For those who dont know the Caveman diet is basically the Atkins diet. I'm not saying Atkins is bad, but all you haters need to be aware the guy was basically right. Pretty much every diet that works involves to some degree removing sugar and starch (they both raise blood sugar) & increasing fiber and protein.
Kind of but not really
I eat carbs. I eat plenty of fruit which is loaded with carbs.
The main thing is no grains, dairy or legumes. The grains are the hard part.
Also...only 6 eggs per week. This is hard for me. Eggs are a great way to fill up and don't have any carbs or fat. I'm still trying to figure out why I can only have six per week.
I've known a couple of people who lost weight switching over but the biggest impact was cutting out the piss poor eating habits they had, not the paleo diet itself.
I just started an Atkins type diet myself, and it really isn't that bad as far as what's restricted. I did a checkup and blood work before I started, because I'm interested in seeing cholesterol improvements with a relatively high fat diet. I eat a lot of meat, eggs, cheese, and green vegetables, and limit myself to maybe 20g of carbs a day, which I've found are mostly in the form of salad dressing when I have it.
Three weeks and I'm down 17 pounds, and I feel fine too. Hardest was giving up anything that requires bread, like sexy pizza lol. I don't eat much fruit either, other than strawberries sometimes. The married life and a new baby plump you up sometimes
Why no legumes? Those are naturally occurring in nature and really good for you.
Reason enough, right there.Actually, the two most popular legumes, peanuts and soybeans, were not part of the American diet until very recently. They've only been commonly consumed by humans in US since WWII. It's only because the US government has subsidized them that they have become very popular.
Just because they are a novel part of our diet doesn't mean that they are bad however. In general, the Paleo diet eliminates all foods that people are commonly allergic to---gluten, diary, peanuts, and soybeans. Also, some people are concerned about the effect of soybeans on our endocrine system since they may act as phytoestrogens.
Also...only 6 eggs per week. This is hard for me. Eggs are a great way to fill up and don't have any carbs or fat. I'm still trying to figure out why I can only have six per week.
Fructose is often recommended for diabetics because it does not trigger the production of insulin by pancreatic β cells, probably because β cells have low levels of GLUT5.[54][55][56] Fructose has a very low glycemic index of 19 ± 2, compared with 100 for glucose and 68 ± 5 for sucrose.[57]
Fruits are not good for the purpose of losing fat and weight as it causes your blood sugar levels to spike rapidly. There are really only two times of the day to eat fruit, either right in te morning or right after an intense workout.
Fresh fruit also contain huge amount of water and can fill you up, unlike dried fruit.
A peach and a banana make a great lunch. I've been trading one meal for either fruit or a small salad. I feel much better than if I hit the buffet.
I have my Paleo book to my mom. Time to hit up the library to get another!
That's the basic idea behind it.
My wife and I started off about 3 months ago doing Paleo specifically but found quickly that we both couldn't stick to it as my wife is hypoglycemic and that level of low carbs caused her to become faint very often.
So we do consume some carbs but aim for roughly 50 total per day NET carbs.
I've lost 33lbs in just under 3 months. Started on March 24th. I've been using the Calorie Counter app on my iPhone which sync with http://www.fatsecret.com and for me has been a great way to track and graph my progress. It keeps me motivated to see the progress I've made already when I'm feeling like I'm not making great progress on a given day or week.
I started off at 252lbs and today am at 219lbs.
I'm 6'3" FWIW.
All in all, we've morphed into focusing on mostly caring about NET carbs and carb avoidance specifically in the evening hours.
It's worked better than we could of ever hoped.
We've been taking the Atkins method to counting NET carbs, which is to take total carbs minus fiber and sugar alcohols if applicable. Sugar alcohols are basically artificial sweeteners.
An example of NET cars is as follows.
We get the high fiber whole wheat tortilla wraps from the grocery store. The total carbs listed is 11 and the total fiber is 6. 11-6=5 Net carbs, which is what we count as carb intake.
When it comes to things like artificially sweetened goods like say a "sugar free" Reese's peanut butter cup. The total carbs might be something like 20 while the sugar alcohols are 18 and you're left with 2 net carbs.
I was pretty suspicious of this net carb method and still can't point to any studies that back it up completely but I do know that we've seen tremendous results while consuming things with artificial sweeteners when we have a craving.
While subtracting the grams of fiber from the total number of carbs is valid, since fiber by default isn't metabolized, it is not a great thing to completely nix sugar alcohols. While they don't have the 4kcal per 1g like most carbs, they do tend to have ~2kcal per 1g. They're less calorically dense, but are not zero calories. I feel like some people could skew their diet to take in more sugar alcohols, which in itself isn't really advised. Paleo is geared toward taking in less processed food sources, not MORE processed. Sugar alcohols tend to be in heavily processed goods, so I'd try to nix them and regular sugar from the diet. That is, if you're trying to be strict Paleo.