there is a book Paleo for athletes might want to check it out wife has it on her kindle acct.

    LeMond VO2 max 95, Armstrong 82....doh
    Posted 4 months ago

  17. Cosmic Kid

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    Muffin tins....BRILLIANT!! Gonna have to try that.

    Do you fil them all the way up, or halfway?

    Posted 4 months ago

  18. cerv

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    "There are mountains of studies that prove definitively that increased meat consumption = increased risk of heart disease"
    This is so wrong I don't even know when to start. You need to read the story of Ancel Keys, and the bad science and personal ego that led to this "link" being adopted as US dietary policy in the first place. Lowest rates of heart disease ever recorded in any indigenous populations are the masaai and the inuit. Red meat/blood and meat/blubber respectively.

    Worst things in the north american diet are:

    1) way too much refined sugar in our processed food (white sugar, HFCS, fruit juice, honey) Dietary fructose is what the liver converts into fat and bad cholesterol, not dietary fat.
    2) way too much white/refined carbohrates. white wheat flour , refined corn flour, white rice.
    3) refined and heat treated vegetable oils (ie, cheap cooking oils...not to be confused with good, cold pressed vegetable oils). These are the fats that are linked to bad cholesterol.
    4) GRAIN fed beef (which has bad fatty acid profiles and lacks the antioxidant and medium chain fatty acids in GRASS fed beef)
    5) replacing our food energy requirements we used to get from fats with sugar and carbohydrates. Need to eat more coconut oil, avocados, walnuts, fish oil, grass fed beef fat, etc and less crappy carbs
    6) Not enough FIBER. All carbohydrates in nature get delivered with fiber so they are delivered in a way the body can deal with without spiking the insulin. Fruit would fall into this category. Fiber does not freeze or keep very well, so it gets removed from processed foods.

    Paleo is yet another stupid diet fad catch word, but the diet does address most of this stuff, and is the reason why so many see success on it.
    One thing I can tell you for sure from personal diet experience is you don't need simple carbohydrates to fuel your exercise if you eat enough good fats. I eat almost no refined carbs or sugars, and I can ride for 4-5 hours with no breakfast, long after all my buddies bonk. Once your liver and pancreas are healthy again, your body can fuel itself on fat.

    Dr Lustig is one of the leading researchers on nutrition in the US these days, particularly the effects of sugar. This video is a pretty good watch.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj69eDFu-_A
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nac7Ydoj0Rg
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzdxeO6LKlc

    Posted 4 months ago

  19. Habanero

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    Found this while researching paleo some more:

    http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/it-sounds-so-nutritionous/

    Posted 4 months ago

  20. Inferno7

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    @CK- all the way they turn out rather large though but as you said they're pretty tasty so I'd just go slow for a while and chow them or pull over if able to.

    Posted 4 months ago

  21. 79pmooney

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    cerv, I'll bet that the masaai and the inuit have diets with a good ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3. Artemis Simopoulos, MD, author of "The Omega Diet" postulates that the ratio should be no higher than 6:1. He found people with very different diets, meat consumption, fat consumption, etc but that held closely to that ratio were some of the healthiest populations on Earth. (The inhabitants of Crete, eating a high vegetable (we would say weed) diet with some animals that ate the same weeds were one. The other were the fishing villages of norther Japan, virtually no land vegetables but kelp and high amounts of high fat seafoods, both fish and mammal.

    My take is that in both cases, the food sources were weeds, land and sea with Omega 3 precursor. Those weeds were eaten buy animals (land and sea and human) that converted the precursor to Omega 3. Some of those animals were eaten by predators that also benefited from that Omega 3 and acquired it to pass on to the humans that ate them.

    In other words, we should be eating weeds or animals that eat weeds or animals that eat animals that eat weeds. (Not all weeds are helpful and contain the Omega 3 precursor. Dark green leafy plants like kale and chard tend to be some of the best. Almost all of the classic American vegetables have none. Our dietary downfall is our obsession with eliminating weeds. (We don't feed weeds to our farm animals. We feed them gain (only an Omega 6 source), often near exclusively. We have thousands of square miles of grain production, almost none devoted to high quality weeds.

    I'm very rusty on the facts here. I read most of that book 12 years ago and made big changes to my diet. I need to get back into it again. The health gains I made were huge. Completely changed my thoughts on food.

    Oh, both Dr. Simopoulos and my internist have near obsessions with heart health. My doctor has that book set out prominently in his exam rooms and has the past dozen years.

    Ben

    Posted 4 months ago

  22. Keith RIchards

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    Anything in moderation is going to be alright in terms of diet.

    I have always had a problem with any diet that emphasizes too much of one type of food.

    I do personally think that eating a lot of beef is tough on the digestive tract, so I try not to eat too much of it.

    But the Angus strip steak I had cooked medium rare on New Years Eve was INCREDIBLE. So was the dry rubbed pork tenderloin I cooked last night.

    Just like cars are not merely a form of transportation for me, food is not merely about calorie count. Flavors and textures are important to me.

    It is his word versus ours. We like our word. We like where we stand and we like our credibility."--Lance Armstrong.
    Posted 4 months ago

  23. Habanero

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    cerv:
    "One thing I can tell you for sure from personal diet experience is you don't need simple carbohydrates to fuel your exercise if you eat enough good fats. I eat almost no refined carbs or sugars, and I can ride for 4-5 hours with no breakfast, long after all my buddies bonk. Once your liver and pancreas are healthy again, your body can fuel itself on fat."

    I appreciate this comment because you are sure to say it is your personal experience. For me as a type 1 diabetic, obviously my pancreas isn't doing what it should. One thing you say which I disagree with "I eat almost no refined carbs or sugars, and I can ride for 4-5 hours with no breakfast, long after all my buddies bonk." This is not physically possible unless you are riding at a very slow speed and have excess fat to burn for this purpose. Carbohydrate, both simple and complex, are the only ways to keep blood sugar from dropping to dangerous levels. If you are not a diabetic your body pulls this carbohydrate from the sugar in the blood and glycogen stores in muscles. Once that is gone you bonk and body begins shutting down. I bonked once and it almost killed me.
    Also - "Once your liver and pancreas are healthy again" - you assume carb consumption equates to liver damage. Where do find basis for this? I have eaten carbs my entire life and have my liver function measured every 3 months due to my diabetes and I have never had anything but perfect liver function.

    Please do not take any of this as a personal attack. I enjoy this kind of back and forth to learn. :)

    Posted 4 months ago

  24. Peter Polack

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    Here's one famous person's experience with the Paleo diet. From his attitude, it doesn't look like it improves your mood, however.

    http://youtu.be/r3DhWv2PnKE

    Posted 4 months ago

  25. cerv

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    Hi Hab

    Those 4-5 hour rides with no breakfast are not fast, mostly in my aerobic HR range, but they're also not slow. I definitely couldn't do a 4 hour race with no breakfast :). I do, however, tend to have more left at the end than my teammates who have all typically had a bar or two during the ride. We all ride a similar amount of hours during the week, and I would say my fitness is average within that group. I am also typically flirting with low blood sugar at the end of a ride this long with no food. What opened my eyes was how much my 'time to bonk' increased with diet changes a few years back. It used to take 2 hours for me to get as depleted as I typically do in 4 1/2 now. No increase or significant change in training, just diet changes. Again, just personal experience.

    Posted 4 months ago

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