Paleo - 2nd thoughts

farmershort

Barefooters
Jun 2, 2011
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Hi All,

apologies for the 2 posts in the same morning!

I've been trying out this paleo thing since reading so much about it on here... i've also been reading loads over on marks daily apple. Anyway, I've been trying it for about 3 or 4 weeks now... sticking too it pretty well, apart from a week or so of getting carried away on the dark chocolate...

I'm noticing more and more that I just dont feel healthy on this diet. the weight is coming off very very slowly - much slower than I thought it would given the massive reduction in carbs. I'm also noticing that I feel very very bunged up (if you know what i mean!). Has anyone else felt this? The fact that some of the world oldest civilizations (I'm thinking IVC here) had simple, mostly vegetarian diets also ring a bit of an alarm bell with me. I do fully understand the fat-burning animal model, vs the carb burning animal model... but if this were all there was, why would some of the worlds most enlightened folk eat veggies and rice?

thoughts greatly welcomed... I to find a realistic eating pattern, to combine with general conscious eating.... my 227 pounds is not doing me any good at all!

Thanks

Adam
 
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Cut out the dark chocolate until you are actually settled into it. Sounds like your body still hasn't made to switch and you are probably going through the Carb flu

oh right... I always assumed the carb flu was just a lack-of-energy type feeling, which I certainly haven't had yet - I also thought is happened to you pretty quickly, but I guess you're saying that the drk choc has been giving me enough sugar to keep me processing sugars instead of fats?

I felt a bit fed up of it this morning on the way to work, so had a grenola bar.... If it is the carb flu type thing, then i guess all i have done is set it back a while! do'h!
 
The length of time of the Carb flu varies in people...I luckily only went through it for only about 3 days and then weight dropped off fast but some can take 2-3 weeks. Thing is in that first month just really stick to it and eat a lot of veggies smothered in organic butter.
 
They ate veggies and rice because that's what they had. Rice, in particular, or whatever their staple grain was.

It's a matter of agriculture. Every civilization has been built on the cultivation of grain of some kind. While grain isn't that healthy a food, it does allow a massive population increase, which of course then mostly has to eat grain. I doubt there's a civilization anywhere that has a staple food that isn't some kind of complex carb.

Civilized people have adapted over thousands of years to eating grain. A meat diet isn't for everyone. My ancestry is mostly from places that weren't civilized until a few hundred years ago (some still aren't), and eating meat works great for me.

Thing about grain vs meat. Meat is digested easily by the stomach and small intestine. Grain isn't, and much of it has to be digested in the large intestine by symbiotic bacteria.
 
No problem I honestly love being paleo. I feel great and food is always delicious. Sadly kind of broke right now though so can't afford to eat perfectly but I try the best I can. However I started back in February at 215 and I'm down to 162 now. Honestly have never felt better.

When you get through it and your body adjusts you won't regret the change. : )
 
Well, serious thanks to those of you who took time out of your day to reply to this post, and to pm me with advice. I hope you don't think I've ignored your advice completely when I make the following statement:

Paleo is not for me....

I cut out sugar last week, including fruit. It did help me get over what may have been "carb flu"... the weight loss seemed to get back on track too. Having said that, I stick with it over the weekend, but had 2 glasses of wine on friday night, and 5 beers on sat night... this morning I'd put on 2KG!

It's not just the weight thing though. I just don't feel like paleo is for me... it just doesn't feel right to eat all of this meat and fat. Don't get me wrong, I've learnt a lot from the theory & the practical application. I shall certainly be continuing to avoid heavily processed grains - breads, etc. I guess I'll opt for small portions of rice and potatoes instead of bread & pasta. I'll keep with the no/low sugar too.... in short, I've learned a lot of useful stuff from the paleo experiment.

I think I'm going to move toward a more sattwic diet, as this make more sense to my yoga brain.

Thanks

Adam
 
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I believe it would be very very hard on the planet if the current population all tried to start eating paleo. That's my big hesitation is groundwater and environmental concerns, and I'm usually not all that much of a tree hugger.
How big is hunting in the UK? I have friends around here who eat lots of meat, but at least at some times of the year they get it from wild animals (that are not in danger of being wiped out). That's grass fed and lean, and you burn a few calories getting dinner.
 
