The Paleo Diet

Discussion in 'Health and Fitness' started by Gizmo Dynamo, Nov 6, 2013.

  1. Mangosteen

    Mangosteen Hold strong not

    what does this mean... unproven effect?
     
  2. matveimediaarts

    matveimediaarts Underappreciated genius

    My first trainer told me that the reason for all the water is to keep hydrated (more important for athletes and very active people) and to flush out stuff like uric acid that accumulates in the body.

    AFAIK, there's no single diet that works for everyone. It depends on stuff like genetics and activity level. Michael Phelps eats a ridiculous amount of pasta, simple carbs, and food in general. BUT, he's an extremely active world-class athlete.
     
  3. matveimediaarts

    matveimediaarts Underappreciated genius

    Pretty much that^^. :cool: I got quite thin on a paleo-ish lifestyle. However, my goal is to gain mass and strength, so I upped my intake of everything but simple carbs/sugars/grains. I've put on significant mass since then. :D (still a long way from my 200 lb goal, though)
     
  4. aaradia

    aaradia Choy Li Fut and Yang Tai Chi Chuan Student Moderator Supporter

    Is the Paleo diet just the Atkins diet by a different name? It seems very similar. Or is it different? If different, how so?
     
  5. boards

    boards Its all in the reflexes!

    As I understand it, the Atkins Diet goes through a series of levels starting off very restricted and gradually adding things in.
    Paleo covers a whole range of diets from the original low fat, no grains natural foods diet, to the high fat Primal Blueprint which is far less restrictive. In general all the paleo diets scorn grains, tho the PB will include rice for active people who aren't trying to loose 200 lbs. They all also tend to be very against grain fed meat.

    It seems like Atkins is more interested in calorie counting than Paleo (I dont really know much Atkins admittedly).
     
  6. LemonSloth

    LemonSloth Laugh and grow fat!

    Aye I know, but it still means a hell of a lot of trips to the bog :p

    Paleo is great if it works for you, but I found for me that it was just too restrictive to sustain long term. The most I'll do now is just cut out some of the carbs from my diet if I'm getting bigger than I'd like, but that's about it.

    Michael Phelps isn't a human, he's a dolphin in a skin suit.

    You're not all that far off the mark, actually.
     
  7. boards

    boards Its all in the reflexes!

    Michael Phelps is a freak of nature. He has a diet that most athletes don't try to emulate.
     
  8. John R. Gambit

    John R. Gambit The 'Rona Wrangler

    I don't know what the Pusztai affair is and the Chinese research was conducted by one of their major universities and was testing urine samples for free circulating pesticides in inorganic produce eaters, which remained detectable in the urine for three days after they stopped eating inorganic produce. I'm not gonna dig it up again (it was a nightmare to find the first time and I'm not even confident I could find it again if I wanted to, but it's cited by me on another MAP thread somewhere.). I really don't see how flawed their methodology could be given how incredibly simple their study was. Oh yeah, and I didn't mention ABs. They are a cause for concern though. You hafta remember I'm giving general advice here about organic labeling. I'm an American. Our food and chemical controls here are a joke. The agency tasked with it is irresponsible at the worst of times and constantly underfunded.

    You seem to have an agenda with this Zaad. Are you making the claim that organic food is just as safe as inorganic food universally? You should maybe read this Wiki entry on the health effects of common pesticides used in inorganic farming.

    Health effects of pesticides
     
  9. righty

    righty Valued Member

    No, they have very different principles behind them. Although the implementation of both of them may seem similar depending on who is following them it's the principle that is the main difference.

    Atkins is primarily focused on limiting carbohydrate intake. How you limit that carb intake is pretty much up to you as long as you keep protein and fats high enough to stop you wasting away.

    Paleo on the other hand is focused on mimicking the lifestyle of early humans with the idea that human physiology evolved specifically in response to this lifestyle. So because processed foods, grains and modern fruit were not readily available during this time, the human digestive tract and overall metabolism is not adapted to properly handle these foods and so they should be avoided.

    Because the foods to be avoided are the main dietary carb sources (e.g. breads, pasta) for a lot of people when the switch to 'eating paleo' it's very common to implement it as a relatively low carb, high protein and fat diet. And so for athletes it can be very difficult to get enough food to fuel performance when eating strictly this way.

    Keep in mind also that while 'paleo' is most often though of as a diet it's more of a lifestyle thing. So it includes things like sleep patterns and exercise programs.

