Every time that I plan to go on the Paleo Diet, the world presents me with a warm donut.
For the past couple of weeks, I have had countless conversations with the Bread Police. My friend, Cynthia, told me that after she went gluten-free, her hypo-thyroid went into reverse and became hyper-thyroid. She said that she has a ton of energy and no longer needed her medication, but the hyper-thyroid means that she doesn't sleep very well.
Lisa, my friendly CSA farmer, told me that she went on the Paleo Diet (no beans, no bread, no pasta, nothing that a caveman wouldn't have found in a forest) and lost a ton of weight and gained a pile of energy.
I've always been pretty thin by leading a decidedly, un-healthy lifestyle. Really, I was just too lazy to eat. But this winter, middle age and excessive hours in front of a computer or at Starbucks (love that banana-nut loaf) caught up with me. I feel mushy around the tummy. Also, my CSA shares have arrived giving me ample opportunities to reform my banana-loaf ways.
I would say that we're at a 50% success rate. I can't present my kids with a meal of beets and veggie burgers without a revolt. I also find it incredibly boring to be constantly cooking vegetables. If you don't eat carbs, you have to cook and eat very often.
Anybody else try this diet?
Apt. 11d 
My dad claims he lost 20 pounds on this diet. He’s a very fit man, though, and exercises a lot. So it was probably a combination. I recently cut out refined sugar and started jogging. I have no idea if I’ve lost weight. I feel slightly less squishy. Jogging seems to do a number on my back, though, so I’m not sure I can keep up with it. I might take up swimming. I hate to obsess over weight and appearance issues because I feel like I’m caving to the media/societal messages. I, too, am thin without really trying (though a bit squishy). Part of me wants to just say, the hell with it, and see what happens.
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I haven’t gone full Paleo since I do eat beans, but I have loved giving up all grains and dairy. No more sinus problems, lost weight, more energy. On every other diet I have ever tried, I thought about food all the time. ALL the time. On this one, I just don’t. I eat until I am full, I don’t obsess about food and the weight just came off. I’ll never go back.
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I’m sure you could lose weight with the “slice of banana cream pie locked in a safe with rusty lock-picking kit” diet, if it end up with you eating fewer calories or burning more calories than you otherwise would. These fad diets are all the same — people who lose weight on them are the ones who are most motivated to lose weight, and everyone else can lose a little because the first few pounds are easy, and then gain it all back plus.
I read a depressing article on weight loss the other day that explains that a person who weighs 250 pounds needs 3,000 calories a day to maintain their weight, while a person who weighs 150 pounds needs only 2,300. So, if you want to lose 100 pounds, your choices are to either drastically reduce your calorie intake and be miserable (because eating 700 pounds a day less than your maintenance needs is very difficult), or else you cut your intake by just a few hundred calories, and you will lose weight until you hit a new plateau ten or twenty pounds later, and then have to cut calories again to continue losing weight.
http://www.economist.com/node/21526789
Meanwhile, I’m down 35 pounds since November on my “eat a Met-Rx bar and a liter of water for breakfast every day” diet, which has worked for me because it fills me up and then I’m not hungry again until 3PM, when I have a late-lunch/ early-dinner and then I’m done. (I keep extra Met-Rx bars in the fridge for late night munchies. They aren’t actually ‘healthy’ or anything, but they are probably better than a whole pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food.)
At this point, I could practically be the “Jared from Subway” of Met-Rx bars, but honestly I doubt it would work for anyone else, just like I could never lose weight on Weight Watchers or e-diets or whatever. You just have to keep trying until you find what works, and if that is the “Paleo Gluten Free Ciliac Disease” diet more power to you. I know lots of people who lost weight on Atkins — I didn’t, but I believe that it really worked for them — but apparently that’s not the fad today.
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1. You think that hyperthyroid is great, because you lose weight & have lots of energy. But the tradeoff is, your body is leaching stuff out of your bones & organs. Also, it’s hard on your heart. Just speaking from experience here. Euthyroid is sometimes difficult to get to, but it’s worth it. Not too much, not too little.
2. ISTM that cutting out HUGE parts of the human diet is not sustainable for the vast majority of adults, or even reasonable. (“Let me give you this impossible to follow diet & criticize you when you fail.”) Also, I’ll bet your CSA-farmer is still fairly carb heavy (carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc.). I know the paleo people like to sub cauliflower for everything, but that gets old fast, even if you like cole veggies. And there’s a limit to how many times a week you can consume kale.
So my point is . . . eat less, exercise more, eat smart. No extremes.
