Paleo Diet

[nivek87]

Saw the P90X thread and made me wonder if anyone tries to limit their intake to the paleo diet.

 

I just picked up doing this again for the new year after avoiding it through the holiday season.  Some people object to it, however; it works great for me.  Makes me feel more alert, shed access pounds, have better sleep, better workouts, and just makes my body feel better all-in-all.  

 

Last night we had pecan crusted baked chicken and tonight we are having southwestern paleo meatloaf.  Just had some chicken stew for lunch we made in the crockpot this past weekend.

 

Anyone have any recipes they really like?  

 

 

[thebiglebowski]

It would probably have been a good idea to have a single "healthy living" thread instead of this, p90x and weight lifting thread but no big deal.

 

I just read about this and I don't really buy into it. I posted this in the p90x thread. I "get" keto:

 

http://josepharcita.blogspot.com/2011/03/guide-to-ketosis.html

 

The thesis is that our bodies are genetically evolved to use food sources in the following order: Carb -> Fat -> Protein. When you starve your body of carbs, it kicks in the process of utilizing fat as a fuel. It only works with almost no carbs, though. Drink a slurpee or eat fruit and your body goes back into carb mode, and it takes about a day to get out.

 

Our bodies have the ability to digest milk (we all use it as infants). No "lack of evolution to digest milk products". No to peanuts and wheat as "toxic foods"? I don't buy it. At a digestive level, a complex carb is a complex carb, an unsaturated fat is an unsaturated fat, etc. Where it comes from exactly isn't important. Only that you are getting the right levels of macro nutrients.

 

So my opinion on this is that it probably works for 2 reasons:

 

1) It is similar to a keto diet (beware of things like fruit though!)

 

2) Every diet has a component of just giving people a reason to say "no". Whether it is no to ice cream, no to red meat, no to carbs, or any other rule, just turning down a meal occasionally causes you to lose weight.

 

I wouldn't follow this exact plan, though.

[nivek87]

yeah, your fruit intake on the paleo should be very limited and when you do eat fruit, to generally go after the melons and berries.

 

i am substituting and i don't have access to the link you sent because its on blogspot which the county won't allow on their wifi.

[scottheisel]

I've been on the keto diet since June, and I've lost 62 pounds. It's completely changed my life for the better. I was at near-diabetic bloodsugar levels and that has gone down, I'm confidently down a size in underwear, pants and button-up shirts... It's awesome.

[thebiglebowski]

I've been on the keto diet since June, and I've lost 62 pounds. It's completely changed my life for the better. I was at near-diabetic bloodsugar levels and that has gone down, I'm confidently down a size in underwear, pants and button-up shirts... It's awesome.

 

 

Nice work!

[nivek87]

I've been on the keto diet since June, and I've lost 62 pounds. It's completely changed my life for the better. I was at near-diabetic bloodsugar levels and that has gone down, I'm confidently down a size in underwear, pants and button-up shirts... It's awesome.

thats awesome. congrats man.

before the holidays i lost 20 pounds the couple months before the holidays and needed to change my eating habits because i was getting constant heart burn and acid reflux anytime i would eat for the rest of the night.

again, congrats, thats quite impressive

[jerseydave77]

Nice Scott. 

 

I have gotten to know a guy at my gym really well. He was almost 500lbs and is down to 275. He was near disability level diabetic and has totally reigned it in over the past three years. He's one of the hardest guys working the bike and treadmill most days and I look to those kinds of gains as inspiring. It's hard to get out of the holes we dig.

[Variant]

The only thing paleo restricts in terms of your food intake is wheat (gluten), and the majority of other heavily processed foods (i.e. foods that have dozens of ingredients you can barely pronounce). These are chemicals and ingredients which our bodies were never meant to ingest.

It promotes clean healthy eating by removing the absolute ridiculous amounts of extra ingredients there are in most foods.

Wheat production/manufacturing has changed a lot in the last 50 years to the point where they have changed the chemical makeup of wheat in order for it to grow/harvest the crop quicker, and produce a higher yield of crop in shorter amount of time (i.e. profit for them, as it is used in the majority of processed food you buy in the grocery store). 

If anyone has read or seen the book out there "Wheat Belly", I highly recommend it. Even if you're not interested in jumping onto this lifestyle/"diet". It's a great read if you are curious about how mass food marketing has changed the way our food is made, by adding chemicals to keep an item fresh longer, or taste more fulfulling, etc. 

