Paleo diet
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lemurcat12 wrote: »Oh, and I will say again that it's NOT especially time consuming or difficult, IMO.
It's more restrictive than I think is necessary (mostly because I think legumes, whole grains, and dairy can be healthful).
Adjusting to it might seem time-consuming at first if you are not used to cooking, but if you are it's no more time-consuming that any other way of eating where you mostly cook your own food.
Is it expensive? Not necessarily BUT beans and grains can be cheap staples. So it depends. If you have been buying a lot of food and replace it with cooking, could be cheaper.
Grass fed and pastured meats are quite a bit more expensive.0 -
One thing to consider is that Paleo is supposed to be approached as more of a holistic lifestyle change than just dietary restrictions. For example, things like eating grass-fed beef and pasture-raised chicken may have minor dietary and health benefits (omega-6 vs omega-3, etc), but it's equally about wanting your food to be raised in a more humane, natural way.
^
This. It focuses on the whole person (unplugging and playing is just as important in your life as well as eating mindfully).
Paleo, just like any other lifestyle change--is only a personal decision. It may work for some, and may not for others.
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Need2Exerc1se wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Oh, and I will say again that it's NOT especially time consuming or difficult, IMO.
It's more restrictive than I think is necessary (mostly because I think legumes, whole grains, and dairy can be healthful).
Adjusting to it might seem time-consuming at first if you are not used to cooking, but if you are it's no more time-consuming that any other way of eating where you mostly cook your own food.
Is it expensive? Not necessarily BUT beans and grains can be cheap staples. So it depends. If you have been buying a lot of food and replace it with cooking, could be cheaper.lemurcat12 wrote: »Oh, and I will say again that it's NOT especially time consuming or difficult, IMO.
It's more restrictive than I think is necessary (mostly because I think legumes, whole grains, and dairy can be healthful).
Adjusting to it might seem time-consuming at first if you are not used to cooking, but if you are it's no more time-consuming that any other way of eating where you mostly cook your own food.
Is it expensive? Not necessarily BUT beans and grains can be cheap staples. So it depends. If you have been buying a lot of food and replace it with cooking, could be cheaper.
Grass fed and pastured meats are quite a bit more expensive.
so true.
Less expensive if you can find a real butcher that sources their meat locally instead of buying at a grocery store though.0 -
If your busy schedule is a deciding factor, then my best tip would be to use your slow cooker/pressure cooker. It will save your life. Meal plan - meats and vegetables are really what you need, don't spend money on flours. There are a bunch of paleo friendly slow cooker recipes. You received some good snack ideas. Good luck.
I definitely agree! I do a lot of batch cooking and freezing on the weekends. Vegetables, for the most part, I make daily, but the protein is cooked over the weekend in either my Instant Pot or slow cooker.2 -
If your busy schedule is a deciding factor, then my best tip would be to use your slow cooker/pressure cooker. It will save your life. Meal plan - meats and vegetables are really what you need, don't spend money on flours. There are a bunch of paleo friendly slow cooker recipes. You received some good snack ideas. Good luck.
I definitely agree! I do a lot of batch cooking and freezing on the weekends. Vegetables, for the most part, I make daily, but the protein is cooked over the weekend in either my Instant Pot or slow cooker.
how funny, I'm the exact opposite. I usually cook veggies in a batch and cook my protein every meal.1 -
If your busy schedule is a deciding factor, then my best tip would be to use your slow cooker/pressure cooker. It will save your life. Meal plan - meats and vegetables are really what you need, don't spend money on flours. There are a bunch of paleo friendly slow cooker recipes. You received some good snack ideas. Good luck.
I definitely agree! I do a lot of batch cooking and freezing on the weekends. Vegetables, for the most part, I make daily, but the protein is cooked over the weekend in either my Instant Pot or slow cooker.
how funny, I'm the exact opposite. I usually cook veggies in a batch and cook my protein every meal.
Interesting! I am more like @lucys1225, except my breakfasts are always some sort of stirfry hash (mixed veggies and meat) which last for days. Really curious, How do you batch cook vegetables?
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If your busy schedule is a deciding factor, then my best tip would be to use your slow cooker/pressure cooker. It will save your life. Meal plan - meats and vegetables are really what you need, don't spend money on flours. There are a bunch of paleo friendly slow cooker recipes. You received some good snack ideas. Good luck.
I definitely agree! I do a lot of batch cooking and freezing on the weekends. Vegetables, for the most part, I make daily, but the protein is cooked over the weekend in either my Instant Pot or slow cooker.
how funny, I'm the exact opposite. I usually cook veggies in a batch and cook my protein every meal.
