Paleo and primal

[Daughteroughter]

I have been reading about paleo and primal diets has anyone tried them?

Tea,

Yes, degree in physics, reasonably heavy in stats. Wife with degree in nutrition, masters in dietetics.

Of course, if you want to eat no carbs, low carbs, paleo, primal or believe that most people cannot naturally control our blood insulin or that we are"gluten intolerant" without actually having coeliac disease, go ahead. Placebo effect is v powerful. Oh, forgot one, that Normal food is toxic and we need regular detoxes...

Good for you and your wife, sweetie.

I think detox is a bunch of bull. Happy now?

I was really enjoying this thread.

I've found a way of cutting down junk food by focusing on whole foods, and by including protein at breakfast and good fats and lowish carbs (which is entirely appropriate for me as I have a horrible condition which includes exercise intolerance).

Food has been reeeeally difficult for me to handle over the past six months and I was totally miserable and gaining weight while eating a pretty normal diet. Look back at my precious posts on this thread and you'll see how happy I am now with this way of eating.

I don't evangelise to anyone. I don't pretend I know why this is working. But it is. And I'd like to come back here for support when junk food calls.

So please step off and start a different thread about justifying food choices. I have things to do.

Apologies building. I guess anyone who reels off his wife's qualifications as an argument really isn't worth engaging with! It's been a tough 24 hours and I was feeling narky...

Let's get back to the thread, I promise I won't feed the troll anymore

Fair enough. Making healthy choices is sensible and I am pleased it is working for you.

People are so ripped off by the pseudo science in the diet\ health food industry, though.

I will step away now.

please do

Thanks all.

Eggs and berries for breakfast. Yum.

Chicken casserole and salad last night, will have leftovers today. Served with orzo for the kids.

Wow I just step out to have a friendly chat with my local butcher and I miss all the action!

Have I mentioned how much I love leftovers - just had an amazing soup. Fried mushrooms, garlic - chilli - ginger paste (I bulk made it yesterday and ice cubed it), fish sauce, and then the leftover greens in coconut milk and some spare chicken from the dcs lunchbox and fish sauce to taste. On the table in 10 mins and really tasty.

Larry, so your wife has a degree in nutrition and you are a physicist. So what? It doesn't mean what your wife has been taught is correct!

Current dietary advice is killing people, and I mean literally. And is based on no evidence or flawed evidence.

You are right of course, it is madness to think that "normal" food is unhealthy, and that most people develop syndrome X within a couple of decades of eating a healthy normal diet.
You are right because what we are eating now in the western world is not normal or healthy.

The interesting thing about the ancestral health movement (paleo, primal, lchf), is how many of the leaders of the movement are medical doctors, biochemists and scientists.

Maybe you should do a little reading, I suggest the following blogs, all have good science links to research, you may have your eyes opened!

Marks daily apple, robbwolf.com, thedietdoctor.

FYI, I have a science degree, my dh is a Dr, our dc who are also very interested in this woe are students of medicine & physics. We are not stupid and actually, neither are the other posters here!

Well said Rawcoconut. It's frustrating how blinkered so many people are.

All I know is when I diet (low fat/low calorie) I'm miserable, hungry and put the weight back on. When I eat this way I'm not tired or lethargic all the time, I've not had one cold this winter for the first time in a long time, I'm never hungry and I lose weight. It works. It's just hard to kick the sugar demon

misscph1973

The brand is called East End. Apparently it is also sold in the world foods aisle of some Morrisons, Asda and Tesco supermarkets.

Have found this as well.

Please can I have the ugly biscuits recipe.

The thing is, if Larry (and his wife!) had bothered to read the thread then they'd see that we eat an amazing variety of fabulous, healthy, whole foods, without an 'industry' in sight. I would even go so far as to say that paleo/primal is the complete antithesis of 'the diet industry'. Yes, there are books and blogs and people can always find a way to make money out of anything but, my god, you want 'diet industry'? Take a look at bloody Weightwatchers or Slimming World!

And it's that stuff that dieticians and GPs recommend...the stuff you pay for, that sets you up to fail so you keep coming back and paying again and again, and you have to buy their food and their magazines and... gggggrrrrrrrrrrrr! The diabetes advice that tells you to consume 12 servings of carbohydrate a day. The slimming club that humiliates its members in public when they haven't lost 'enough'. The NHS-sponsored weightloss programme that tells you to eat low-fat, sugar-filled, artificial shite...

I wouldn't take advice on a 'healthy, balanced diet' from a 'professional' if my life depended on it. Which, thankfully, I'm now confident it never will.