There was one segment of the book that explained how a whole wheat bagel increased your blood glucose more so than a can of pop does. The way in which your body breaks down gluten and turns it into sugar basically. 

 

I've been somewhat paleo for the last year, occasionally falling off the bandwagon here and there (it's pretty easy to with how easily available gluten-rich foods are). 

[nivek87]

The only thing paleo restricts in terms of your food intake is wheat (gluten), and the majority of other heavily processed foods (i.e. foods that have dozens of ingredients you can barely pronounce). These are chemicals and ingredients which our bodies were never meant to ingest.

It promotes clean healthy eating by removing the absolute ridiculous amounts of extra ingredients there are in most foods.

Wheat production/manufacturing has changed a lot in the last 50 years to the point where they have changed the chemical makeup of wheat in order for it to grow/harvest the crop quicker, and produce a higher yield of crop in shorter amount of time (i.e. profit for them, as it is used in the majority of processed food you buy in the grocery store). 

If anyone has read or seen the book out there "Wheat Belly", I highly recommend it. Even if you're not interested in jumping onto this lifestyle/"diet". It's a great read if you are curious about how mass food marketing has changed the way our food is made, by adding chemicals to keep an item fresh longer, or taste more fulfulling, etc. 

There was one segment of the book that explained how a whole wheat bagel increased your blood glucose more so than a can of pop does. The way in which your body breaks down gluten and turns it into sugar basically. 

 

I've been somewhat paleo for the last year, occasionally falling off the bandwagon here and there (it's pretty easy to with how easily available gluten-rich foods are). 

 

i'll have to check out the read.  with that said, are you a part of the paleo lifestyle?  if so, any recs?

[Variant]

Nothing fancy for my recipes really. Just fresh produce/meats mostly.

Girlfriend wants me to do spaghetti squash this week, so for the sauce I usually do lean ground beef (or venison, or bison), with crushed/chopped tomatoes, parsley, garlic, onions, mushrooms and maybe a few other items.

 

I usually google every now and then when i want something new/different. There's so many website now that have great ideas

(I like http://www.thefoodee.com/ and http://civilizedcavemancooking.com/ )

Looking for a slow-cooker recipe today actually, few have caught my eye:

 

Chili-Cilantro-Lime Chicken

Mexican Pulled Chicken Stuffed Peppers

Kalua Pig

[nivek87]

Nothing fancy for my recipes really. Just fresh produce/meats mostly.

Girlfriend wants me to do spaghetti squash this week, so for the sauce I usually do lean ground beef (or venison, or bison), with crushed/chopped tomatoes, parsley, garlic, onions, mushrooms and maybe a few other items.

 

I usually google every now and then when i want something new/different. There's so many website now that have great ideas

(I like http://www.thefoodee.com/ and http://civilizedcavemancooking.com/ )

Looking for a slow-cooker recipe today actually, few have caught my eye:

 

Chili-Cilantro-Lime Chicken

Mexican Pulled Chicken Stuffed Peppers

Kalua Pig

 

 

they really do have 100's of websites, just curious what everyone enjoys the most since there is so much to choose from.

 

we made a really good stuffed peppers recipe with lean beef

 

the only two slow cooker recipes we have used are chicken stew (really easy and lasted awhile) and jambalaya recipe which was one of the  best things i've eaten.  the replacement for rice was cauliflower, but we threw that in the crock pot too and it tasted awesome.

[thebiglebowski]

I'm pretty close to with you. I believe in the no carb diet. I'm just not sure I buy into wheat being something we were never meant to eat.

 

Genetically engineered foods, preservatives, and chemicals are everywhere. Eating a paleo diet doesn't save you from them (unless you go completely organic). They are in beef, eggs, lettuce, and on and on.

 

Lastly, yes a whole wheat bagel will all be broken down into sugar. That is what a carb is -- a sugar. The idea behind eating complex carbs (like whole wheat) is that 1) they take more energy to break down into simple sugars that can be used by the body (resulting in fewer calories saved as fat) and 2) that they take a longer time than simple sugars to break down, so you don't get that glucose spike, followed by a craving for more sugar.

 

There is a Mount Everest sized pile of evidence to disagree with your book that a whole wheat bagel is way better for you than a can of soda (which isn't exactly the point you were making, but close).

[xfedupx]

Totally ignorant on this subject...but why is fruit not a good thing when you're on these diets? Is fruit eaten outside of these diets ok and encouraged?

