Going Primal

[Analog6]

As the regulars will know I came bak after 13 months of slothful, fat building idleness to restart my Atkins Induction.

As a result of that, via a kiwi low carb recipe site and forum, I found Primal Lifestyle. This is for me! I am graduating over to it and am having about 50 carbs a day, lots of fat, lots of veges, and have lost 8kgs in 10 days.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/ - there is a forum here too

You an download The Primal Blueprint (mainly the exercise side) and the Users (from the forum) Primal Recipe book for free one you subscribe (simply by giving your email) to the blog.

Long term I will be eating protein, vegetables, fats and easy on dairy and legumes and preferably no grains at all. This is a lifestyle I an stick with long term.

[Sherrie]

There is the odd person here following that diet, I swear there was a thread but I can't find it, perhaps it's just been linked and discussed in other threads.

[Analog6]

I did have a look as I felt I'd seen one but I couldn't find anything either.

[Silver]

Dr. Kurt Harris' recommendations at, PaleoNu (http://www.paleonu.com/what-is-panu/), are similar to Primal Blueprint. I very much like Dr. Harris' no-nonsense, succinct explanations of the science. I follow his food recommendations at a very low carb level.

Paleohacks (http://paleohacks.com/questions#axzz18AvjbLjK) is a forum for asking questions, which might be of interest.

[Analog6]

Thanks, Silver, yes, that's pretty much what I'm doing. I find 2 meals a day is enough, I don't feel hungry till 9-10am, and we eat early at night as my partner starts work at 2am, so a bit of a snack satisfies me. I'm still having cheese but will gradually cut it back.

[Analog6]

I'm sure it is all the fat I am eating, I never ate this much before and I was always a bit hungry and had cravings. That is all gone this time.

[Silver]

Odille, that's great that Primal is working so well for you. :)

[Kapay]

Hi Odille, Thought I'd say hi and that I am too swaping over to Primal Blueprint from Bodytrim.

I have lost 15kgs on Bodytrim but Primal is making too much sense to me and to my family as well. I am happy to say I can see DH and DS living long healthy lives on a Primal/Paleo diet whereas Bodytrim has served its purpose for the weightloss I needed.

Anyone else out there going primal? I am loving the Marks Daily Apple website and the newsletters from them. Really informative and helpful.

Hey get this! even changed the dog over to a primal diet to calm his hyperactivity and its really helped heaps. :eek:

[lea]

Anyone else out there going primal? I am loving the Marks Daily Apple website and the newsletters from them. Really informative and helpful.



what a strange timing! since yesterday i've been reading on the same topic and i find it sounds quite good... only thing i don't like so much is that they apparently don't like legumes & pulses ?!

cheers,
lea

[Sherrie]

Lea I would hazard a guess to say it is due to their anti nutrients/digestibility.

[lea]

i quite like their approach of avoiding processed foods and (mostly) unlimited vegetables and fruit, but since i can't eat meat every day and rely on them for protein. also they're my most satisfying foods... :rolleyes:

i'm still curious though, maybe i will find out more, thanks sherrie :)

[lea]

p.s. i also wonder a bit how the food substitute powders they are promoting fits with the no processed food approach :confused:

[Sherrie]

Protein powders?

[lea]

i guess they are, but not particularly low in carbs....

[Sherrie]

Do they make money from the selling of these powders?

[lea]

i suspect they do... i'll do some more research later and update my findings :)

[Sherrie]

Is it the daily apple site? I just have a look and yeah there's a shop that sells the stuff so if it is, then there's your answer imo. Pretty much every diet these days wind up selling their own protein powders and supps because it is continuous revenue.

So I guess in the end you have to decide how "paleo" you want to be, nothing is perfect even paleo. That might sound silly but if you look back to what their goals would be, what health issues they faced etc things were vastly different. They never had to worry about their metabolism dropping per se because in a way that was key to survival in the sense of maintaining fat and building stores. It's not like they were obese, they had the opposite problem to us!

What merits it does have is digestibility; the fact is, a lot of foods we eat in abundance now, is not that easily digested and can cause health issues and nutritional deficiencies because of it. What you tolerate can also depend on where your ancestors come from. Ultimately, I would take the principles but also tailor it to what you tolerate. If you are sure you tolerate legumes, then why stop? ultimately it makes evolutionary sense to evolve to eat them eventually, as our population increases. Anyway, that's just my way of looking at it.