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I believe it would be very very hard on the planet if the current population all tried to start eating paleo. That's my big hesitation is groundwater and environmental concerns, and I'm usually not all that much of a tree hugger.
How big is hunting in the UK? I have friends around here who eat lots of meat, but at least at some times of the year they get it from wild animals (that are not in danger of being wiped out). That's grass fed and lean, and you burn a few calories getting dinner.

Well, hunting is not big at all really - I consider myself on the fringe of the community that does hunt... the only big game which we have are deer. you need a decent rifle to shoot them - .243 or above. It's pretty hard to get a licence for a rifle like that over here - you have to have written permissions from landowners with enough land to justify it, and with proven deer on the land - and it has to be legal to hunt them in that are - i.e. not a national park.

I do snare/shoot rabbits every so often, and i go fishing whenever possible, but that's about the limit. There's a bit of a "shooting" crowd over here... the posh toffs who like to stand in a neat line, all wearing tweed, whilst they blow up a load of pheasants which have been driven toward them... that's just not my idea of hunting at all.

If you can kill it with a shotgun (again, our shotgun shells are much less powerful than some of yours), then it's easier to hunt over here (in terms of permissions, etc), but this limits you to ducks, pheasants, rabbits, pigeons, etc. Tbh... I get bored of picking out the pellets from a shotgun kill.

We are fortunate in that we are small-holders, so can rear our own high-welfare meat. I believe the term "hill jack" is used over in the states... at least it was when i was over in detroit a couple of years ago... you could say that i'm a bit of a hill jack, but without the weaponry....
 
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Hillbilly, but close enough I suppose. :)

lol - no we're all aware of the phrase hillbilly over here ever since that awful beverly hillbillys program.... I got talking with a fordy who lived just outside detroit back in 2010... he said that him and his mates were hill jacks.... it's supposedly hillbillys with brains, or something like that?
 
It would probably be better on the planet if most people went with a higher veggie less meat version of the paleo diet. Which honestly, a large part of me think this is probably closer to how we would have evolved anyway. I mean 2-3 million years isn't that long in the grand scheme of things. So a mostly vegetarian diet with a bit of meat thrown in here and there would seem to be really quite fine on the world.
 
We're omnivores aren't we?

Surely the paleo thing is an over reaction to the opposite over reaction of a reliance of processed grains for the majority of our carb needs.

I have basically been meat free (apart from that barbecue incident :oops:) for about three months, eating only a little fish. I've also been reducing my processed carb intake. I've not lost much weight only 1kg or so (that wasn't the aim) but I do feel healthier and leaner.

This week, without thinking about it I ate pasta two days in a row. The effect on my digestive system was significant and you wouldn't have wanted to share the car with me on my two hour drive to Frankfurt.
 
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I don't know why anyone would think a paleo diet wouldn't involve fruits and veggies. There's a joke in anthro that the mode of production called hunter-gatherer should really be gatherer-hunter, since in many of those societies the gathered fruits, nuts, seeds, veggies, roots, are what constituted the majority of the diet, up to 80-90 percent, and the gathering was usually done by the women. The men would hunt and fish for protein and fat, no less essential, because this required spending more time away from the camp and its children. But they would also contribute to the gathering at times. Examples of mainly flesh-eating diets like those of the polar peoples are few and far between.

The vegetarian argument about helping the planet might not work, because the tendency in capitalism, which is based on infinite expansion of the economy (M-C-M'), is to push up against environmental limits (which are finite) regardless. If fewer people ate animals, that would lead to an increase in people eating plants, because the land devoted to raising animals could support a higher population of plant-eaters. There would simply be more people as the carrying capacity of the earth expanded (unless the whole world achieved middle class status and began having just replacement-level numbers of progeny--a little above 2, on average). Then there would be more people around using up more non-food resources, so it's doubtful if a 'save the planet'-type argument should enter into consideration of diet.

Basically, eat what you think is healthiest/tastiest/easiest/cheapest/best, and the market will respond by cutting down (or planting) as many trees as it takes to feed you and everyone else on that diet, be it animal or plant. Soy, for example, is typically monocropped and wrecks havoc on the soil.

The only reason I can see for vegetarianism is ethical or religious: to spare semi-sentient beings from their evolutionary fate as prey because we humans, being the most sentient of all potential prey, find it somehow immoral or unholy. As I do not hold this view, I see no reason not to use my grill tonight for New York Strip steaks rather than tofu burgers, although if some vegetarian friends stop by, I will not hesitate to go out to the store and get the finest tofu available.
 
