Does the Paleo Diet – also known as the Caveman Diet – actually work?
Will you lose weight naturally?
Will you be able to keep to it?
Those are all the kind of questions you need to be asking when you start any diet.
My first introduction to the Paleo diet was back before that term became commonly used – I bought a book called Neanderthin at around the turn of the century.
It’s a good read.
It goes into all the details you need to know and the recipes are tasty which is always useful if you want to stay on a diet for any length of time.
And, of course, the premise of paleo and similar caveman diets is that the “any length of time” is actually “for the rest of your life”.
The logic behind the paleo diet is simple:
For most of our evolution, we didn’t have agriculture in any meaningful form.
It takes our bodies lots of generations to adapt to change
Our bodies haven’t done that yet (and likely won’t for a few thousand years)
So paleo goes back to what we’d have eaten as hunter gatherers.
Meat and fish that you can catch
Eggs
Fruit and vegetables in season
Nuts and berries
Water
That’s pretty much it.
No grain
Sugar only when it’s naturally occurring in whatever we eat
Fat – but almost certainly a lot less than is found in factory farmed foods
Naturally reared meat – or at least as close as we can get to meat that roams freely
The paleo diet avoids processed food as much as possible.
Ideally completely.
That said, some versions of paleo allow dairy and/or rice.
And quite a few make a special case for allowing coffee.
As you’d probably expect given that we can’t exactly go back in time to check what was happening, there are some variants.
Because paleo is low on carbs and high on fat it attracts controversy.
There’s a natural association in our minds between eating fat and piling it on. Which is wrong (more on that another time).
It’s difficult to do precise studies on weight loss because there are factors you just can’t isolate.
We can’t feed one side of a person a paleo diet and the other side a more conventional one.
But there have been some scientific tests and they’ve actually come to the conclusion that paleo works.
It helps with all sorts of things such as blood pressure, blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels.
And, of course, the thing most of us are ultimately interested in, weight loss.
Which is really good news.
Of course, there are negatives.
It’s not always easy to eat out and avoid sugars and processed foods, although that is improving, most restaurants offer at least some choices that meet the paleo diet requirements and you can always leave the processed sauces and other additives.
And cravings come in to it as well.
That’s why I personally fell off the Neanderthin diet and did the same when I revisited it as a paleo diet.
Maybe I should have persevered.
Maybe you should too.
It’s actually a nice diet to follow.
Bacon and eggs for breakfast, maybe with some grilled tomatoes and mushrooms. Just ignore the toast and the pancakes.
And also ignore the hash browns and (if you’re British) the baked beans.
Lunch and evening meals are essentially low carb. It shares quite a bit with Atkins in that respect.
Drinks shouldn’t be caffeinated – either at all or seldom depending on who you believe.
The less processed your food ingredients are and the more naturally they were produced, the better.
Recipes are all over the place or you can just adapt the ones you already use.
Leave out the kidney beans from the chilli con carne – that’s actually quite easy to do – and decide whether or not you’re going to follow a paleo diet plan that allows you to eat rice or not.
And add some oregano and some cumin to add some variety to the flavour.
If you decide rice is allowed, choose a low-processed version – brown, not white.
If you choose the no rice route, cauliflower rice works as a low carb, low calorie, substitute.
But a quick word of caution…
It’s very easy to try to find substitutes for all the things you think you’re going to miss.
A lot of vegetarians do that: meat substitute, bacon substitute and so on.
Fair enough if you have an intolerance.
And probably fair enough if you’re vegetarian on principle.
But don’t expect a paleo diet to be veggie friendly – it isn’t.
Going back to the substitutes…
I found that I craved them more if I tried to substitute too often.
And I also found that the substitutes were rarely a match for their factory produced distant cousins. Which I guess isn’t surprising as a lot of money goes into creating food that tastes good, doesn’t fill us up too much and therefore sells in big quantities (no pun intended).
You’ll need to make that decision.
Or maybe you’ll work on a 90/10 principle where you’re “good” and stick to the diet 90% of the time but allow yourself to lapse occasionally.
That can work but you need to be disciplined – otherwise the ratio can easily flip the other way and the pounds find their way back on.
A diet buddy also helps – you can keep each other motivated and on track. Especially if you each report your weight and fat percentage to each other every day.
Overall, the Paleo diet works – scientific studies have proven that.
Those same studies have seen a general increase in the well being of the people following the diet as well as weight loss.
It’s tasty and quite varied once you get over the culture shock of missing out potatoes and wheat and a few other things.
It’s definitely worth investigating – follow it for a few weeks and notice how much better you feel,
It goes into all the details you need to know and the recipes are tasty which is always useful if you want to stay on a diet for any length of time.