I haven't looked at this website for a very long time but in the day it was always a good reference point for paleo diets: Beyond Vegetarianism (http://www.beyondveg.com/)

[lea]

Is it the daily apple site? I just have a look and yeah there's a shop that sells the stuff so if it is, then there's your answer imo. Pretty much every diet these days wind up selling their own protein powders and supps because it is continuous revenue.

yep, that's the site i've been looking at. and i agree that ultimately it's all about the money... but then, look at atkins and their broad variety of supplements, powders, bars, substitutes for almost everything... :rolleyes:


So I guess in the end you have to decide how "paleo" you want to be, nothing is perfect even paleo. That might sound silly but if you look back to what their goals would be, what health issues they faced etc things were vastly different. They never had to worry about their metabolism dropping per se because in a way that was key to survival in the sense of maintaining fat and building stores. It's not like they were obese, they had the opposite problem to us!

i'm not looking for any new woe/ lifestyle, i'm really perfectly happy at how things are going now food and weightwise :). i'm just always very curious of the concepts.

i also think that you are making an excellent point here, i too find it difficult to transfer one part (food) out of a bigger context (primal society with it's different lifestyle/ environmental circumstances/ goals...) and ignore all the rest.

for exactly those two reasons, money making and the one-sided way of looking at things, i am at least suspicious...



What merits it does have is digestibility; the fact is, a lot of foods we eat in abundance now, is not that easily digested and can cause health issues and nutritional deficiencies because of it. What you tolerate can also depend on where your ancestors come from. Ultimately, I would take the principles but also tailor it to what you tolerate. If you are sure you tolerate legumes, then why stop? ultimately it makes evolutionary sense to evolve to eat them eventually, as our population increases. Anyway, that's just my way of looking at it.

completely agree too since it fits well into my opinion that the ultimate say about consumption of a food should be the way the body (and mind) reacts to it :).



I haven't looked at this website for a very long time but in the day it was always a good reference point for paleo diets: Beyond Vegetarianism (http://www.beyondveg.com/)

thanks, i'll check that out, too!


have a lovely day,
cheers,
lea

[Sherrie]

Yep I agree that's why I said; pretty much every diet these days wind up selling... but I guess that's where you look at the diet by it's principles and go from there, the main thing to look for is that the diet doesn't depend on these things as that is where the real rip off is (shake diets etc) As long as you can do the diet without having to buy one food item then its worth reading about.

[lea]

agreed :)

i suppose you can do the primal blueprint one without their products... but i'll never give up legumes! and diary too for that matter :p

[Sherrie]

Yeah I like my dairy :)

[Fiasco]

Could someone please explain how to do this diet?

[LC_Dave]

The New Paleo stuff, if you scratch the surface is just Atkins with a twist.

[TLP]

Could someone please explain how to do this diet?


Go to www.marksdailyapple.com and you will find all the information there :)

[Calli]

So does any one do all the exercizes that the Primal Blueprint suggests? Or is every one just doing the food side of things?

[Caramel]

Hi all,

I notice this thread has been dead for a while! Hoping I can revive it. I am a paleo follower though not of the daily apple kind. Mark's approach is not true paleo as it allows dairy and other foods, which as many scientific studies have shown by the real paleo guru Dr Cordain, are bad for us. They are inflammatory and raise bad cholesterol levels (LDL) amongst other things. There is years of solid science behind paleo and solid research explaning why it's carbs, grains, legumes, dairy etc that are causing bad cholesterol, some cancers, type 2 diabetes etc.

The real paleo is easy to follow and is not a diet, but a forever lifestyle. The principles are:

Eat lean protein including lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, fish etc.
Eggs
Nuts and seeds
Lots of low starch veggies
Some higher starch veggies - squash and sweet potato
Lots of fruit
Good oils - olive oil and pure organic virgin coconut oil - our bodies actually need saturated fat to work properly. Our brains our made up of 60-70% fat.

Paleo extras include:
Herbal teas
Herbs and spices
Stevia as a sweetener
Coconut palm sugar (pure without cane sugar) from health food shop
Coconut flour
Almond meal flour
Pure raw cocoa (cacoa) powder
Unsweetened chocolate
Almond milk (unsweetened)
Butter in small amounts for baking

There are LOTS of true paleo recipes on the net for cupcakes, coconut flour pancakes, chocolate, chocolate cake, etc etc. Life on paleo does not need to be boring.

Processed foods such as protein powders are not paleo.

