Ok I'm a little late to the table on this, but I still wanted to share some of my thoughts. US News released a report ranking the Best Overall Diets and the good news is that the Paleo diet is included on the list. The bad news is that it's last...my blink reaction to the list is that I want to see the ranking criteria. Any study or report that includes the Slim Fast Diet and Medi Fast Diet (which feature consuming fortified supplements instead of eating actual food) on the list of the best diets automatically raises a flag for me.
The Top 20 Best Diets....according to US News:
1. DASH Diet
2. Mediterranean Diet
2. TLC Diet
2. Weight Watchers Diet
5. Mayo Clinic Diet
5. Volumetric Diet
7. Jenny Craig Diet
8. Ornish Diet
9. Vegetarian Diet
10. Slim Fast Diet
11. Nutrisystem Diet
12. Vegan Diet
13. South Beach Diet
14. Eco Atkins Diet
14. Zone Diet
16. Glycemic-Index Diet
16. Medifast Diet
18. Raw Foods Diet
19. Atkins Diet
20. Paleo Diet
Jennifer Fugo at Evolving Well wrote a great blog post called Death to the Sandwhich that I think is incredibly relevant to the readers of my blog as well. Check out her post and let me know what you think, its funny that one of the first questions I get when I mention what I eat and don't eat is, what do you eat for lunch! My husband took turkey roll-ups - turkey lunch meat wrapped around spinach and sliced peppers, to work for lunch and got some questions about what the heck he was eating and why didn't he have bread along with his turkey meat. So as Jen asks at the end of her post - if you're eating Paleo or Primal, do you miss eating sandwhiches? What are you eating instead?
One of the foods that I choose to exclude from my diet are grains, primarily because they contain "anti-nutrients" which your body reacts negatively to when you consume them. The most well known of the grain anti-nutrients is gluten. Going gluten free has been pretty trendy lately, and there is a reason why - when people are cutting it out of their food choices generally people feel better. You don't have to be diagnosed with Celiac Disease to see that your body runs better when it's gluten free. Each person's gluten sensitivity varies, and some common health ailments that you have: headaches, allergies, stuffiness, bloating, etc could be related to gluten. The thing is that most people have been eating gluten since they were able to eat solid foods, so its difficult to know how much better you would feel without gluten until you cut it out. The chart shows 3 levels of gluten intolerance: sensitivity, wheat allergy, and celiac disease.
Why do I make it a priority to cook most of my meals, to paleo-ize recipes, to pack lunches and snacks, and to go to the grocery store multiple times a week to keep up a steady supply of fresh foods? It seems like a lot of work, and I feel like all I do at home anymore is cook, eat, and do dishes! So why I do what I do, because I'm striving for optimal not tolerable.
What do I mean by optimal? Think about it from the perspective of a race car - it's designed to run on high octane fuel. If you put regular 87 in it you're putting in a "tolerable" fuel source. The car will still run, but you're going to gunk up your engine and get poor performance out of the car. When you put in the "optimal" fuel, high octane 93 or racing fuel, your car doesn't just run, but it runs optimally - you'll notice that it has great performance, it responds better, etc. Your body responds the same way to what you put in it. Anything with fat, carbs, and protein is considered food. I believe Paleo foods are truly your optimal food source, based on the way your body breaks them down at a nutritional level and then how your body uses those nutrients to fuel your body and brain.
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| Tolerable Breakfast |
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| Optimal Breakfast |
It's true you can get fiber, vitamins, and minerals from grains, legumes, and dairy but these food groups are tolerated by your body and cause a lot of bad things like inflammation and gut irritation when you eat them. You can get the same vitamins, minerals, and fiber (and in larger quantities with more diversity) through eating more vegetables and fruits and eliminating the foods that your body tolerates and replacing them with ones that your body runs optimally on. Why would you want to put things into your body that are sub-optimal, if you are what you eat - I want to be putting optimal foods in so that I can achieve my best in everything I do. Being sharper and more attentive at work, having better workouts and faster recovery, and overall having more energy to enjoy all the activities I do in my daily life.