Interesting! I am more like @lucys1225, except my breakfasts are always some sort of stirfry hash (mixed veggies and meat) which last for days. Really curious, How do you batch cook vegetables?
Usually roast or steam several servings at once. My favorite is to oven roast cauliflower, which takes quite a long time so it's best done ahead.0 -
I did Paleo ages ago, before Cordain even wrote his book. Back before some Paleo folks said tubers were okay.
It was a start of a ten year low carb stint. At the time, I was breast feeding my daughter, and she had a lot of food sensitivities, and the restrictions of paleo seemed to slot into what I needed to eliminate. So it wasn't really a hardship.
It just got boring. And I missed dairy, but I would have missed it anyway because that was one of my daughter's sensitivities. As soon as she weaned, I switched to low carb because I saw no good reason to not have dairy since I tolerate it well.
I wasn't counting calories, and I didn't get to any sort of goal weight. Nuts are pretty calorie dense, and I was snacking on them hard core and had a pretty free hand with olive oil. And again, I got bored.
After ten years of eating paleo/low carb, I knew it wasn't a sustainable path. The foods I missed weren't the things you'd suspect like cookies and cakes. They were things like oatmeal and beans and potatoes. Good, healthy carbs.
I saw no reason to not include perfectly healthy foods in my diet, because I had, after ten years of eating in a way that was supposed to help me finally get thin, only progressed so far and then started to gain weight.
Paleo, low carb, high carb, vegan, vegetarian... however you eat. It's no secret trick to weight loss. Count your calories. The foods you eat should form a sustainable way of eating. As long as you understand that your food choice isn't the driver of your weight loss, doing a paleo experiment isn't the worst thing you could do, it's just rather boring and arbitrarily restricts perfectly good foods based on some half-cocked reasoning that has no basis in anything scientific.10 -
Just to add my two cents, I found Paleo to be more of a mindset/lifestyle worth sustaining than an actual diet worth sustaining. As a result of giving Paleo a try a couple years ago, I am now more mindful of ingredient lists, avoiding excessive added sugars and being more wary of ingredients I cannot pronounce. I’m by no means a saint (diet Sunkist is my fav drink ever!), but I actively balance the ratio of whole versus processed foods I eat regularly with an 80/20 rule.
Paleo also helped me understand more about food sensitivities and how my body reacts to different foods. I treated Paleo as an elimination diet, removing refined sugars, legumes, dairy, grains, soy, etc from my diet for 30 days as per their whole30 program. Then, I slowly reintroduced foods to my diet. I realized that I have a real issue with gluten, as a result.
When I removed gluten, I slept better, had improved motor skills, saw less inflammation with my psoriasis and had fewer headaches. No reactions one way or another to refined sugars, soy, legumes, or dairy, so I eat all but gluten now.
Like many other diet related tools, such as carb cycling, carb loading, IF, and IIFYM, I see aspects of Paleo that can be part of the overall toolkit toward optimal health and meeting fitness goals. If you want to try Paleo, great! Maybe you will find it to be a wonderful lifestyle change or maybe you will find it does nothing for you - the point is to try new things, learn from the experience, and apply those learnings to future healthy habits.
Side note: trying any diet or lifestyle change for only a week will not be long enough to gather appropriate data to determine usefulness or effectiveness - for something like Paleo, 4 weeks minimum would be a realistic time commitment.2 -
I think paleo is usually an improved diet for most people. Meats, eggs, veggies, a few fruits... Seems healthy. I gave never really thought of Paleolithic as a weight loss plan - more of a healthy eating plan.
I loosely follow primal - I like cheese and some sour cream.
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It's a tough crowd on this app...a lot of self-entitled know-it-alls! I'm beginning keto and I have thought about posting on here, looking for advice, but I know it will attract negativity. Instead I ordered a book and am doing my own research...that is what I would recommend and good luck with everything!!11
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It's a tough crowd on this app...a lot of self-entitled know-it-alls!
I'm beginning keto and I have thought about posting on here, looking for advice, but I know it will attract negativity.
Instead I ordered a book and am doing my own research...that is what I would recommend and good luck with everything!!
This is true.
There is a certain segment of MFP forum "community" which apparently thinks that there are certain unassailable "truths" as they see them and any opposing or varying points of view are quickly crushed w/negative responses or anonymous "woo" votes.
The effect is (as you report) to discourage people from participating in the forums, which IMO is not good for the community at large because it narrows the scope of discussion.
