Paleo diet followers love eating like cavemen, but health experts wary

Spanishchef.net recommends these products

Paleo diet followers love eating like cavemen, but health experts wary

You can forget about that bowl of Total cereal with cold milk. Don’t think about crunching on Triscuits either.

Want some brown rice with your veggies? Nope. Feel like a little slow-churned ice cream? Sorry, not allowed on the Paleo diet.

If cavemen in the Paleolithic period of more than 10,000 years ago didn’t eat it, then you’re not supposed to either under this diet. They hunted and gathered their food. That pretty much limited them to animal protein and plants.

Can — and should — we duplicate that diet now?

Local Paleo diet followers boast about the great success they’ve had — weight loss, leaner bodies, better athletic performance and overall good feeling. The diet’s growing and devoted following say it’s a lifestyle to follow permanently.

“I started the diet two months ago, and I’ve lost 31 pounds,” said Cris Thompson, 36, Avon, who works for Hewlett-Packard.

“I’m seeing and feeling very positive results,” he said. “My doctor reduced my high blood pressure medication. Fatigue doesn’t linger as long as it used to when I go to the gym or run. For me, the results have been worth any sacrifice.”

Yet some health experts are skeptical. A panel ranked the Paleo diet last among 25 evaluated for U.S. News World Report magazine.

A big health benefit is the diet’s lack of junk food, processed food, alcohol and refined sugars — all of which are too big a part of most modern-day diets. We can all do without doughnuts, cookies and candy, right? Giving up canned soups, jarred pasta sauce and frozen diet meals may be tougher.

“The hardest part was saying no to beer,” said Mindy Schelling, who professed a love for craft brews.

Paleo followers eat a high-protein, low-carb diet rich in lean meat (ideally from grass-fed animals). Again, foods that could be hunted or gathered: seafood, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds.

The Paleo diet shuns dairy, legumes and grains. That’s not just whole milk, white bread, white rice and high-fat cheese. The diet also excludes healthier counterparts — skim milk, brown rice, quinoa, beans and whole-wheat pasta and bread.

The diet is popular with those who practice CrossFit, an intense training program in bare-bones gyms in Indianapolis and worldwide. Few people followed Paleo diets until CrossFitters began championing them in the past five years.

“Paleo changed my life. It gave me back confidence in myself,” said Schelling, 30, while working up a sweat at the CrossFit Naptown gym in Downtown Indianapolis. “I failed at Weight Watchers, Atkins and others for two years. For the first time in 10 years, I’ve lost weight.

“I feel as good as I did in the military nine years ago,” she said.

Schelling has lost 10 pounds in about five weeks and is just getting started. She eats a lot of vegetables, chicken, buffalo and 10 eggs per week. She snacks on grapes, cantaloupe and carrots. When she works out, she treats herself to a Lara all-natural, fruit-nut bar.

Schelling had been a vegetarian since junior high school, but had a hard time keeping off weight. Eliminating refined sugars and cutting back carbohydrates has done the trick, along with exercising more. When she reaches her weight goal, she may cut back to following a Paleo diet 80 percent of the time.

Operators of CrossFit gyms often recommend the Paleo diet and have weight-loss challenges. Their routines feature weight lifting, pull-ups, push-ups, short runs and other muscle-building practices.

Health benefits debated

Supporters of the Paleo diet say it can be maintained — either strictly or with exceptions, throughout life.

The diet is based on the work of Loren Cordain, a leading expert on the diet of Paleolithic societies and author of “The Paleo Diet,” published in 2002. Cordain, a Colorado State University health and exercise science professor, found that people who ate diets rich in meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds had fewer diseases and health problems than Western contemporaries.

Paleo diets haven’t been widely researched, so that makes it harder to evaluate their long-term viability and health impact.

Some local dietitians say cutting out two major food groups — grains and dairy — from your diet isn’t a good idea and could lead to a lack of calcium and vitamin D. They also say risk for heart problems may increase if you’re not careful about making lean-meat choices.

“I would describe it as a very low-carb diet and low in a lot of nutrients, vitamins and minerals,” said Angie Scheetz, registered dietitian and wellness coordinator at the National Institute for Fitness and Sport. “It’s not something I would recommend.”

However, if the diet helps motivate people to make changes and lose weight, then the health community needs to pay attention to what works, said Margie Fougeron, registered dietitian with St. Vincent Medical Group.

Just as people with allergies to wheat, grain and dairy products make diet adjustments and use supplements, she said people on this diet need to be cautious in replacing nutrients.

Fougeron thinks it would be a hard diet to sustain. But she said adopting positive aspects of it and making healthy, small changes would be workable.

The panel of 22 health experts who evaluated diets for U.S. News World Report in its Jan. 3 issue didn’t think highly of the Paleo.

“Experts took issue with the diet on every measure,” the issue reported. “Regardless of the goal — weight loss, heart health or finding a diet that’s easy to follow — most experts concluded that it would be better for dieters to look elsewhere.”

The experts noted the lack of large research studies to back up claims that the diet improves people’s health. Cordain responded that five studies have found Paleo diets to be superior to Mediterranean, diabetic and typical Western diets regarding weight loss, cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk factors.

Success story

Elyse Merchant, 25, is an assistant coach at CrossFit Naptown. The Indianapolis woman doesn’t need to see study results to know how the diet has helped her. She’s followed it for 18 months, during which time she competed in the Muncie Half-Ironman in July.

Her body fat has gone from 23 percent to 16 percent. Her muscle tone has improved. Her blood pressure has gone from 120 over 80 to 107 over 68. And her resting heart rate is 54.

At first, she struggled with the diet because of its lack of carbohydrates. But she made adjustments by eating starchy vegetables such as sweet potatoes, more fruit like bananas and a lot of broccoli. She doesn’t eat much red meat and drinks coconut milk to supplement her calcium.

“After awhile, you get your body used to using its own fat for energy,” she said. “It’s more of a sustained energy. You don’t have the spikes in blood sugar. Once I upped my fat intake, I really started to notice an improvement, and I had more energy.”

That’s exactly what Kate Onuska lacked when she tried the diet for nearly a month. A petite, physically active 31-year-old, Onuska thought the diet would be a good way to eat “cleanly.”

It wasn’t for her.

“I noticed immediately I was hungry, which I was told would subside. But I was never full,” she said. “I normally have the energy of an eternal cheerleader, but I felt really fatigued. At the end, I laid on the couch and couldn’t get up.”

She thinks the diet might not be good for a person who is the correct weight, eats well and has no health issues or food allergies, and it may even be harmful.

Frank Dennis, who owns QuantumFit on the Northeastside, follows the diet and recommends it to his clients. He says he’s seen many successes with the diet. People who follow it have to make sure they’re getting enough protein, and they need to replace sugar with healthy fats.

“There is a huge amount of energy missing because they haven’t replaced the sugar with anything,” he said. “If you follow this diet right, you are not missing anything nutritionally. It’s certainly something that anyone can sustain.”

Diet and Weight loss with Bill & Sheila

If you require a high quality printout of this article, just click on the printer symbol next to ’Share and enjoy’, and we will do the rest.

Get the best website builder available anywhere –SBI! Click here for more information

Return from paleo diet to Home Page

If you want to increase your site popularity and gain thousands of visitors – check out these sites THEY ARE FREE. Spanishchef more than doubled its ‘New Visitors’ last month simply by signing up to these sites: