Primal Instincts
Jun/093
Time to clean up the Diet!
so easy a caveman could do it...
I have switched to the Paleolithic Diet . After a lot of research and testing, I can confirm this diet is truly optimal for energy and weight management. Not to mention all the health benefits you can can get from removing all the processed foods we are bombarded with in America. This is not a diet so much as it is a lifestyle change. I recommend everyone give it a try. It’s basic premis is to limit the food you consume to what you could have caught or gathered with your bare hands!
Under this model I will not restrict myself to a caloric limit. Instead I will let myself eat when I am hungry, but only natural, raw (or safely cooked) foods that our paleolithic ancestors could have eaten.
These Include:
· Meat, chicken and fish
· Eggs
· Fruit
· Vegetables (especially root vegetables, but definitely not including potatoes or sweet potatoes)
· Nuts, eg. walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, almond. Do not eat peanuts (a bean) or cashews (a family of their own)
· Berries- strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc.
· Root vegetables- carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, Swedes
You will notice a significant difference in performance as your body gets used to the clean whole foods that can be easily digested in your diet. These foods are much more filling than processed foods so you will naturally tend to eat in a more controlled fashion.
Good Luck, Stay Strong.
8:54 pm on September 20th, 2009
Wait a sec (BTW, this is Sarah–Megan’s old college roomie), I thought sweet potatoes were not actually potatoes, AND that they were low on the glycemic index, AND that they were a miracle food. What’s up with that? Please do explain.
And I find you sight fascinating. Well done!
9:42 pm on September 20th, 2009
Hey Sarah! Your right! A sweet potato is a root, but it’s classified the same on the Glycemic index. A sweet potato has tons of nutrients and can be a great source of carbohydrates. This particular diet approach is based of the ides that all humans were meant to eat only certain foods as we evolved as omnivore’s. This mainly consists of foods we could have foraged for or killed with our bare hands. So technically a sweet potato is considered a root or tuber, however its a far stretch from the types our caveman ancestors would have enjoyed. These roots, like a sweet potato or turnip, are much more starchy. That being said you can make this diet work for you, most roots are typically excellent sources of indigestible fiber that help support the normal microbes of the intestinal tract, especially so if the skins and peels are eaten. The main thing I try to convince people of with this diet is that your food should be eaten fresh and raw or as close to raw as it can safely be consumed. Consuming processed foods is the easiest way I know to add extra sugar, fats, and salt to your daily diet. For additional reading I would refer you to a very well done paper on the Paleolithic (caveman) diet, you can find it here