[BuzzersonKillwell]

It would probably have been a good idea to have a single "healthy living" thread instead of this, p90x and weight lifting thread but no big deal.

 

 

Yes, please do this!

[nivek87]

Totally ignorant on this subject...but why is fruit not a good thing when you're on these diets? Is fruit eaten outside of these diets ok and encouraged?

 

 

this is from everydaypaleo.com, which explains it pretty well.  

 

 

 

 

Fruit is not inherently bad, there are just some things you need to know.  Fructose, a primary sugar in fruit, is not quite as user-friendly in the human body as glucose. It is easily stored as fat and can be problematic for the liver. In fact, high fructose corn syrup has basically the same effect on the liver as the ethanol alcohol found in your favorite adult beverage.  In nature, however, we find fructose present with fiber which slows its absorption and eases the load on the liver, making it less problematic to consume, but still quite easy to store.

 

Another thing to keep in mind regarding fruit is agricultural selection.  If we were to plant the first two apple trees ever planted, and one grew sweeter apples than the other, we would certainly plant the seeds from the sweeter apples as opposed to the more bitter apples.  Rinse and repeat for a few thousand years and the result will be what we see today – apples that are much sweeter than any found in nature. Essentially, the result has been the agricultural production of fruits with higher fructose content and less fiber.

 

The various fruits in the diets of of our hunter/gatherer ancestors were also only available seasonally.  The option to buy bananas year round has really only been available for the last few decades.  This means that periods of time spent eating lots of fruit would be followed by periods of time eating very little fruit, and metabolic flexibility (our ability to switch between glucose and fat for energy) would likely be maintained.  Eating fruit seasonally today is not a bad idea.

Fruit juice is always a bad idea, and smoothies and shakes are for people without fat loss goals.

 

Long story short, fruit is not necessarily bad for you when consumed in reasonable quantities, but it must be understood that consuming all of your carbohydrates in the form of fruit will probably hinder fat loss.  We often see people consume too much fruit and end up frustrated.  If you don’t like veggies, eat more meat.

[xfedupx]

Thanks malonekw! I've never done any research on this since I've been around the same weight for years. Super interesting and makes sense. Thanks again!

[thebiglebowski]

Keto diets (which is the general name for no carbs. Atkins and Paleo would be subcategories of this) function on the idea that your body is designed to burn carbs and save fat. This is the result of evolution, with our bodies trying to save food because we never know when the next famine could be coming.

 

Ketogenesis is the bodies process for turning fat into food (it mostly involves liver production of enzymes to break down fat). In order to enter ketogenesis, you have to starve the body of carbs. When you eat fruit, you throw your body out of keto, and start the process over. With a keto diet, you do have to occasionally carb up for your muscles to perform (which is why Atkins encourages 1 "cheat day" a week).

 

Keto + fruit? bad idea. You will take in tons of fat that your body will store for later.

 

A balanced, low calorie diet of carbs, fat, and protein + fruit? Great. They are full of nutrients and the fructose isn't as bad for your diet as sugars that you find in soda and white bread.

[thebiglebowski]

I'm not buying that fruit is ok this month but not next. That makes no sense. It's like saying it is bad for you but if you take a month off to recover from it, then it is ok.

 

It basically admits that fructose is undesirable, but because of the fiber in fruit, it still ends up being kind of good. I agree with this. But why eat fruit to begin with? You can get the same nutrients and fiber out of green vegetables without the fructose. You don't have to trade off fruit sugars and fiber and vitamins. You just take the one your body actually needs and leave the undesirable.

 

Plus, eating sweet food conditions you to want more sweets. It might be all mental and have nothing to do with the automatic processes happening in our body during digestion and metabolism, but it is there.

 

Best thing is to just get used to eating food without sugar.

[nivek87]

Best thing is to just get used to eating food without sugar.

this

[scottheisel]

Yeah, I'm not super-super-strict on my keto diet; I give myself a reasonable window of food to eat from in terms of "everyday" food and "sometimes" food. (For example, the wife is making short ribs for dinner tonight but they had to be rolled in flour first, per the recipe—but I'm not gonna flip out about it.)

