How to Eat Paleo

Do you want to learn how to eat paleo, but aren’t sure what foods are good to eat on the latest health-craze diet? See what the paleo diet is all about, how you can go paleo, and why you should start eating like a caveman (or, cavewoman) to be healthier, leaner and fitter.

What is the Paleo Diet?

The word “paleo” is short for “Paleolithic”, which stands as the foundation of the diet. The idea behind the Paleo Diet is to practice eating habits that mimic those of our caveman ancestors.

Studies suggest that the evolution of the western diet is the cause of today’s obesity epidemic in the Western world. Since our bodies were not originally designed to process anything other than meats and vegetables, we have a hard time metabolizing new foods that differ from what the caveman ate, thus causing weight gain.

Advocates of the paleo diet credit it as a successful way to lose weight and maintain a healthy diet.

Paleo Foods

The paleo diet requires you to eat unprocessed, natural foods high in protein, fiber, omega-3, and omega-6 fats, and potassium and low in carbohydrates, glycemic, and sodium.

Suggested foods to eat include grass-fed meats, wild-caught fish and seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, nuts and seeds, and healthy oils.

Foods to avoid include grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugars, potatoes, salt, and processed foods.

Basically, you’ll want to eat the foods that cavemen ate; meat & fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. And remember; if any of these were processed in a factory, don’t go near it. Cavemen didn’t have food-processing factories!

Tips For Eating Paleo

Keep a food journal

Before making any changes, it is important to clearly define your current eating habits. In your food journal, write down everything you eat for the day for a few days. Your food journal will help you notice areas where changes need to be made and give you an overall idea of the road ahead towards “living paleo”.

Before you take away the bad, add the good!

Start by introducing foods that your diet lacks that fit the paleo diet. This is the time to explore and experiment! Try new foods that are variations of the foods you already love and find out what you enjoy eating and what you want to shy away from. For example, if you love foods high in bad fats, substitute them with foods with alternative fats, such as coconut oil, EVOO, or duck fat.

Clean out your kitchen

Get rid of all the grains, pasta, rice, etc., and replace them with paleo-friendly substitutes. If your diet is packed with grains, start by substituting your normal grains with “good” grains, like quinoa and wild rice. This will help you ease into the total elimination of grains from all your meals.

Change your meal plan

Instead of your dinner meal consisting of “meat, veggie, grain” change food categories to “meat, veggie, veggie”. Each dinner meal should have one portion of meat, and two portions of vegetables. For variation, make two vegetable dishes or two preparations of the same vegetable. For breakfast and lunch meals, eat any food that fits the paleo criteria.

Have a weekly “cheat meal”

Each week, set aside one meal as your “cheat meal”, where you can choose to eat whatever you’d like, no matter if it fits with the paleo diet or not. Having a “cheat meal” once a week will help you maintain eating habits on the paleo diet and ensure that you do not feel deprived of all foods you enjoy.

The Takeaway

Switching to a paleo diet isn’t easy to do…but cutting out processed foods and eating like a caveman will make you healthier and leaner. Follow these steps on how to go paleo and start your journey towards a better, healthier you!

Sources

British Journal of Nutrition: Estimated macronutrient and fatty acid intakes from an East African Paleolithic diet

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition: Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet.

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: Diet-dependent acid load, Paleolithic nutrition, and evolutionary health promotion

Photo by Lord Jim

2 comments

Ivlia November 30, 2013 - 2:03 pm

if quinoa is a south american food staple, and if the current fad for eating it is genuinely leaving locals, who depend on it as part of their daily diet, starving because they can no longer afford to buy it as the price has soared, should we really be encouraged to eat it. surely we should only be eating it if there is sufficient left over after those who traditionally rely on it as a staple food are supplied first, at prices they can afford to pay. else it smacks of stealing from those who have little just to feed a modern fad by those who have plenty.

Ivlia November 30, 2013 - 10:05 am

great idea but why go back to the paleo era. look at the paintings and descriptions from as late as the 16thC and you won’t find many people who were obese so why not eat what they ate. Even going back to the 14thC and the diet was greatly different to now with only wheat being the only main processed food. and if obesity really is exacerbated by a ‘fat gene’ as scientists claim I see no reason why there would have been no overweight people in the paleo era. They may not have been obese, due to the exercise taken, but if the fat gene really does exist then it almost certainly existed in paleo times as well. This diet may be good for you, although I suspect that it may be lacking in certain areas, but unless the meat is grass-fed, the fish wild caught and the fruit and veg fresh (so not from a supermarket where they have almost certainly been in cold storage for months or years but picked direct from the garden) the diet can’t be the same. Most modern meat isn’t grass-fed but fed on cattle cake and other supplements so that cuts that out to start with. You’d spend all your time catching/killing/collecting your food, which in turn would give you all the exercise needed which in turn would mean obesity is highly unlikely.

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How to Eat Paleo Like a Caveman