The Paleo Approach Achieving Optimal Health with Paleo Nutrition
Contents 1. About the AuthorBy
Brenton Black
2. What Is Paleo Diet 3. How to Get Started 4. Paleo Diet Health Benefits 5. How Start Eating Paleo 6. What Is Paleo Fitness 7. Paleo Diet Food List 8. Going Completely Nuts….and Seeds! 9. Recommendations For Further Reading
About The Author My Name is Brenton Black, and I appreciate that you’ve decided to learn more about me by visiting this page, so lets get started! Growing up, I wasn’t too concerned about what I ate or how active I was because I was skinny and energetic. The majority of my meals were high in sugar, heavily processed, breaded, covered in melted cheese, or ordered from fast food restaurants. Since I wasn’t fat, I thought I was healthy, but looks can be deceiving… In middle school, my skin started to become more oily and acne prone, so I was prescribed several antibiotics over the years, but they never completely cleared my acne. I asked my dermatologist if perhaps something I was eating was causing my breakouts, but she claimed that acne isn’t effected by one’s diet. I continued eating poorly while taking antibiotics for several years, and eventually, I began having trouble digesting dairy until I was completely lactose intolerant. My acne continued to bother me throughout high school, so my dermatologist suggested I take Accutane (Isotretinoin). This would be the greatest regret of my life thus far because three months into the six month cycle, I experienced several terrible side effects: • visual sensitivity to light • stuttering speech disorder • fatigue • depression
• constipation • weight loss • cystic acne lesions • peeling/chapped lips • dry mouth/eyes/skin • insomnia I was referred to another dermatologist, and he immediately cancelled the Accutane cycle and put me on a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug called Naproxen. According to him, I had a rare infection as a side effect to Accutane, so I had frequent injections of Cortisone in my face and neck to prevent the inflammation of the infection from spreading. In the aftermath of that ordeal, I was able to recover from some of the side effects like the stutter, depression, and lesions caused by the infection, but I still had issues regarding my digestive health, and my acne never disappeared. Over the course of six years, I had two laser surgeries to reduce the scarring on my face, and I saw several specialists regarding the lingering digestive problems. Unfortunately, they couldn’t figure out what was causing my weight issues, constipation, and fatigue, so they diagnosed me with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). I became quite hopeless; I figured if the trained and highly educated specialists can’t figure out my health issues, then what possibility is there for me to find an accurate self-diagnosis?! I scoured the internet for clues or answers, and someone on a forum suggested gluten intolerance. I’d never heard of gluten before, but they claimed they had my exact symptoms, and wheat was the culprit! Within two months of following a dairy & gluten free diet, my digestive problems vanished! I was amazed with the results, and my obsession for health and nutrition began! I decided it was time to see if I could find some answers regarding what causes acne, and if it was possible to overcome it naturally.
Despite what my first dermatologist told me, I found plenty of information and research proving relations between diet and acne. Luckily for me, my efforts paid off when I became aware of Loren Cordain’s work. I immediately made the decision to follow the Paleo diet, and I noticed a huge improvement in my skin. However, new pimples would form after eating most fruits, so I occasionally ate berries which didn’t have much of an effect on my skin. After five months of following a modified paleo diet coupled with vitamin and herbal supplements, my skin was completely clear and radiant.
Anyhow, that’s my story! After overcoming my own issues and finding fulfillment in helping others, I hope to make PaleoApproach a resource for anyone interested in finding their own answers while achieving optimal health through a Paleo lifestyle!
What is the Paleo Diet? The Paleo diet consists of eating preferrably grass-fed meats, poultry, wild-caught fish, organic vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, roots, and healthy oils while avoiding most processed foods, grains, dairy, legumes, refined sugars, and unhealthy oils or transfats.
The basis for eating this way was discovered by researching the hunter-gatherer dietary practices of Paleolithic man who existed and thrived during an era prior to the developement of agriculture. Our prehistoric ancestors were omnivores who mostly foraged and hunted for food for over 2 million years. However, with the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago, humans began consuming more dairy, grains, sugars, and salt which led to a significant increase in obesity, disease, and death in civilized populations around the world. The goal of following the Paleo diet is to return to humanity’s original food sources and reclaim our health!