Absolutely tea!!! I did that whole slimming world thing for years, and mentally I think the repeated failures are very bad for people- but they want you to fail (they want you to succeed and then return to a SAD diet, get fat again and rejoin them (ok, we are in the UK but SAD (standard American diet) is a brilliant acronym !

And yes, the diabetes advice is absolutely bat shit crazy - eat lots of what made you diabetic, and take lots of medication, rather than change what you eat.
And oddly, BOTH type 1 and type 2 are related to grain consumption (inflammation, autoimmune and wrecking of the insulin response are all effects of healthy whole grains!
And I'm not making that up - there a number of studies which support that.

Misscph before I started paleo I eBayed lots of my skinnier clothes, but there were a couple of things that I loved and were expensive so held onto them. There's no reason why you won't fit into them again. But positive :)

I had salad and salt beef for lunch, some almonds (my legal downfall) and an apple for snacks, and courgette spaghetti and bolognese with loads of veg for dinner. I'm very proud I avoided the yummy biscuits at the hairdressers!

Oh but when I weighed myself I this morning I'm now heavier than when I started paleo :(

This is the point - this is normal real food which people have eaten for 2million years. Modern processed junk food is not real or good food and it makes you sick. Modern foods are in a sense the real weird fad. Very few doctors would disagree that eating unprocessed food is bad for you. It's all pretty much proven. There is nothing faddy about eating real food which is all paleo/primal is. It's nothing complex or special.

SAD could always be Standard Awful Diet...

Speaking of which, does anyone have any good strategies for kicking a diet coke habit? I've done it before but it crept back in.

I'm more low-carbing than paleo/primal really, as being too strict with myself never works. I'm aiming for 80/20 but I'm more at 60/40 right now. I'm really not happy about the diet coke and diet soft drinks - I want them GONE.

What happens if you stop the paleo diet though? Does it all come back on again?

Eliza - if I went back to eating my previous diet of sugar- and grain-heavy foods, I would expect to gain weight, yes. I'd also expect to feel bloated, sluggish, lethargic, spotty and grumpy.

But, this isn't a diet, and I don't intend to stop. Ever. This is the way I eat. I don't think people come to paleo/primal for a short-term fix, because it changes so much about the way you see the food you eat. So the idea of putting it all back on doesn't bother me, because I won't

I think the thing with the lower carb approach to eating is that if you have done the reading and the understand how and why it works and you understand the negative impact grains can have then going back to a conventional diet is not something you want to do for your health - more for ease and your tastebuds. At times since I've started I have reverted to normal diet - especially on holidays and around Christmas and at family gathering - but I see I am now fully conditioned into thinking that Paleo is a healthier diet, so we always hop back on the wagon and eat clean food whenever we can.
The other thing to bare in mind is that Paleo is a guide, you make up your own rules.....if you are at your ideal weight and you are very active you can happily munch away on bananas and sweet potatoes - great food for paleo kids but most people save these treats for occasional use....the idea is to feed you body with the nutrient dense, additive free, non inflammatory food. But everyone's requirements will be different depending on their goals.

The whole thing about the dietetics industry is interesting. I've spent the last ten years in the NHS and now work in a school. Few healthcare professionals have much time for the work dietitians do and the NHS has never built up services, especially compared to other allied health professionals such as occupational therapists and physios (where the evidence and outcomes are pretty shaky at times). GPs are now told to refer to Slimming World rather than dietitians as it provides better value for money, I.e. better outcomes and cost, not just that it's cheaper.

Dietetics only really started as a discipline in the 70s/80s around the same time as the promotion of high fibre low fat diets. This coincides nicely with the rise in obesity, although the reasons for that are more complex.

I agree that if you understand the science, especially at a cellular and organ level, you know why this woe works. At school I can see which kids are flailing by lunchtime. When I ask them, breakfast is invariably cereal and mid-morning snack a biscuit. It's frustrating that they're being set up for failure.

As to sugar cravings, I just don't have them anymore. We've had doughnuts in the staff room all week as it's been SATS and I haven't been tempted. I nearly spat out some milk chocolate the other day as it tasted so cloying and cheap. That's after four months of primal eating about 90% of the time.

I did think about re-training as a dietitian a few years ago, my friend - a GP said not to bother as I would get too frustrated with the job as no one pays any attention to what they say. Mind you nutrition and the NHS is a bit of a joke, stay in hospital for a few days and you'll realise how little value they place on eating well. The food they gave me to eat after a major op made my consultant gasp in horror, my dh had to bring in suitable food from home.