One of the common questions or concerns about switching to a Paleo diet is that you will be missing out on essential vitamins and minerals: Where are you going to get your fiber? and What about calcium? are two of the most common questions I get. When you compare Paleo based meals to the "healthy" Standard American diet meals you will see that the Paleo meal is always higher in vitamins and minerals every time. You can get fiber naturally from eating whole fruits and vegetables. Calcium is a bit more complicated to understand, but you can get calcium from leafy green vegetables (like broccoli) and when you change to eating Paleo foods you better manage the acid/base balance that your body struggles to maintain - primarily through the leaching of calcium from your bones. Now do you understand how a nation that consumes so much dairy could also have a problem with osteoporosis.
The next time you make a food choice, think about what you are putting in your body - personally I'm going for the real, whole foods verses the newest flavor of cheerios which is claiming to have 20% of my daily recommended intake of fiber. How much fiber do you think is in the veggies in my omelette or in the avacado...definately more than 20% RDA.
Over the past few weeks I've seen this idea of "Resistant Starch, RS" in a variety of places - a friend at the gym told me that they saw it on TV and Rachel Ray was talking about how amazing Resistant Starch is, Health Magazine's Carb Lover's diet is based on the concept of RS, and then another friend sent me this Yahoo article, 8 reasons carbs can help you lose weight. I read through it and was appalled, here are the 8 reasons and my take on them.
1. Eating carbs makes you thin for life - they cite research that "the slimmest people also ate the most carbs, and the chubbiest ate the least" There are no facts at all on how this study was set up, I don't trust it.
2. Carbs fill you up - they claim carbs are an appetite supressant, I don't agree. Fat and Protein have much higher saitey and trigger leptin, the hormone that tells your brain that you're full.
3. Carbs curb your hunger - "According to researchers, when dieters are taken off a low-carb diet and shifted them to an approach that includes generous amounts of fiber and Resistant Starch foods, something wonderful happens: Within two days, the dieters' cravings go away" -- I don't even know where to start with this, what cravings, how low carb are the dieters, really 2 days and cravings go away - no credibility here.
4. Carbs control blood sugar and diabetes - Um no, controlling your blood sugar controls insulin which relates to decreased insulin sensitivty (this is bad). The less insulin sensitive you are, the higher your risk of type 2 diabetes. Fat and Protein have a much lower impact on blood sugar than carbs do and do not contribute to blood sugar spikes -- therefore not negatively impacting insulin sensitivity. So I don't agree that carbs can control your blood sugar or diabetes - since they cause decreased insulin sensitivity and blood sugar spikes.
5. Carbs speed up metabolism - article claims that RS speeds metabolism by not depleting muscle mass, but protein is the real muscle builder in your body so not sure about this claim, I don't think they have much to base this statement on.
6. Carbs blast belly fat - carbs are stored as fat when eaten in excess of immediate energy needs (hint this is easy to do when eating large amounts of carbs). Belly or Abdominal fat specifically is also sepcifically a stress/cortisol issue which doesn't really tie back to carbs at all, I don't agree with this one either.
Crossfit King of Prussia is using the natural motivation of starting a New Year to kick off a primal challenge, to see details of the challenge click here. To help support you on this journey we’ve gathered some of the best resources to help you better understand what you are doing and why you’re doing it. For those who selected to try to Paleo Perfectionist level the material below will be especially helpful.
Some of my favorite and easy to understand resources on the web are: Whole 9 and Mark’s Daily Apple. I am also super geeked-out on Robb Wolf’s podcasts – although these are a bit science-y so they aren’t for everyone. Personally, I get excited every Tuesday when the new one is released.
Good luck, happy reading, and post to comments if there is something that you’re looking for that you don’t see any references to.
Help from Whole 9, how to explain what the heck you’re doing with this nutritional challenge:
The Paleo Pitch. Whole9 helps you explain how you eat to friends, family and co-workers.
