Eat Paleo NOW! – For your health’s sake!
***UPDATE***
We have recently started a Q2 (quality and quantity) program. Paleo foods, Zone quantities. For more, click on the Nutrition link at the top of the page.
Paleo. Paleo Diet. Short for Paleo-lithic, meaning the era from millions of years ago to maybe 10,000 B.C. (depending on your philosophical timeline, I won’t argue that today). We’re talking about folks living before any existence of modern agriculture. The Paleolithic diet is considered by many to be a diet consisting of foods our bodies were designed to eat. When our bodies are fueled by the foods that our DNA expects to consume, we find ourselves in a place of health and efficiency few have known during our generations.
Kerry and I recently dove full-on, head-first into the Paleo (www.thepaleodiet.com) way of eating. We’ve known the merits of this way of eating from early on in our CrossFit days, but like many, baby steps were important. We started our CrossFit journey by simply Zoning. (www.zonediet.com) We got rid of a lot of crap from our diet, but still kept a lot of it in our diet. But we saw fat-loss and muscle growth as we were eating more protein, more fats, better carbs and certainly less food altogether. Slowly we deleted most sugars, then most grains. Ultimately, we hung on too tight to our “cheat weekends” so the cycle never really broke completely.
Like many CrossFitters, there comes a time where just zoning doesn’t cut it anymore. We find ourselves in a place of knowledge about performance and nutrition and it starts to become silly that we eat any bread whatsoever. Never mind whole grain, or sprouted wheat, or some other substitute for the white crack. Why eat it at all? The same goes for artificial sweeteners. They’re just substitutes for the real thing, so why eat them at all? Dairy? Do I need it? No. Is it bad for me? There is information about dairy proteins and the digestive system in humans that some folks debate, but I won’t. I don’t need it, so it’s gone now too.
So what are we eating now? Coach Glassman said it best in his now-famous “World Class Fitness in 100 words” when he said; “Eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar.” It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
I talk to folks about how I eat, give them that sentence, and it usually met with a question like, “What about BLANK, is that considered a BLANK?” I have come into the habit of responding by saying, “Don’t think of this as a list of foods that you try to fit everything into to make it OK, but rather as a list of foods to eat. If it’s not on the list, don’t eat it.” This invariably will preclude any question about fruit that isn’t whole fruit, grains that act like vegetables, carbonated beverages laced with chemicals and more chemicals, or non-breads that are really just bread. This enlightenment makes eating (and deciding what to eat) a remarkably simple process. Variety becomes a challenge, but it’s a fun challenge. Finding new ways to cook the same foods can be hard sometimes, but it encourages us to explore our options and find new things to eat that we might not have tried before.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t about food, the goal is better health, longer life, and increased performance during our CrossFit workouts. A lot has been written, by folks a lot smarter than me, about the health benefits of the Paleo diet. There just isn’t anything bad to say. I’ve yet to come across anyone who’s tried it and felt worse. Almost exclusively, folks feel so good they can’t believe they waited this long. “I could’ve been eating like this all along!” Yep. However, as twenty-first century humans, we’re conditioned into eating packaged, processed, convenient sources of energy that counteract everything our bodies were meant to do.
Our bodies want to regulate body fat stores. Yet we continually stuff our faces with sugar and flour, driving up insulin, which literally mandates fat storage. Our bodies store the energy but we counteract the next step. Instead of using the fat for energy, we’re forced to store more because our insulin gets spiked again by our next high-carbohydrate meal. This cycle happens again, and again. This continues all summer, all winter… year after year. We do not live off the land like our distant relatives so many years ago. Our bodies are in a continued state of storage for an eventual day that isn’t coming. No famine, no fasting, no drought to dry our lands, or winter that depletes our food stores. We eat, and eat and eat and eat 365 days a year. And we get fat!
This regular intake of processed carbohydrate and sugars, and the subsequent spike in insulin does many other things to our bodies besides the excess storage of fat. It causes inflammation, elevated blood pressure, elevated blood lipids, diabetes and many other diseases only associated with modern, western civilization. I am well under-qualified to talk about these topics, but a quick google search or visit to your favorite medical reference site to find the connections between carbohydrate, insulin, and these conditions, will provide you with more information that you probably want to find. There are a few good books that even the layman can read. Checkout the library or your local bookstore in the health section. The effects of carbohydrate and insulin on our health are serious and widespread, and this information is really beginning to flow to the masses.
In closing, I want to introduce you to my brother, Rich. He’s not a CrossFitter….yet. 
He’s 3 years younger than I, almost 36 years old now. Like me, he had some pretty bad eating habits. He recently was given a wake-up call from his doctor. I asked him to write a paragraph about why he’s now almost a month into the Paleo diet, and how he feels.
Just about 1 month ago today, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. My blood sugar level was 155 fasting and 255 after meal. At the age of 35 I was a bit surprised by this diagnosis, but not totally. I ate what I wanted. I ate too much sugar, too much bread, too much pasta, too much processed crap. I am 6 foot 1 and I weighed 270 on my day of diagnosis. I also have been on medication for high blood pressure for 2 years. This diagnosis was unacceptable to me at this age with 2 young boys at home. Literally seconds after my doctor told me, I decided it was time to change for real. I’ve tried switching to diet soda before, and lowfat this and that. Turkey instead of red meat or bacon… whatever. None of that did squat for me. My brother had been telling me for some time now about how to get healthier… and I just ignored it. But now was the time to try something real. I immediately cut my sugar and carbohydrates to as little as possible. I follow a simple plan that my brother taught to me that he calls “Paleo”. It basically consists of eating meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. I cheat with some cheese here and there, and the occasional sugar free snack. But for the most part I stick to the rules 99%. Well to make this long story short, in one month I have lost as of today (28 July) 23 pounds, gotten my blood sugar COMPLETELY under control, usually in the 90 range fasting and 110 range after a meal. And I’ve gotten my blood pressure down to where I’m certain my doctor will take me off the meds next time I see her. And most impressive to me about this diet is that I feel great. I really thought that cutting carbs would make me feel tired, but it doesn’t. And I’ve learned to eat so many more foods that I never liked before. I missed sweets for maybe 3 or 4 days. But now I don’t miss them at all. I don’t think about cookies. When I’m hungry I think about a nice piece of fish pan fried in olive oil with some pepper and lemon juice on it. That’s my new candy. This is how we were meant to eat. I just feel it. ~Rich
That’s from the mouth of a Paleo-newb. Only one month in and he already “gets it”. While he did this for health reasons, the quality-of-life effects are already apparent to him. His wife is on the train with him, as are his two boys. One decision has changed four lives. Why not you? Why not today?
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Bob, that is fantastic that Rich has this success doing this. I am sure this is far from normal when people switch over to a mainly Paleo lifestyle. Of course, we are human, and we deviate every so often but we know what is the best way and we don’t deviate hard.
This is a great blog, I am going to reproduce this on my blog today to share this.