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Just joined Overeaters Anonymous (I have a serious food problem). The plan my nutritionist came up with includes no dairy, no sugar, no flour, and so far it’s working. (How well? Lord knows. We’re only allowed to weigh ourselves once a month — but my clothes feel less tight!)
I did lose a lot of weight rather quickly a few years ago on the raw food diet (like paleo, but don’t bother cooking the vegetables. Just eat them raw). My skin got really, really clear and smooth, I had a ton of energy and my hair looked good. Found it hard to stick to longterm, however.
Lately, I’ve been feeling called to give up meat as well. We’ll see how that goes.
At this point, my kids are still eating really unhealthy food and I’m not imposing my beliefs on them. However, last night, they DID notice that my “diet plate” had twice as much food on it as anybody’s elses — grilled chicken, lots of salad, grilled vegetables. They seem intrigued by the idea that you can eat MORE if you eat the right stuff.
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Forgot to add that yes, preparing & cooking veggies can be very time consuming. At least you’re getting them delivered regularly, but if not, add in the time to be frequently acquiring them. And, veggies (other than frozen) generate a lot of waste which not everyone has a good way to deal with.
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FWIW, I’m hypothyroid and the Paleo diet did nothing for me. I suppose it’s because I come from a long line of folks who survived primarily on the foods the Paleo diet shuns (rice, pasta, bread, beans). Maybe it works better for folks whose ancestors were heavily reliant on meat and dairy.
For me, the crucial key to weight loss is getting enough calories. If you’re working out, or doing physical labor, cutting back as if you were sedentary just lowers your metabolism. When I gained weight after becoming hypothyroid, I ramped up my weekly workout hours and intensity of activity—and continued to either plateau or slowly gain…..until I stopped working out, upon which I would lose weight, before putting it back on again once I commenced workouts. Very frustrating. Now when I need to lose, I keep track with a calculator that insures I’m eating enough—I think Weight Watchers does this, but the one at Livestrong is free (you plug in your meals and your workouts, and it calculates how many calories you need).
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Also, to go along with what Tasha said about euthyroid—cruciferous veggies are delicious, but only in moderation; they can impact TSH levels. If I eat moderate amounts they don’t bother me, but soy kills my thyroid—even simple energy bars impact my levels.
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I did the Paleo thing after having my second child and it worked well to take off the pregnancy weight. Now, I try to limit my grains and sugars but that’s about it. I’ve never struggled with my weight and I’m not someone who is sensitive to carb intake so it’s not really necessary for me to adopt the diet fully.
The time it took to prep the food was one of the main reasons I stopped. And I generally like food prep. My guess is that with cutting out so many foods groups and keeping food groups that are inconvenient, that some part of the benefit of Paleo is due to caloric restriction. I know the Paleo people say you can eat as much of the allowable foods as you want but in practice I’d guess most people are eating far fewer calories when they switch from a typical American diet to a Paleo one. Like Ragtime said, there is only so much kale you can eat.
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Oh, and the other reason I stopped is that, despite eating tons of fruits and veggies on the Paleo diet I couldn’t, ahem, keep the pipes as clean as I’d like. Tried everything and it appears I need some grains for the operation to run smoothly.
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“I suppose it’s because I come from a long line of folks who survived primarily on the foods the Paleo diet shuns (rice, pasta, bread, beans).”
That would be a very interesting thing for somebody to do actual research on. It does seem likely that if you ate the same diet as somebody whose ancestors had been mostly eating blubber for thousands of years, the two of you might have very different results.
(I personally LOVE pastries and the Starbucks oeuvre. At the same time, I notice that no matter how much I eat of starch/fruit/veggies, there’s a little voice in my head saying “That was nice. Now, where’s the real food?” A better diet for me would probably involve cutting out the less nutritious stuff that evokes that response.)
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I don’t find food prep all that time consuming. I make a fruit salad (canteloupe, kiwi and strawberries or oranges, grapefruit and pineapple) on Sundays, but otherwise just chop before cooking. I mostly roast veggies, so it is just chop, toss with oil and herbs and shove in the oven. I take leftovers to work the next day.
I think people have a problem if they are trying to pretend that something is pasta or whatever. It isn’t and pretending it is just leads to feelings of deprivation.
Of course, the veggie prep probably doesn’t bother me because I was vegan for a while. I quit that because I kept getting anemic (despite very careful eating) and having to take B12 and iron pills which are really hard on your body.
I have been doing this for about 4 years, so it is sustainable for me. I will eat bread on occasion. I use to try that with dairy, but every time I paid for it with sinus headaches and waking up with ..uh phlegm.. the next day. With the feedback of eat this feel like crap it was easy to just stop.
