From Iron Magazine
You’ve probably heard that the Paleo diet is a powerful tool that can allow you to change your body. But, like everything in nutrition nowadays, eating like our hunter-gatherer ancestors is not so simple.
You’ve got to ignore all the detractors who say it’s too hard, too expensive, too trendy, or just plain dangerous. You’ve got too carve through the misinterpretations of Paleo, like that it’s inherently low-carb, no-carb, high fat, or super meat-heavy.
In fact, making a Paleo-inspired diet work requires most people to adapt Paleo principles to their own unique taste buds, metabolic situation, and genes. This article will tell you how to do so.
#1: Eat a whole bunch of whole foods.
One of the biggest myths about the Paleo diet is that it’s strictly low in carbs. In fact, it’s not that carbs are banished on a Paleo diet, but that a specific type of carbs should be removed.
The average Westerner’s diet differs from that of a true caveman diet in that the Westerner eats almost entirely processed foods that contain zero fiber. As much as 50 percent of their calories come from rice, corn, wheat, and potatoes.
Our digestive systems are simply not able to cope effectively with so much sugar so fast. Over time, a diet high in simple starch causes diabetes and increases the tendency to gain fat.
What to do: Consider that the standard hunter-gatherer got 35 to 40 percent of calories from carbs, but only 2 percent of calories from simple sugar. They also walked an average of 9 miles a day in search of food and did other fairly rigorous tasks.
A deal breaker for many people is that they restrict whole carbs too much, especially if they have a high activity level. The solution is to eliminate those staple “Western” carbs listed above, and eat a wide variety of whole plants, fruits, and tubers.
#2: Fat is your friend. Don’t be scared of it.
Fat is delicious, filling, and provides building blocks that the body uses to fight inflammation, and synthesize hormones.
So what fats did our ancestors eat?
Hunter-gatherer diets were dominated by fats from seeds, nuts, and meat from wild animals that ate grass rather than grain, which is the staple diet of modern animals. Populations near the coast and in the Arctic, such as the Inuit, ate plenty of fish, balancing out saturated fat intake from meat with omega-3 fats.
What to do: Eat fat at every meal, favoring organic and grass-fed/finished meats, butter, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, seeds, nuts, and seafood. Try organ meats and use bones to make broth.
If you’re going lower carb, it is extremely important that you eat adequate beneficial fat. A lot of people start a lower carb Paleo diet and shy away from fat, feel terrible, and quit. Calories may be too low, or the ratio between protein, carbs, and fat may be off, but eating more fat tends to help.
#3: Chew your food and eat more of it raw.
For our ancestors to survive, they had to be able to eat tough, hard foods, chewing tubers and fibrous fruits over and over. Our jaws and teeth of today are still well adapted for extensive chewing and there are many body composition benefits to eating more raw foods:
• You’ll consume as much as 15 percent fewer calories by increasing the proportion of raw foods in your diet.
• You’ll get more fiber and water in your diet for greater fullness and satiety.
• It’s a useful way to make you more aware of what you’re putting in your mouth and how much you’re eating.
What to do: No need to go all raw. Researchers suggest that raw diets are undesirable from a survival perspective. Cooking makes survival and reproduction much easier and has significantly supported human evolution.
Historically, when energy was scarce, cooking increased the calories available from food and it makes meat much more palatable since it becomes more easily digested, safer, and tastier.
#4: Fix your circadian rhythm.
Our modern approach to sleep is a huge departures from a caveman lifestyle that radically impacts our hormone balance, including melatonin, cortisol, and the androgens, estrogen and testosterone. As a result, when you lack sleep, you’ll be hungrier and crave high-carb foods.
I’m not going to tell you to sleep outside on the ground cuddled up with everyone in your extended family, as our ancestors did, but if you’re struggling with Paleo or not seeing the results you desire, try optimizing your sleep-wake cycle.
What to do: The simplest way to optimize your circadian rhythm is to sleep based on your natural tendency to be a morning or evening person. Train yourself to avoid waking up to an alarm. In addition, optimizing your meal frequency will improve your sleep wake cycle.
Other things that may help are suggested by the following research observations:
• Hunter-gathers didn’t usually sleep in a single bout but considered it normal to wake in the middle of the night before having a “second sleep.” If you wake up and can’t get back to sleep, get up and get something done, and then going back to bed.
• Exposure to bright lights will wake you up in the morning, and amber or yellow lights are recommended in the evening.
• Studies show that having warmer temperatures during the day and colder temperatures at night can support circadian rhythms.
#5: Lift weights and get rid of your car.
Is it humanly possible to lose weight without exercising on a Paleo diet?
Well, yes. Of course it is.
The good news is that by eating whole foods, favoring protein and fat, and eliminating simple sugar you can improve your metabolism and boost satiety from meals so you create a negative calorie balance. Fat loss can occur.
Still, our bodies haven’t adapted to be physically inactive. They simply don’t work quite right because our muscles degrade over time and tissues become less sensitive to insulin.
What to do: If fat loss or overall awesomeness are in your sights, lifting weights and a nice daily dose of physical activity are key.
You’re probably familiar with the fact that intermittent exercise such as weight training or sprinting will improve the body’s ability to use fat for energy, while also burning a lot of calories and supporting metabolic hormones. Anaerobic exercise also builds muscle, which simply makes you healthier and more attractive.
If you have a desk job, figure out little ways of spending more time on your feet. Consider that the average male sedentary desk jockey burns about 75 percent fewer calories a day than the average hunter-gatherer.
Can you get rid of your car and bike or walk to work? Get a standing desk? Always, always, always take the stairs? Do walking meditation instead of seated?
It’s your life. Figure out a way to do what you were born to do.
References:
Turner, Bethany, Thompson, Amanda. Beyond the Paleolithic Prescription: Incorporating Diversity and Flexibility in the Study of Human Diet Evolution. Nutrition Reviews. 2013. 71(8), 501-50.
Source: http://www.ironmagazine.com/2014/tip…-a-paleo-diet/