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Paleo Diet Health Benefits
If you are a health conscious person, then you definitely must have heard of the Paleo diet. There is absolutely no lack of admirers of this amazing and possibly life-changing diet. Many people have taken to this diet for different reasons. But the end result is always same, and each of them agrees that this diet has indeed helped them to stay fit and lose weight.
Now any body with a proper mind would definitely wonder about convincing reasons to use this Paleo diet to lose weight, when there are hundreds and thousands of other weight loss diets in the market. Well, there are zillions of weight loss plans and diets. But how many of them are actually effective and how many of these effective weight loss plans can boast of being promoting healthy weight loss? One of the greatest dangers of dieting or attempting to lose weight using fad diet plans is the risk of developing health disorders. You can easily end up in the hospital, if you adopt the wrong diet plan, especially if it fits in to the ‘lose weight overnight’ category of diet plans. Losing weight rapidly may be the most popular method, but is not always the healthiest option. Paleo diet is a class apart from such fad diets and dangerous weight loss diet plans for many different reasons as listed below: • Paleo diet does not encourage extreme fasting or food restriction • It does not encourage adopting extreme procedures like cleansing or intense detox
• It does not ask you to count calories or limit food intake • It does not ask you to adopt unhealthy foods • It has numerous health benefits like preventing onset of chronic disorders like heart troubles, hypertension, arthritis, Multiple sclerosis, Celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, IBS etc • The Paleo diet encourages use of lots of fruits and vegetables too, which provides a good amount of fiber to the diet. Fiber intake has been linked to good health of the colon and also provides safety from dangerous diseases like cancer of rectum or colon, fissures, constipation, hemorrhoids etc. • It helps in losing weight in healthy manner without any risk or bad effects. Many critics who oppose the Paleo diet say that it restricts dairy products so it can bring about a calcium deficit in the body and hence lead to calcium deficiency related bone disorders. This is not at all true, because calcium can be sourced from other foods like spinach etc and need not be only depended upon dairy products.
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How to Start Eating Paleo
Starting a Paleo diet can be difficult at first, so here are some suggestions to make the transition easier: • Use this as a guideline for your meals:
• Eat at least 2-3 salads a day. Salads are simple to make and can be highly nutritious when prepared with a variety of healthy ingredients. • Prepare meals ahead of time. At the beginning of the week or dayby-day, take some time to prepare and cook large batches of food to store in the refrigerator for later. This will minimize the amount of time spent cooking overall.
• Remove any non-Paleo foods from your pantry & refrigerator. This reduces the likelihood of eating foods that aren’t Paleo-approved. • Use various herbs and spices when cooking. They offer a variety of different flavors that’ll keep foods from tasting repetitive or bland.
• Carry nuts, seeds, or dried fruit at all times. A bag of nuts or dried fruit can be healthy snack or sometimes even a lifesaver in situations where Paleo-approved foods aren’t available. • Have a snack before going out. Many restaurants do have Paleoapproved options like chicken (unbreaded), steak (preferably dry
rubbed), or a plain side salad with balsamic vinaigrette, but some restaurants still coat everything in some form of wheat, dairy, or preservative-laden, highly sweetened sauce or marinade. This is also a perfect opportunity to make use of that aforementioned bag of nuts, seeds, or dried fruit. • Eat some fruit to overcome sugar cravings. A cup of berries with some nuts or seeds, and a glass of water can curb sugar or carb cravings until the next meal which is far better than eating other unhealthy sweets. • Drink plenty of water! It’s very important to stay hydrated because the human body consists of about 55-78% water depending on body size, so it needs at least 4-5 glasses of water a day to function properly.
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What is Paleo Fitness?