I hope there are still others out there, that want to join in.

[Analog6]

I have not been on for a while here as I fell off the wagon - well sort of slid off mainly because my partner was eating lots of carbs and bad stuff (hot chips fried in oil and bread) and I was weak. . . . .:( See my updated journal for the horrible details.

I do realise Paleo says no dairy but I do like my bit of cheese and have 3-4 cups coffee & decaff (water decaffeinated) with a dash of pure cream (not thickened) each day. Maybe eventually these items will disappear from my diet too.

I like the 80/20 idea (80% good - read Paleo and 20% other), I reckon I am about 85/15. I stick to fairly low carb stuff, so not a lot of nuts and fruit and my main fruits are berries, melons and apples. But I have never been a huge fruit eater. My only grains are a few seaweed rice crackers (6-8) at night when I feel like them - maybe every 3 days or so. I feel much better without grains. I don't buy the supplements/protein powders etc - I rely on a healthy balanced diet.

I eat a lot of meat/chicken/fish and vegetables and salads, I like them. I try to keep off the higher carb root veges but I do have them, they are a treat and I enjoy them and they help me avoid worse choices.

This is definitely a lifestyle for me, now I have discovered swimming and am finding it so easy and satisfying, and most importantly I am pain free, I will never go back to my former slothfulness. I am not into the body building side of Primal, but they Primal Blueprint says gentle run-of-the day routine exercise anyway, and that is what I am doing.

When I get down to 100kgs I will start to add some afternoon walks to the mix 3 days a week for weight bearing exercise benefits. I'd love to cycle but we are on anarrow winding road on a steep hillside - it would be dicing with death! I may buy a bike later and drive down to the beach to ride - see how I go.

[Morte]

Paleo sounds good to me ... if you add in a little cheese :) I like my cheese. And yoghurt, cream, ice cream, etc. In small amounts, of course. But I just couldn't give up dairy, it's one of my loves :)

Wheat, I'm finding easier to give up ... though some grains are good still.

I guess, no one diet or plan is right for everyone.

[Analog6]

Primal in a Nutshell

Understand that the basis is, if something is in its natural form and humans have been eating it for millions of years we're probably well adapted to digest and utilise it fully. Something made in a factory - created in the mere last 100 years we are most likely not adapted to eat it.

Remember Paleo is a template. Everyone implements it a little differently based on their needs. EAT REAL FOODS! AVOID POISONOUS THINGS!

Avoid processed foods
So that means basically never anything with gluten, and all other grains except for maybe some rice . . . .
Avoid legumes (unless maybe traditionally prepared but even then they should be limited or eliminated)
Avoid Vegetable/Soybean oils
Avoid processed sugars

When it comes to dairy, full fat raw is preferred.. usually hard cheeses, cream, butter, fermented raw milk (aka yogurt) and maybe some milk.

So what does that mean?
You go to the store and peruse the produce aisle to your heart's content avoiding the corn which is actually a grain.
You load up on the meat (preferably you buy grass fed, if you cant get it then you go with the lean cuts . . .
You go to the seafood section and load up, wild caught if possible.
You look for butter in the dairy section, maybe some full fat Greek yogurt, and some good unhomognised milk, hard cheeses, and lots of free range eggs!
You peruse the frozen section looking for frozen vegetables/fruits/fish/meat as long as nothing is added
You go down the oils aisle and get some EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) and maybe some nut oils (macadamia/almond/avocado/sesame/peanut - use the last 2 sparingly)), various vinegars (apple cider, balsamic) and spices
Find the aisle with the canned tuna & salmon . . . . .
Find some good plain nuts . . . .
You can get some of the tomato sauces but you must check that there are no bad oils
For your healthy indulgences You find some real maple syrup, and local raw natural honey, red wine, maybe even some white wine, dark chocolate (>70%), fresh gourmet coffee
Also down that specialty section you might find some coconut flour which some use to make some primal treats once in awhile.

The rest is all you . . . get some cooking appliances, get some recipe books and embark on your new adventure to forever health!

We tend to be a lower carb community. Most of us eat <150g of carb on a regular basis, but there is a huge swing . . . .protein is between 20-30% , the rest good healthy primal fats from animals and EVOO or plants like Coconut or Avocado.

Now a lot of us (where possible) get our meat and eggs from local farms, our produce from local farms . . . our raw milk from the local dairy farmer . . . so we buy minimally from the grocery store . . .but one step at a time.