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Amy P: I agree; it would be interesting to see actual research on heritage and most-beneficial diets. I just assume that because of the known connection between heritage and lactose intolerance; it’s not too far a stretch to assume the same for carbs.
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I think that one of the strengths of the paleo diet is excluding what comes with all those grains – lots of fat and refined sugars. Think of the cereals and muffins and cakes, etc.
No magic bullet (beyond addressing food intolerances and allergies) – burn more calories than you eat, you lose weight. Just getting a bit more active (forget the gym think daily walking) can make a big difference.
But that after 40 slower metabolism DOES have me spinning a few times a week!
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I managed to go from no hard exercise to a half marathon without losing a pound.
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MH – all things being equal, I would guess that your percentage of muscle went up.
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Gina Kolata (a NYT writer on science) had a book out last year: “Rethinking Thin” that explored some of these diets and how people approach them.
None of them have any strong scientific basis (the data usually come out mixed, with minor differences that go away, with the critical problem that almost all diets fail, in the sense that people who use them gain back the weight in fairly short amounts of time).
Right now, most of the data could be explained by Ragimes hypothesis — that any of these diets cause people to alter their food behavior, and that their effectiveness is dependent on how long they alter the behavior with respect to the input/output energy function.
The one thing that I am still waiting for the end evidence on is whether a reasonably large number of people are diabetic/pre-diabetic in the way that their bodies process sugars (and carbohydrates) and whether this group can be identified and a diet designed specifically for them. Diabetic diets aren’t directly related to obesity, but diabetics do definitely process carbs differently than typical individuals, and their processing has a number of systemic effects, that can be mitigated by things like balancing carbs/proteins, smaller meals, and exercise immediately following meals.
I still think the bottom line is variety and balance and exercise and that for families where 1) there’s a natural tendency towards thinness, like Laura’s, 2) a fair amount of home cooking, with variety and interest that shock-methods of altering food behavior probably aren’t necessary. I’m guessing there would be little benefit to following a Paleo diet v just using more of the CSA produce in cooking, and making sure you leverage the food (which Laura does every summer).
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bj said:
“The one thing that I am still waiting for the end evidence on is whether a reasonably large number of people are diabetic/pre-diabetic in the way that their bodies process sugars (and carbohydrates) and whether this group can be identified and a diet designed specifically for them.”
We had a long-term diabetic houseguest (Type 1) during the height of Atkins mania, and I noted similarities between the two diet protocols at the time. (In either case, ketoacidosis has to be watched out for, but for different reasons.)
laura said:
“I can’t present my kids with a meal of beets and veggie burgers without a revolt.”
There are a lot of carb-loving little kids (all those infamous kids who won’t touch anything but plain pasta), and my current thinking is that that may be developmental, rather than something than needs to be vigorously battled on all fronts from day one. Eating stuff that tastes yucky is a good way to win a Darwin Award, so there’s survival value in dietary conservatism in children. (My 7-year-old is finally beginning to come to terms with tomato sauce.) If a child will eat a variety of stuff (mine have always had a pretty good tolerance for Indian and Asian food), that’s fantastic, but they don’t have to eat everything just this minute.
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Doesn’t the Paleo diet imply that caveman were the pinnacle of health? What was the average age expectancy for them? 35-40.
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I also think that kids often have much more acute taste buds than adults. I’ve recently discovered that my 9-year-old has an uncanny gift for detecting when milk is about to go off. She starts complaining about the taste about 2 days before I can detect anything wrong with the milk, and I have learned to trust her judgment.
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LisaV (Vindauga) and LeslieMB (Clutter Museum) — I don’t know if you read them, but they have been blogging recently about their success with a similar paleo diet. and, of course, Heather Armstrong. I guess it’s all the rage now among bloggers. 😉
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(sorry for not providing the links, I can if you’re interested)
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Lillian is right. I’ve been doing it since February. Though the first couple of weeks I don’t know I was. I just gave up processed foods and felt better. Then I noticed similarity to paleo and primal. I read some of their tips and believe some and question others. I don’t eat as much fat as they suggest and do eat dairy (full fat greek yogurt or a full fat latte) every day. It’s true that I’ve reduced my calories/carbs, but I eat more food. Like Ragtime said, probably any diet does this. The difference to me is that as Tulip says, I’m not hungry. Ever. I don’t obsess about food. My blood sugar is stable and I’m not constantly feeling crashes because I ate simple carbs. I’m eating the healthiest, most nutrient dense diet of my life.
