What exactly is the paleo diet program?
The paleo diet program has become prevalent lately due to the degree of beneficial results people have had, where no other diet would work. The paleo diet is a version of a low-carb diet that is really implemented as more of a way of living than a diet. It calls for dedication. It requires change. It generates results. You have to learn paleo diet recipes. You need to eat a paleo breakfast, a paleo lunch, and a paleo dinner. I don’t always snack, but when I do, its paleo.
The main theory of the paleo diet is to eat like our forefathers, the cavemen. Cavemen didn’t have agriculture and constantly had to hunt and gather for their dinner. They lived on a diet of various meats, seafood, berries, fruit, roots, nuts, and veggies. They were furthermore active and had to be physically in shape to defend themselves and their kin. There weren’t any firearms (the great equalizer) or even crossbows.
The paleo diet tries to imitate the cavemen by foregoing carbs, eating a couple big meals every day, getting ample amounts of animal fat, and essentially eating lots of natural produce. While typically animal fat is demonized as a cause of weight problems, a month or two eating as a caveman will reveal to you that carbohydrates are the real offender.
The main difference between this diet and previous low-carb diets, such as the Atkins, is that this is a way of life in addition to a diet. You can still eat fruits with this diet, even the ones with tons of natural sugar. It is all right if you slip-up every from time to time. The key is to follow an 80%/20% rule; stay strict to the strategy 80% of the time and don’t get worried if you slip up in the other 20%.
The diet works by coaching your body to begin digesting your body fat for your energy as opposed to using carbohydrates as in a standard American diet. Carbohydrates are not evil, it is just in our current state of civilization where many of us work in careers that demand little or no physical activity we don’t need them. Taking in more than half of your daily calorie consumption in carbohydrates when you are not an endurance athlete and wanting to know why you are obese is like wearing a winter coat to Miami and asking yourself why you are sweaty. By removing carbohydrates from the diet and instead taking in your calories from animal fat and produce, your body is trained to break down fat instead of carbohydrates for energy.
So where to get started? For a lot of people this diet is a huge change to the status quo, and if you’ve been eating a certain way for most of your adult life it is not easy to change at the flip of a coin. Here are a couple steps to help get you on the right path:
1. Get rid of all of your processed foods
This is an absolute must. It doesn’t matter if you are getting with the paleo system or if you are on a typical calorie-counting diet, processed foods are the worst thing you can put into your body food-wise. They have little to no nutritionary worth, chemical substances used to make production easier and faster, often too much salt, low quality ingredients, and are often just simple carbohydrates. You ever ask yourself why most coupons are marketed only for this junk? Because it’s trash and everyone knows it.
2. Eliminate fast food.
This may be tough for people who live on a tight schedule, but you got to take care of yourself. Have you read recently that McDonalds just now eliminated a pink slime chemical (some form of ammonium) from their burgers because someone ratted them out to the press? Think about that for a moment. Pink slime. Makes me gag. They use the lowest quality meat at these places to make it cheap and quick to cook.
