[lisaemu]

Anyone do the Paleo Diet? Has it helped you healthwise, and have you lost any weight on it? Im thinking about doing it to see if it makes me feel better, and was just wondering your thoughts on it.

[Can'tEvenEatRice!]

I am thinking about trying it too. I am going to try a combination of the Paleo and the Specific Carbohydrate diet. I have to avoid dairy, so I cannot follow the SCD diet exactly so I thought I would look into the Paleo diet. There are a lot of great recipes online.

[Ann1231]

I am doing MUCH better on the paleo diet and I am losing weight, slowly because I'm on prednisone right now but I am losing. I have more energy, my stomach feels so much better on this, my blood sugar has leveled out and even my rheumatoid arthritis is feeling better. I am really sold on this way of living.

[BRUMI1968]

I do Paleo, and it works well for me.

Caveat: you have to be sure to be good on your candida issues, because there is a lot of dried fruit on the Paleo diet. If you try the Paleo and find you're bloated or whatever, you may have candida issues.

This happened to me, and I had to go fruit and sugar free for a while to get balanced. Then I add back the fruit. If you think you have Candida problems, check out the Body Ecology Diet.

Back to Paleo:

I like it. Breakfast is weird, but you get used to it. I eat sauteed veggie omlets or poached eggs over sauteed veggies. Ocassionally I'll only eat apple with almond butter - but usually I do the eggs...probably too much.

It is hard for me to keep the weight on, if I don't eat the nut butters - so for someone wanting to lose weight, I would think it would work well.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to pop them - I've been doing this about 3 months...whatever my signature says about going grain free.

[Nancym]

I'm pretty relaxed with the rules, but I do try to keep to paleo foods. The better I do, the better I feel.

[BRUMI1968]

the weight is the issue, ins't it? I finally balanced out for a while, but then.....wait, I'll start at the beginning.

So ...BLOAT...that's the theme of my life. So I went on the paleo diet and it got a bit better, but not cured. So I went on the Body Ecology Diet which is ZERO sugar or fruit for a while, then very little fruit (yeast-killing diet). Well, the bloat went away, but I had ZERO energy and was losing weight hand over fist. So after a while, I went back on Paleo, and that was going well....but then I started eating sugar again -- and then the bloat came back. so now I'm back on Body Ecology. Am I always going to have to choose between energy or bloat? I'm hoping it is adreneline fatigue or something like that.

I'm nervous because when I started Body Ecology last time I weighed 130 and lost 5 pounds; well, now I only weigh 125 - so what will that look like in a week.

nut butters
meat
avocados
nuts - pumpkin seeds are good too
pumpkin butter and fruit butter (fruit-juice sweetened or honey)
almond milk or hazelnut milk
eggs (jeez, these only have 60 calories each)

I guess eating a lot is an option.


There's just not enough calories in veggies.

[BRUMI1968]

I eat squash - winter squash - and some sweet potato (but not potatoes). I don't think sweet potatoes are encouraged, but all diets should be flexed to the person who is doing it. I have trouble with too few carbs. Roasted carrots are probably also discouraged, but like I said...whatever it takes. All veggies/meats/fruits/nuts is going to better than grains and man-made junk...so adding a veggie here or there that is unliked by the paleo godfather seems more than appropriate to me. ESPECIALLY as winter comes.

I eat packaged almond milk. Sure, paleo chick wasn't eating it, unless she had some sort of stone cuisinart -- but I'm also not hunting rabbit and buffalo...so I eat the "milk" ocassionally. I only wish it were raw. I met some folks in Portland Oregon who make their own raw almond milk...but they have some exorbinantly expensive machine that I forget the name of.

One challenge is to find anything creamy - we've all gotten so used to creamy. Here winter squash comes in handy...and almond milk tea lattes. A good winter squash soup is just to roast it, along with one apple, and then blend them...salt/pepper/maybe carmelized onion. Good stuff. Creamy, startchy (comparatively), and yet still "allowed".