I don’t miss the bread, donuts or anything else enough to make me think I’ll go back. This isn’t a diet, this is a way of life. My kids are eating better and are way more conscious of what they are eating and whether its healthy or not. There is no cereal in my house. No mac and cheese. One loaf of bread a week is about all they eat. They like chicken and turkey and are learning to like more seafood. If they want crap, they eat it out of the house. I truly believe the food industry is as evil as the tobacco industry and talk about the political implications of eating twinkies or fast food. Sometimes they roll their eyes, and sometimes they listen. If they want treats I encourage them to bake, and sometimes they do. I’ve asked that the one thing they do is never consume soda, and so far they haven’t.
As far as prep goes, I’ve always cooked fairly intensive meals, this is easy. The kids have even commented how easy it is to clean up now that we roast some vegetables, saute some chicken and throw together a salad. It’s easy for the most part.
I’ve lost 30 lbs, I’d like to lose more but if my body stays here, it does. I can’t see how I can go back to eating stuff that makes me feel bad now that I know how easy it is. I wish I’d learned this decades ago.
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I think the idea might be that our bodies evolved for the “paleo” diet, rather train paleos are healthy. The problem is, as you point out that evolutionary pressure only works as far as reproductive success, and 70 year old paleos probably weren’t very important in ensuring reproductive success.
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For me, there really is something about simple carbs (including whole grain) that just triggers more eating. I have people telling me all the time that it isn’t a good idea to just cut grains and dairy, that I should just do portion control and exercise.
I already exercise, I have always exercised. And portion control doesn’t work for me. I obsess over food, whether I am physically hungry or not. Portion control is a constant act of will. It’s miserable.
With this, I don’t think about food. I do occasionally eat some bread, or even cake at a party. It makes a huge difference because I will then spend a day or two craving, CRAVING sweets. But if I make it past those two days, it goes away and I’m fine. This diet is a way of life that allows me to control my eating and focus on other things.
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Actually, bj, I’m reading Sarah Hrdy’s _Mothers and Others_ (she’s a sociobiologist/anthropologist) right now and she has a whole chapter about the importance of postmenopausal (i.e. grandmothers) women in hunter-gather communities — apparently, they were the hardest/best workers in terms of reliably bringing in the fruits and nuts that the tribe subsisted on.
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“…she has a whole chapter about the importance of postmenopausal (i.e. grandmothers) women in hunter-gather communities — apparently, they were the hardest/best workers in terms of reliably bringing in the fruits and nuts that the tribe subsisted on.”
50-70 might be very productive years, while 70+ might be pushing it.
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The personal anecdotes here seem like they’re a lot about how particular food plans allow particular individuals to modify their behavior to eat better, with the specifics varying from person to person (in satiety, control, cravings, . . .).
I think food behavior is pretty poorly studied, and it’ll be interesting to see more research on it.
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I think food behavior is pretty poorly studied, and it’ll be interesting to see more research on it.
Yes, it would! And I think it’d be cool to see where the physical/psychological breakdown is. Carbs are crucial for me—carb-heavy meals give me that perfect feeling of satiety (which is probably why I find it easy to eat a relatively low-fat diet, between 20-25%). But is that because of genetic factors? Or the psychological effect of upbringing (what feels/tastes like “real food”)? or my activity level? Whatever the reason, I can’t deal with paleo—and it isn’t the raw veggie and fruit intake that trips me up (love crunchy veggies and salads!), but the lead-in-the-gut levels of meat and the run-to-the-bathroom levels of dairy. I’m inclined to think it’s partly genetic, but I think it’s also force of habit/upbringing. I think once we get away from what “feels” like food (and more into what “feels” like a program or assignment)…that’s when any positive diet change falls to crap. It has to feel like second-nature in order to be sustainable enough to work.
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“what feels/tastes like “real food””
There’s a lot of cluelessness (of the form of imagining that culture that you don’t understand really well functions a particular way based on your own projections) in the book about french kids eating habits
(French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters by Karen Le Billon)
But one idea that strikes a chord with me is her description of how consciously educating children about food is taken in France. Individual parents don’t just decide what individual children eat (or buy lunchables, or see adverts for them). Kids are fed a variety of foods, determined by adults, based a cultural history of food goals. I think she’s being clueless when she suggests this will work for every child, or does work for every child in France, but I can also see how the palate can be educated.
