Paleo / Primal Nutrition

I’ve hopped on a new nutrition bandwagon.

I guess it all started about 10 years ago, when I first discovered and implemented the Atkins diet. As most people know, the Atkins diet is all about restricting carbohydrates. It has come under some flack for being unhealthy because it restricts fruit and veg, but the truth is, beyond the first two week adjustment phase, the fresh foods are added back in. It worked well for me at the time, I dropped a lot of fat weight, but in time I found it a bit restrictive, and it seemed like an un-natural way to eat, and like so many good diet plans, I came back ‘off’ the diet, and gained the weight back. In fact, during those ten subsequent years I have gained a lot of strength and bulk, I’m just not the same chap physically that I was back then.

But recently on the web, I’ve become more and more aware of the paleo/primal way of thinking about nutrition. The basic idea is that you attempt to follow a diet such as we would have eaten as Palaeolithic hunter gatherers, which is before the Neolithic phase and so before agriculture. The big change is to drop grains and sugar from the diet. This leaves you focussing on meat, animal products, fruit and vegetables. Another part is to avoid vegetable oils, full of omega 6 and would not have been available to the paleo people.

I’m not going to try and lay out the whole nutrition principles, as others have done this at length and much better than me, but suggest you follow the links at the end of the article if you want to find out more detailed information.

I didn’t jump into full implementation of the paleo way of thinking in one go, but started to incorporate it bit by bit. This made my transition pretty easy going. I’ve lost over 20 pounds over the last few months, and I’ve kept my strength in the gym, so I think this is largely fat weight. After a slow-ish start with visible fat loss, when I think I was losing a layer all over, now a lot of the fat that was sat on my belly has gone as well, I’m very pleased about that. Still a good way short of visible abs though, ah well. In short, I’m feeling and looking pretty damn good.

Its been mentally easier to stick to that Atkins. Where I thought at the time Atkins was a little bit ‘out there’ and weird, the logic of following a diet that we evolved to eat (or ate as were were evolving?) seems straightforward to me. So although in some ways it is similar to Atkins, the principles make much more sense to me this time around.

I don’t envisage myself going off the nutrition plan. I can see that maybe in time I will soften it up a little, and maybe eat a little more of the non-primal foods. I’m already happily ‘cheating’ on weekends, usually when I’m visiting friends, when its nice to eat more ‘normally’ and not be funny about food. (What is normal anyway? Is the primal way more normal than the current modern way?) This doesn’t seem to have affected progress. It tends to only be a meal or two. I’m still learning new ways to eat on plan. I’m not going hungry. Its fairly easy, and I feel good.

One nice aspect of eating this way is the control of insulin levels, and hence energy and hunger levels. I was your classic eat 6 times a day strength trainer, and if I missed a feeding, I’d get really hungry fairly rapidly. Now my energy levels are much smoother, and I can not snack between meals with ease if I’m busy, and not suffer a drop in energy or needing to eat.


There’s a lot of information out there on the web relating to eating like our ancestors, I’ll just link you to my absolute favourites. Yes, their ideas don’t all match, but its from the same hymn sheet :

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/ This is where it all started for me. Mark has a fun easy to read style. He had his own slant on the caveman idea, which he calls Primal Nutrition. He covers in some detail nutrition, including lots of information on specific food groups. He also considers exercise, play, and other branches of his ten rules of primal living. Check out his ‘primal blueprint’ posts for the basics. My favourite source of primal info by far. I’ve also bought his book, very good, although a large part of the information can be found by extensive reading of the blog, but its summarised well in the book, and much easier to get the whole picture.

http://freetheanimal.com/ This blog focuses on paleo nutrition. He gets pretty angry and worked up about subjects, and this makes for fun reading. He has transformed himself through the paleo diet. Way back the blog was about politics, but now its pretty much entirely nutrition based.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/ A lot of nutrition science, digested into understandable articles. A lot about natural food diets of primitive and/or isolated groups, and how they affect health. A lot about the spread of modern diseases and how that relates to nutrition. Really reading through the entire blog, and understanding some portion of the science – this is what made me realise that I ‘had’ to get started on a new nutritional path.

http://robbwolf.com/ In particular the podcast. A fun Q&A style podcast on paleo eating, lots of information laid out clearly, great listening. Discussion of topics in detail that I have not read about anywhere else on the web.