Whole 9’s Perspective on Paleo via the Whole 30: Why to avoid gains, legumes, and dairy - found on the Whole 9 Resources Page:
The Grain Manifesto. Whole9′s simplified explanation of the trouble with grains.
Cereal Grains: Humanity’s Double-Edged Sword. Published by Dr. Loren Cordain
The Dairy Manifesto. Whole9′s simplified take on dairy products.
The Adverse Effects of Milk. An analysis from Dr. Loren Cordain and Pedro Bastos
The Peanut Manifesto. Whole9′s simplified take on peanuts.
Robb Wolf’s Perspective on Paleo and Getting Started:
Paleo Overview -What is the Paleo diet?
Basics of the Paleo diet - Answers about diabetes, cardio vascular disease, autoimmunity, calcium, acid/base balance, and more
Get Started - I want to give Paleo a shot. How do I do it?
Mark’s Daily Apple Resources:
The Definitive Guide to Grains – Why are grains not part of a primal lifestyle and Why Grains are Unhealthy
The Definitive Guide to Dairy – Why dairy is problematic and how to incorporate it (or not) into your primal lifestyle
The Definitive Guide to Sleep - Why sleep is important, and why you need to get more of it!
The Definitive Guide to Fats – a primal lifestyle goes against conventional wisdom of eating a low fat diet, if increasing your fat intake is concerning you, check out this post and see why fat is good for you!
Summary
Need a quick visual of what your food should look like, use the Balanced Bites food pyramid as your Paleo Food Guide.
What we think we know about grains based on everything you've heard and been told by your friends, family, doctors, the food pyramid, your health teacher, and the media is that whole grains are healthy and good for you and should be a staple in your diet. Whole grains are included "as part of a complete breakfast" and to help fulfill you RDA, Recommended Daily Amount, of vitamins and minerals as well as fiber. Americans regularly eat bagels, donuts, pastries, cereal, muffins, toast - all grain based breakfast foods in addition to sandwiches, pizza, rice and pasta at lunch or dinner.
So why did I change my diet and go from eating a loaf of bread a week as a high carb/low fat believer in whole grains to going Paleo and no longer eating grains at all? I started to learn more about grains and found that grains aren't as much good as 'they' say.
First, lets define what is a grain?
Wheat, Rye, Barley, Flour (made from any grain), Oats, Cereals, Corn...yes corn is a grain, Rice, Quinoa*, Couscous
Why I don't eat Grains:
Grains contain Lectins that cause inflammation and cause auto-immune responses:
Lectins = Proteins found in grains (Gluten is one of them) that cause an inflammatory response and break down and actually attack your intestinal lining because your stomach acid is unable to break them down. When they attack the lining of your gut, it creates small holes that enable both lectins and other things to 'leak' outside of your digestive system and into your blood stream. When this happens both harmful and non-harmful particles can enter your body, so your body attacks them causing an inflammatory response often associated with auto-immune diseases (like Multiple Sclerosis, Celiac Disease and Rheumatoid Arthritis). In addition to the inflammatory response your body is attacking itself and diverting attention away from being able to attack other things. With constant re-exposure to grains your gut never has time to heal, and therefore the damage persists and gets worse each time you eat more grains.
Celiac Disease = extreme form of reaction to the lectin gluten, so for people that are gluten intolerant the attacking of the gut lining and response is extremely bad. Robb Wolf, a former research biochemist turned Paleolithic Nutrition and Strength & Conditioning coach, states that all people are gluten intolerant to some degree; try taking grains (especially ones containing gluten) out of your diet and see what clears up...allergies, colds, energy spikes and lows, stuffy nose in the morning, headaches and more.
Eating grains, legumes, and dairy cause inflammation in your body because your body actually identifies portions of them as foreign? You can reduce inflammation by removing these things from your food; however, it takes about 30 days to allow your gut to heal from the damage that grains, legumes, and dairy cause. Are you ready to try it for 30 days? Try the Whole 30 program from the Whole 9 as a challenge.