 

But really, to lose weight, you just have to stay away from carbs. The easiest way to do that is to READ LABELS. All the info is right there. Here's what you do:

 

-Look at the total grams of carbs for a serving of whatever it is you want

-Then subtract from that number whatever the total grams of dietary fiber is

-The number you're left with is net grams of carbs—this is what the diet is based off of

 

The first two weeks of the keto diet is called the "induction phase"—it's where you should try to limit yourself to no more than 20 net grams of carbs a day. This is HARD. But the reason you do it is that it kickstarts your body into something called ketosis, which is the state your body goes into when it's burning fat. When you limit your carb intake, your body has no choice but to burn all the fat it's stored up over the years. This is how you lose weight. You don't have to exercise (although it always helps), but all you need to do is really watch your intake for the first two weeks. You may experience something called the "keto flu," which can last for a day or two, where you just feel lethargic because of the lack of carbs. (Not everyone experiences this, though—I didn't.) It generally only lasts for 24-48 hours, though, and once you're through it, your body will just start burning fat like it's nobody's business!

 

After the first two weeks, you can increase your net carb intake—I try to keep mine capped at 40g a day, but if I go over by a few, I won't beat myself up over it, as long as I keep it no higher than 50. Some days you'll find you may only eat 5-10 net grams just because you'll be eating so much high-fat/high-protein food throughout the day, you'll be full. Buffets are AWESOME on this diet, as long as you stick to non-fried meat and watch your sauces (most barbecue sauce served in restaurants is really bad, sugar-wise, but hot sauce has ZERO carbs, so you can eat all the hot wings you'd like and it doesn't count toward your carb total AT ALL).

 

Stuff you can eat endlessly:

-meat (the higher in fat content, the better)

-cheese

-butter

-cream (whipped/sour/etc.)

-any green/non-root vegetables (salads/cucumbers/green beans/peas/broccoli/cauliflower/etc.)

 

Stuff to watch out for:

-fruit (fruit has a lot of natural sugars in it, so you have to be very careful with your consumption of it)

-certain veggies (peppers and tomatoes can be consumed but not by the bucketload, as both are "sweet" vegetables with natural sugars)

-milk (milk has a TON of sugar in it—I recommend natural, non-flavored almond milk instead)

 

Stuff to avoid pretty much at all costs:

-non-green/root vegetables (potatoes/carrots/corn/beets/etc)

-sugary stuff (candy, sweet tea, chocolate, etc.—basically dessert is off-limits)

-anything grain-based (bread, pasta, pizza, etc.)

-anything breaded

-anything deep-fried

-most snack foods (chips/pretzels/etc.)

-most fast food (although many places have low-carb options)

-rice

-anything labeled "low fat" or "non fat" — these products sell because people think they're eating healthy, because we've all been trained to think of "fat" as a four-letter word. but if they're removing fat from these products, then that means they need to be putting something in its place—and that's generally sugar.

 

This diet is different for everyone. My friends Josh and Claudio are SUPER-militant about it. Some of my other friends who do it, not so much. I sneak some rice into my diet here and there, and even fried chicken isn't terrible (just consult the restaurant's nutritional information ahead of time—KFC's fried chicken is really carb-heavy, but Church's Chicken isn't). You can still have "cheat days" here and there and indulge a little bit, but you don't want to get too crazy, but it's easy to knock your body back out of ketosis, which means you'll need to start the induction phase all over again.

 

In short: Don't count calories; count carbs!

[thebiglebowski]

Pretty good advice. 40 grams / day of carbs on keto seems high to me but I think you are a bigger guy.

 

Another good rule of thumb -- Read the label. If you see more than 5 grams of sugar per serving, put it back.

[JessRD]

Ahhh! I feel like I have so much to share! Must go to hot yoga though! I'll happily share my thoughts on this when I get back. I did paleo myself for  a little while after getting sucked into it while doing crossfit. I was originally against it. Then rationalized it.  Now am pretty against it, or at least the way I did it.  

[JessRD]

Also, Scott, congrats on your weight loss and better blood sugar control! That's amazing, keep it up!

[3arl]

This summer I ate basically only protein for about a month and a half.  I lost about 25 pounds.  But I fainted one day and decided that I shouldn't continue with that and slowly weened myself back onto a normal diet.

[thebiglebowski]

Keto is just as much about increasing your fat intake as your protein. You are trying to train your body to use fat as a fuel, not protein as a fuel.

 

It's not easy to eat so much protein that you throw your body out of keto but it is possible. You would have to eat a whole lot of tuna fish and chicken breast. Chicken breast isn't as good on keto as some of the fattier parts, like a chicken thigh.

 

60% fat / 35% protein / 5% carbs for your calories is a good goal. This ends up being about equal parts fat and protein by weight, because fat has more calories / pound.