The basis of paleo fitness is to exercise while mimicing the movements of our hunter-gatherer ancestors: low to moderate activity, such as walking or jogging, combined with bursts of high intensity sprints, heavy lifting, and compound exercises which utilize multiple muscle groups. These basic compound exercises consist of: • Push-Ups (Chest, Shoulders, Triceps) • Pull-Ups (Lats, Biceps, Middle Back) • Dips (Triceps, Chest, Shoulders) • Squats (Quadriceps, Calves, Glutes, Hamstrings, Lower Back) • Overhead Presses (Shoulders, Triceps) • Deadlifts (Quadriceps, Forearms, Glutes, Hamstrings, Lower Back, Middle Back, Traps) • Planks (Abdominals, Glutes, Obliques, Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Calves, Lower Back, Middle Back, Traps, Shoulders, Chest) There are several variations that can be performed with each of these exercises depending on grip, hand or foot placement, or use of equipment such as weights, sandbags, barbells, or dumbbells. There
are instructional videos about how to perform each of these compound exercises at the bottom of this post. If such exercises don’t interest you, feel free to try other activities like hiking, swimming, cycling, rowing, rock climbing, or playing various sports that incorporate quick, powerful muscle movements or sprinting.
The general idea is to keep yourself active, so you’ll want to perform these exercises or activities 2-5 times a week depending on your current level of fitness. Regarding lifting, aim for 3 sets of 8-10 repetitions for men, or 3 sets of 12 -15 reps for women, and adjust the weight accordingly: you’ll want to make sure you are struggling to lift the weight by the last repetition of each set. Allow for a 1-2 minute break between exercises to catch your breath or drink water. Always remember that after exercising, the body needs nutrition and rest to recover properly, so eat a protein-rich Paleo meal and get plenty of sleep. Also, make sure to stretch briefly before and/or after physical activity to reduce the risk of injury.
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Paleo Diet Food List
Lean Beef: (trimmed of visible fat) • Flank Steak • Top Sirloin Steak • Extra Lean hamburger (7% fat or less) • London broil • Lean veal • Chuck Steak • Any other lean cut Lean Pork: (trimmed of visible fat) • Pork loin • Pork Chops • Any other lean cut Lean poultry: (white meat, skin removed) • Chicken breast • Turkey breast • Game hen breasts Eggs: • Chicken (enriched omega 3 variety) • Duck • Goose Other meats: • Rabbit meat (any cut) • Goat meat (any cut) Organ meats:
• Beef, lamb, pork, chicken livers • Beef, pork and lamb tongues • Beef, lamb and pork marrow • Beef, lamb and pork “sweetbreads” Game meat: • Alligator • Bear • Bison (buffalo) • Caribou • Elk • Emu • Goose • Kangaroo • Muscovy duck • New Zealand Cervena deer • Ostrich • Pheasant • Quail • Rattlesnake • Reindeer • Squab • Turtle • Venison • Wild boar • Wild turkey
Fish: • Bass • Bluefish • Branzini (Mediterranean sea bass) • Cod (Scrod is a young 2.5 lb or less cod) • Drum • Eel • Flatfish • Grouper • Haddock • Hailbut • Herring • Mackerel • Monkfish • Mullet • Northern Pike • Orange roughy • Perch • Red snapper • Rockfish • Salmon (fillet, steak, patties, smoked) • Sardines • Scrod • Shark • Striped bass
• Sunfish • Swordfish • Tilapia (St. Peters fish) • Trout • Tuna • Turbot • Walleye • Any other commercially available fish Shellfish: • Aabalone • Clams • Crab • Crayfish • Lobster (live lobsters) • Mussels • Oysters • Scallops • Shrimp Fruits: • Apple • Apricot • Avocado • Banana • Blackberries • Boysenberries
• Blueberries • Cantaloupe • Carambola • Cherries • Cherimoya • Cranberries • Gooseberries • Grapefruit • Grapes • Guava • Honeydew melon • Kiwi • Lemon • Lime • Lychee • Mango • Nectarine • Orange • Papaya • Passion Fruit • Pears • Pineapple • Peaches • Persimmon