Not sure what the solution is, except to have a thick skin and ignore the negativity, but it I think it is something that the MFP administrators and moderstors should address to promote more participation in the forums apart from those who are most active and opinionated.
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I've gone paleo before. Here is my take:
The positives:
-I started eating more veggies
-My cooking skills improved
-I always met my protein goal
-I started to think more about what I was eating
-it was really easy for me to over indulge in paleo treats
The negatives:
- It is really restrictive
- It was really hard to meet my daily calcium numbers
- my husband loves pasta and my son is allergic to most nuts and seeds
- It was difficult for me to get enough carbs.
OP, go ahead and give it a try. I would either supplement calcium or get really intentional with the dark leafy greens. You will be happiest on a paleo diet if you get enough carbs. I like the paleo recipes on this site https://therealfoodrds.com/ and this one https://meljoulwan.com/ .
Goodluck to you!3 -
I've done Paleo on and off over the past several years. Overall, I like it and think some form of it will be beneficial for most people. That said, there's a wide variance in what is meant when someone says she is eating paleo. Some people eat 80% meat. Some eat 80% vegetables. Some people eat a whole lot of almond/coconut flour muffins and cakes. Some eat none. Some people have added in small amounts of dairy, legumes or white rice. Some think it's heresy to even suggest such a thing.
I'm a big believer in experimenting to see what works best for your body.
I don't think it is a magic weight loss secret. Many advocates of Paleo say that you can eat as much as you want. The idea is that the food is so nutrient dense that you'll stop eating when you're satisfied. I long ago destroyed any mechanism in my body or brain that told me to stop eating. With Paleo, as with all other ways of eating, I have to weigh and measure food, and count my calories. I do usually feel more satisfied with a smaller amount of Paleo food, but that doesn't translate into me automatically eating an appropriate amount of food unless I consciously limit myself.
Eating strict Paleo will eliminate most of the foods that some people have issues with such as gluten, soy, wheat, sugar, dairy. If you had unknown food sensitivities or inflammation causing digestive issues, headaches, joint pain, fatigue or any number of other negative symptoms, those issues will likely be resolved.
I don't function well on a very low carb diet so I need to make sure I'm eating higher carb starchy foods while doing Paleo. Sweet potatoes, taro, plantains, parsnips, carrots, and fruit all contain higher levels of carbs. Overall, I think most women in general, especially younger women, have fertility and other hormonal issues if they go too low carb for too long a time. Paleo can become too low carb if one is not mindful.
A Paleo diet is not much different than my regular diet, with the exception of eliminating grains. For many people it may be very, very different. Give yourself time to learn new habits and routines. Try new recipes.
Paleo can be a lot of work. I like to clean and chop up vegetables at the beginning of the week so they're ready to be thrown into stir-frys and hashes, or eaten for a snack. I also often cook a bunch of meat at once to use in meals throughout the week. I buy big bags of prepared greens for lunchtime salads. For me, a Paleo meal plate is about 3-5 ounces of meat (or some eggs), a big serving of lots of vegetables (at least half the plate is veg), and the remainder is fat, starchy veg, fruit, nuts.
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I think paleo is usually an improved diet for most people. Meats, eggs, veggies, a few fruits... Seems healthy. I gave never really thought of Paleolithic as a weight loss plan - more of a healthy eating plan.
I loosely follow primal - I like cheese and some sour cream.
The paleo diet really shouldn't be referred to as Palaeolithic, it bears no resemblance whatsoever, even ignoring the fact that the Palaeolithic era covers a really long time span, over a very wide geographical area (people having gotten to pretty much everywhere except the Pacific Islands).
If people want to eat according to the modern paleo diet, they enjoy it, feel better, whatever, that's fine. Just don't get sucked in to thinking that's how we 'should' eat because that's supposedly the way our ancestors ate.7 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »I think paleo is usually an improved diet for most people. Meats, eggs, veggies, a few fruits... Seems healthy. I gave never really thought of Paleolithic as a weight loss plan - more of a healthy eating plan.
I loosely follow primal - I like cheese and some sour cream.
The paleo diet really shouldn't be referred to as Palaeolithic, it bears no resemblance whatsoever, even ignoring the fact that the Palaeolithic era covers a really long time span, over a very wide geographical area (people having gotten to pretty much everywhere except the Pacific Islands).
If people want to eat according to the modern paleo diet, they enjoy it, feel better, whatever, that's fine. Just don't get sucked in to thinking that's how we 'should' eat because that's supposedly the way our ancestors ate.
Agreed.