There's a joke in anthro that the mode of production called hunter-gatherer should really be gatherer-hunter, since in many of those societies the gathered fruits, nuts, seeds, veggies, roots, are what constituted the majority of the diet, up to 80-90 percent, and the gathering was usually done by the women. The men would hunt and fish for protein and fat, no less essential, because this required spending more time away from the camp and its children. But they would also contribute to the gathering at times. Examples of mainly flesh-eating diets like those of the polar peoples are few and far between.
The only reason I can see for vegetarianism is ethical or religious: to spare semi-sentient beings from their evolutionary fate as prey because we humans, being the most sentient of all potential prey, find it somehow immoral or unholy. As I do not hold this view, I see no reason not to use my grill tonight for New York Strip steaks rather than tofu burgers, although if some vegetarian friends stop by, I will not hesitate to go out to the store and get the finest tofu available.

Very good points Lee, I think a lot of the erroneous information about paleo, atkins etc and erroneous implementation is based on the idea that paleo=meat. In once had someone try and tell me that there was no way our ancient gatherer hunter ancestors would have eaten any source of carbs whatsoever, i.e. no roots, tubers, veggies, berries etc. Faced with such an uneducable mob I decided to forgo further contributions to that thread.

For me, the paleo argument is about removing processed foods and highly refined carbs from our diet, but I also think we tend (in the west) to eat far more meat than is necessary from a nutritional and health viewpoint. The evidence repeatedly shows that the mediterranean diet with more highly coloured veggies, more fish, less meat and good quality fats such as olive oil gives better health, as does the south east asian diet with again less meat, less animal protein and more of that coming from fish.

There is another potential argument for vegetarianism and that is health. I've read a few articles, none that I would consider to be rigorously scientific that suggest that there are longevity benefits of vegetarianism, and other that suggest that in athletes vegetarianism can improve speed of recovery from training and from injury adn generally casue less inflammation in the body.

I also agree by the way that vegetarianism alone is not an environmental solution, most of our current environmental problems come about directly from population pressure and not farming lowland cattle or chickens won't solve that alone, but that's a whole new thread.
 
Very good points Lee, I think a lot of the erroneous information about paleo, atkins etc and erroneous implementation is based on the idea that paleo=meat. In once had someone try and tell me that there was no way our ancient gatherer hunter ancestors would have eaten any source of carbs whatsoever, i.e. no roots, tubers, veggies, berries etc. Faced with such an uneducable mob I decided to forgo further contributions to that thread..

Yah, just as in some of the running running debates on form, barefoot vs. shod, etc., so much in the diet debate is based on ideology/folk notions rather than facts. If you look at our teeth, the length of our intestines, and so on, it is clear that we evolved to be omnivores. If you look at the anthropological record, it is clear that most food came from plants in paleolithic societies.

For me, the paleo argument is about removing processed foods and highly refined carbs from our diet, but I also think we tend (in the west) to eat far more meat than is necessary from a nutritional and health viewpoint. The evidence repeatedly shows that the mediterranean diet with more highly coloured veggies, more fish, less meat and good quality fats such as olive oil gives better health, as does the south east asian diet with again less meat, less animal protein and more of that coming from fish.

Couldn't agree more Dave. I think it's generally a good idea to restrict red meat to just once or twice a week, but man, do I love my steaks on Friday.

There is another potential argument for vegetarianism and that is health. I've read a few articles, none that I would consider to be rigorously scientific that suggest that there are longevity benefits of vegetarianism, and other that suggest that in athletes vegetarianism can improve speed of recovery from training and from injury and generally cause less inflammation in the body.
For me, all health/nutrition/exercise studies are suspect. There's a lot of money involved. I would only consider altering my diet/exercise after years had passed and a research consensus had developed in which there are no obvious conflicts of interest. What I do now pretty much works for me, although I could probably eat 10-20 percent less and do better for it. I consume coffee and beer/wine on an almost daily basis, and I wonder if that is such a good thing, but I'm still awaiting the definitive study to tell me not to . . .
 
Eating insects is something that would need to be done if we were going to "feed the world" on paleo.

Lee, red meat is an excellent source of nutrients and fats it's just that we need to get organic grass fed beef to avoid the chemicals and excess omega-6s due to the animals being grain fed