• Plums • Pomegranate • Raspberries • Rhubarb • Tangerine • Watermelon • All other fruits Vegetables: • Artichoke • Mushrooms • Asparagus • Mustard Greens • Beet Greens • Onions • Beets • Pasley • Bell papers • Parsnip • Broccoli • Peppers (all kinds) • Brussels Sprouts • Pumpkin • Cabbage • Purslane • Carrots
• Radish • Cauliflower • Rutabaga • Celery • Seaweed • Collards • Spinach • Cucumber • Squash (all kinds) • Dandelion • Swiss Chard • Eggpland • Tomatillos • Endive • Tomato • Green Onions • Turnip Greens • Kale • Turnips • Kohlerabi • Watercress • Lettuce Nuts and Seeds: • Almonds • Pine Nuts
• Brazil Nuts • Pistachios (unsalted) • Cashews • Pumpkin Seeds • Chestnuts • Sesame Seeds • Hazelnuts • Sunflower Seeds • Macadamia Nuts • Walnuts • Pecans Foods You Can Eat in Moderation: • Coconut Oil • Olive Oil • Ghee (clarified butter) • Avocado • Walnut • Flaxseed • Olive Beverages: • Water • Tea • Wine (2-4 oz glasses) • Beer (12 oz, 1 bottle) • Spirits (4 oz)
Paleo Sweets: • Dried Fruits (2 oz) • Nuts mixed with dried fruit and fresh fruits (no more than 4 oz nuts and 2 oz of dried fruit a day.)
Going Completely Nuts… & Seeds!
Nuts & seeds are undoubtedly some of my favorite foods. They are delicious, nutritious, and easy to travel with or keep on hand as a snack. I use them regularly in most of my meals as well because they add a pleasant crunch and heartiness due to their well-rounded nutrient content of fat, protein, and carbohydrate. It’s commonly thought that most nuts are just that — nuts! However, the truth is that some foods commonly called “nuts” are actually kernels or legumes. The following “nuts” are not Paleo approved foods and should be avoided: peanuts (legume), soy nuts (legume), and corn nuts (roasted corn kernels). Flax & chia seeds could also be on this list, since they’re technically grain seeds and weren’t consumed by
our Paleolithic ancestors, but due to their high omega-3 content, some people consider them acceptable foods in moderation. These nuts & seeds are acceptable Paleo foods: almonds, pecans, walnuts, brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, chestnuts, macadamia nuts, pine nuts, pistachio nuts, candlenuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, hemp seeds, & sesame seeds.
Other than eating nuts & seeds by the handful, you can also enjoy them in trail mix, baked goods, or nut butters! Here are two of my favorite extra nutty recipes! Homemade Trial Mix:
• 2 cups sunflower seeds, unshelled & unsalted • 2 cups pumpkin seeds, raw & unstalted • 1 cup walnuts, unshelled • 1 cup almonds • 1 cup pistachios, unshelled & unsalted • 1 cup dried fruit, unsweetened (raisins, cranberries, pineapple, etc.)
• ¾ cup coconut flakes, dried & unsweetened • ½ cup bitter dark chocolate (optional) Mix all ingredients in a bowl, container, or zip-lock bag, and it’s ready to eat! You can make your own variations of this recipe by using different combinations of nuts, seeds, and dried fruits. If you’d like to add some spices to make it more flavorful, mix a teaspoon of nutmeg and/or cinnamon. If you’d like a sweeter flavor, you can preheat your oven to 350 degrees, put only nuts and seeds on a baking sheet, drizzle a teaspoon of raw honey over it, bake for 5 minutes, let cool and remove from the baking sheet, and then mix with the other ingredients. Homemade Vanilla Nut Butter:
• 5 cups of nuts (almonds, cashews, hazelnut, etc.) • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract • 1 teaspoon cinnamon and/or nutmeg
Add ingredients into the food processor bowl and process for about 1015 minutes, stopping to scrape the bowl every 30-60 seconds as needed. This should take between 10-15 minutes.
Recommendations For Futher Reading
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