Re Primal, Mark Sisson drives me crazy sometimes, and I do think one should not lose sight of the fact that he's all about promoting his own products, but the "primal blueprint" -- primal isn't really a thing outside of Sisson's named diet -- makes sense to me somewhat.
NOT the idea that grains are bad, but moving away from strict paleo to promoting generally whole foods based healthy eating (like dairy, he seems to think beans/lentils are okay, even though I personally think he's too skeptical about them still in that they are pretty obviously both healthful and almost no one's actual problem when it comes to overeating (I exclude one legume, peanuts, as some people clearly do lack self control with peanut butter, but that hardly makes it bad for people in general)). Beyond that, and why he gets my positive comments here, I like the fact that he promotes:
Eating lots of vegetables (IMO, if your version of paleo doesn't do that, it's not really following the spirit of the whole thing);
Many, many things beyond just eating in a particular way -- getting adequate sleep, exercise (lots of walking, weights or other kinds of strength building exercises, sprinting and play, getting outside, so on).
I think it's deeply silly to insist this is all "paleo" (I think Sisson's caveman logo and "primal" name are also kind of silly, but whatever), but in general I think it's a pleasant and healthy approach to fitness.2 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »I think paleo is usually an improved diet for most people. Meats, eggs, veggies, a few fruits... Seems healthy. I gave never really thought of Paleolithic as a weight loss plan - more of a healthy eating plan.
I loosely follow primal - I like cheese and some sour cream.
The paleo diet really shouldn't be referred to as Palaeolithic, it bears no resemblance whatsoever, even ignoring the fact that the Palaeolithic era covers a really long time span, over a very wide geographical area (people having gotten to pretty much everywhere except the Pacific Islands).
If people want to eat according to the modern paleo diet, they enjoy it, feel better, whatever, that's fine. Just don't get sucked in to thinking that's how we 'should' eat because that's supposedly the way our ancestors ate.
Agreed.
Re Primal, Mark Sisson drives me crazy sometimes, and I do think one should not lose sight of the fact that he's all about promoting his own products, but the "primal blueprint" -- primal isn't really a thing outside of Sisson's named diet -- makes sense to me somewhat.
NOT the idea that grains are bad, but moving away from strict paleo to promoting generally whole foods based healthy eating (like dairy, he seems to think beans/lentils are okay, even though I personally think he's too skeptical about them still in that they are pretty obviously both healthful and almost no one's actual problem when it comes to overeating (I exclude one legume, peanuts, as some people clearly do lack self control with peanut butter, but that hardly makes it bad for people in general)). Beyond that, and why he gets my positive comments here, I like the fact that he promotes:
Eating lots of vegetables (IMO, if your version of paleo doesn't do that, it's not really following the spirit of the whole thing);
Many, many things beyond just eating in a particular way -- getting adequate sleep, exercise (lots of walking, weights or other kinds of strength building exercises, sprinting and play, getting outside, so on).
I think it's deeply silly to insist this is all "paleo" (I think Sisson's caveman logo and "primal" name are also kind of silly, but whatever), but in general I think it's a pleasant and healthy approach to fitness.
I'm down with the lifestyle bits Sisson promotes, I just can't, like you, see the point in saying that grains are bad.
Totally agree about the whole foods and especially the vegetable intake.
When I was strict paleo, I was eating a huge amount of vegetables. As I said upthread, this was before Cordain's book. I'm trying to remember... I think the author I read was named Audette.1 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »I think paleo is usually an improved diet for most people. Meats, eggs, veggies, a few fruits... Seems healthy. I gave never really thought of Paleolithic as a weight loss plan - more of a healthy eating plan.
I loosely follow primal - I like cheese and some sour cream.
The paleo diet really shouldn't be referred to as Palaeolithic, it bears no resemblance whatsoever, even ignoring the fact that the Palaeolithic era covers a really long time span, over a very wide geographical area (people having gotten to pretty much everywhere except the Pacific Islands).
If people want to eat according to the modern paleo diet, they enjoy it, feel better, whatever, that's fine. Just don't get sucked in to thinking that's how we 'should' eat because that's supposedly the way our ancestors ate.
That was actually my spell check that changed that. I guess I missed that one correction.
But I do think it is closer to what our ancestors ate than what many people do eat now. People stick with it because they feel better, and hopefully because they enjoy it somewhat. Eating in an obviously different waythan our ancestors did is more enjoyable to me though. Darnit. I just don't feel as good eating jujubes, drinking pop, or cream cheese frosted cinnamon buns. JMO4
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