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Heh. That’s pretty much what I did with my daughter, because that’s the way I was raised (Sicilian-American, not French, but food is A Really Big Deal for us, too). Lots of not just home cooking, but talk about food, education on flavor/texture/technique, critiquing of food (as in *why* something works or doesn’t)….that sort of thing. I didn’t realize it at the time, it was just one of those unconscious Things We Do, and I did it. She’s almost thirteen now, and is really only now starting to realize that not everyone does that, or cares to—that food is just fuel (or, not that big a deal) to some folks.
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@ Amy P — I had to finish the book before I could respond. Hrdy cites consensus among “demographic anthropologists, evolutionary-minded histroians, and human biologists who study life history patterns across primates that the bodies of homo sapiens are “designed” to last about 72 years” (242). She later on briefly discusses cultural practices for dealing with those (here focused on women) who have outlived their usefulness (including reverse solicitude, voluntary euthanasia, and execution) (270). So yes — years 50-70 highly productive, and 70+ not so much.
@ La Lubu — she also refernce a 2007 report in _Nature Genetics_ that “revelaed that people like the Hadza who rely on roots and tubers have accumulated extra copies of a gene positively correlated with salivary amylase enzymes useful for the digestion of starch. Such copies are absent in Siberian Yakut herders and others with little starch in their diets” (256). [reference: George Perry et al., “Diet and the volution of human amylese gene copy number variations” _Nature Genetics_ 39: 1256-60]. So there is some work out there on this.
And now I’m off to do the work I read the book for 😉
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I call our diet Paleo-light. Not grain free, but very low grain and certainly gluten free. Not legume free, but beans are not a staple in our home. Otherwise, yeah, we follow something a lot like it. Low glycemic, pretty low carb, piles of fresh veggies and fruits, a decent amount of fermented foods, a focus on grassfed/pastured meat and eggs, wild caught fish, etc. I probably over-rely on nuts as dairy (and grain) substitutes, but in general, the diet works well for us, and the Paleo and Primal blogs delve into the details of foodstuffs and how they affect the body, which is helpful.
Is it time consuming to prepare whole foods all the time and not rely on packaged and take-out? Well, yeah. But the trade off is worth it. I’m not in it to lose weight (though that’s a plus). I’m in it to boost my family’s health. And you do learn new shortcuts over time, and new comfort foods, etc.
This might be of interest. It’s a discussion comparing paleo to vegan, but in so doing, it takes a good look at the benefits and potential drawbacks of each, as well as what the diets entail.
One question: why veggie burgers? They’re not exactly Paleo.
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I’m also in the relatively effortlessly thin camp, though I’m youngish and haven’t had kids, so I’ll have to wait and see if I can keep that up (my immediate family is all thin, so I am lucky in the genetic camp though). I am very much pro-carb and pro-dairy, mainly because I am contrarian, and I’ve been eating both since birth with no ill effects. I do try to eat whole grains and avoid refined flour except in desserts (I have a huge sweet tooth). I also avoid processed foods, and try to cook things from scratch or buy things where I can understand all the ingredients, mainly because I absolutely hate how so much stuff has corn syrup snuck into it, and since I love sweets, I’d rather limit my sugar intake to stuff that actually tastes sweet. I also try to avoid all sweetened or heavily caloric beverages that aren’t alcoholic (or nutritious), so I just drink water, unsweetened coffee, tea and on occasion milk.
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I was raised like La Lubu in an Italian-American family with lots of home cooked food, vegetables, and food talk. My mom made certain concessions to my mid-western Dad, so it wasn’t a perfect Mediterranean diet, but it was close. (Dad didn’t like fish.) This Paleo diet isn’t that different from a good Italian diet. It’s Italian without the side of pasta.
My downfall is when I’m rushing and don’t have time to cook. I have a deadline. The kids need to be in two different town at the same time. Or I get a headache trying to cook something that everybody likes to eat, so I give up and order a pizza.
(tamar – I just like to say “veggie burger.” I know it’s not related to the Paleo Diet._
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I have done the Paleo diet and I was hungry all the time. ALL THE TIME. It was awful. Also, my, um, output changed so much it weirded me out. I did lose weight, though.
I love veggies and can totally cut meat out of my diet but not eating bread and rice and beans is a lot more difficult for me. Also, we live in developing countries a lot where meat is either expensive and/or of questionable origin. I just can’t bring myself to buy the beef out of the butcher’s shop after I’ve seen all the flies humming around it.
Is the Paleo diet one of those “wealthy country” diets that you can’t really do outside of the first world? I managed but it wasn’t fun. We’re in the Middle East right now, with the world’s best hummus right at my doorstep. I couldn’t resist even if I wanted to.
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