I'm sorry I haven't read the book, Paleo Diet or Neanderthin are two of the ones I can think of. I did get the Paleo Diet for Athletes, and don't suggest it - it is mostly for folks doing HARD athletic training, such as ironman marathons and the like. It's informative, but should be gotten from the library if anything, because most of it just isn't applicable to folks who don't run twenty miles a day.

I'm off to go eat sweet potato fries. Don't tell Mr. Cordain.

[Nancym]

I think coconut milk adds a wonderful creaminess to many foods.

[SylvanArrow]

lisaemu, on Oct 1 2006, 04:06 PM, said:

Anyone do the Paleo Diet? Has it helped you healthwise, and have you lost any weight on it? Im thinking about doing it to see if it makes me feel better, and was just wondering your thoughts on it.

Yes. After just eliminating my food allergies (gluten, dairy, and eggs) didn't cure my symptoms entirely, I started doing the Paleo diet. After reading several books on the subject, I really feel that this is the healthiest way to live. My indigestion has gone away, I'm off asthma meds, and even my acne has cleared up. It'll probably be a while before my gut is completely healed, but overall I'm healthy. My vitals were normal before but now even better (blood pressure is 100/60 and resting heartrate 60). I can play hours of tennis without getting tired, and I'm never out of breath after a long rally like my opponents are.

As for maintaining weight, nuts and seeds make it pretty easy. Fruits also, if you're not dealing with Candida or something. I'm a fitness junky, and I am lean, but not weirdly so.

[eLaurie]

Feedback from those of you doing this is encouraging. Thanks!

I'm six months gluten free, GI issues much better, but depression and anxiety are pretty much unchanged. I'm also at a steady 190 pounds for a 5'5" frame. I've been reading about Paleo and am about ready to try it for a while.

[ArtGirl]

I've been giving this diet some thought, too. I must be addicted to potatoes because these are surely the very hardest food for me to give up. I've only read a bit on the internet about the diet, but did pick up that one needs to eliminate the PBGs - potatoes, beans, grains. Well, I'm still eating rice, and some beans, but until I can conquor this potatoe issue, I'm not going to totally eliminate the other two.

I don't have a gall bladder so don't digest fats well, and I can't eat dairy or eggs, so will have to modify the diet some, but for the most part, I think eliminating the big three will help me loose weight and become even more healthy.

[Nancym]

Loren Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet, has a newsletter that is pretty interesting. http://thepaleodiet.com/

He also says that striving for 85% on the paleo diet is acceptable. So you don't have to be perfect.

Me, I'm paleo but I use a lot of modern convienences and a few decidedly unpaleo things like diet soda, splenda and so on.

[BRUMI1968]

I've found it next to impossible to stay 100% paleo in the wintertime. I now eat some rice, some rice pasta, and some potato. But not much. I've also added rice milk (in the form of tea lattes), and that is helping me keep the weight on.

[Limpin]

It is good to know that other people are considering the Paleo Diet not only to help lose weight. I too am an "ectomorph", "hardgainer", i.e. I have a hard time keeping weight on. I suspect that this is partially due to malabsorption, something that being wheat free may help. Have people found it hard to keep weight on with the Paleo Diet, because of the low carbs? It seems easy to get plenty of calories with the high fat intake, but calories is not the sole measure of metabolism--the principle of low carb diets, is, after all, that carbs are what get stored as fat in the body. Your personal story would be appreciated!!

[Nancym]

Paleo isn't as low carb as many diets are since you can eat fruit. Right now my apple trees are producing buckets of apples and I'm eating loads of them and I'm putting on pounds. You can eat things like dates, figs, berries, apples, lots of things with fairly high sugar content. Not to mention nuts...

Oh, I ran into this article that folks might be interested in. It's about the harm that lectins (found in grains and beans) can cause.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/...70801091240.htm