    While paleo can provide benefits for the Average Joe by simply reducing intake of calorie dense but nutritionally poor foods and total Calories it can definitely be taken too far. The most extreme example for me is when I had an argument with someone who refused to vaccinate her children "because vaccines aren't paleo".

    Anyway, I hope at least some people found this useful.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2013
  10. John R. Gambit

    John R. Gambit The 'Rona Wrangler

    I'll get back to this topic, but I wanted to post a well-written news article and a journal article on pesticides in foods.

     
  11. Mangosteen

    Mangosteen Hold strong not

    I do indeed have an agenda; i've been studying this recently and was hoping for a good ole informative internet discussion with someone who is well read on the topic to challenge my understandings!
     
  12. Mangosteen

    Mangosteen Hold strong not

    i was actually referring more to GMO than pesticide, fertiliser and animal conditions.

    a note on the chinese pesticide study - my mother works in a food quality area in china and they are horrendous with their regulations (heck you can buy DDT from any side stall in India for home use!) so a chinese or other country study may not be relevant.

    also nice cherry picking by highlighting the stats in that study e.g. birth weight and IQ in correlation to pesticide consumption.
    ill see if i can find some meta analysis on the topics tomorrow
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2013
  13. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    My main disagreement with GMO is with the way the companies use a terminator code within the seed to make it sterile, thus ensuring the farmers reliance on the org to get new seed every year.
    Yet without the terminator gene, potentially dangerous cross breeding with weeds etc could occur, ethically its a mine field.
     
  14. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e7S7r31cjAQ&desktop_uri=/watch?v=e7S7r31cjAQ
     
  15. John R. Gambit

    John R. Gambit The 'Rona Wrangler

    I only asked because I recalled you having a bit of a history at asking me loaded questions that are very challenging to source, followed by asking more follow-up questions to the cited reply while your contribution to the debate remains minimal in terms of word usage or time spend researching a counter-point. I figured I would save myself some time by getting directly to the root of your opinion, which you appear to be expressing some reluctance to commit to here.

    Well I wish you had stated to to begin with. I will try to get around to finding the articles I read on GMO, which until recently I had previously assumed to be quite safe before discovering there are apparently instances of increased diseases in livestock who are fed GMO feeds.

    I have looked for the Chinese study since I originally cited it and have been unable to locate it, and I did search again for this thread with no success. Google is a fickle mistress it seems.

    Your objection is that I didn't use bold highlights on the article I posted in it's entirety while providing an original link for everyone to verify? If your agenda here is to support that inorganic is safe and preferable, please just state so. It's a common opinion on MAP, so you won't be alone.

    I will try to get around to the GMO info soon, but I'm afraid I've been out of town and quite busy since my return.
     
  16. John R. Gambit

    John R. Gambit The 'Rona Wrangler

    [I intended to make this post entirely GMO-based research, but apparently I keep running across additional articles on pesticides while doing the GMO search that are relevant to this discussion, so I will mix-and-match the topics a bit here.]

    There is A LOT of research cited in the article below, which is by the same organization as the article above. I suggest reading their academic sources if you are sincerely interested in the topic of risks associated with GMO consumption.

    Their cited sources are at the original link above and I will repost them below.

     
  17. Oldi

    Oldi Valued Member

    In answer to the OP, I've gone back and forth over the paleo thing, trying it for long periods, reading a lot of the main exponents (Robb Wolf, Mark Sissons, Loren Cordain etc) and their detractors. Eventually I came to the same conclusion as many others here; paleo type eating leads to a calorie deficit in most people, so people lose weight. There are also health benefits implicit in increasing fruit and veg intake and teaching people not to fear animal fat. Beyond that however I see no reason to demonise food groups unnecessarily in healthy people, and I was eventually seduced by the Alan Aragon school of thought.

    To both the OP and the current debate on pesticides, I would recommend the thoroughly commonsensical writings of Aragon and Monica Reinagel, the self-styled Nutrition Diva. Her book is rather meanly cribbed in this particular review, producing some pretty solid guidelines in which, when coupled with a managed calorie intake, I have complete faith. http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/300316749

    Regarding pesticides, Reinagel references a study suggesting you can reduce your exposure by 90% by trading standard peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, grapes, spinach, lettuce and potatoes for their organic equivalents.
     
  18. John R. Gambit

    John R. Gambit The 'Rona Wrangler

    Yes, there are websites which list which foods are richest in pesticides, however there is also the issues of GMO being in almost all foods, even-cross contaminating some organic fields, and your dietitian doesn't see to address this concern. Inorganic produce that is still GMO (which most of it is these days in the US) does cause a broad spectrum of disease in livestock it is fed to. The unfortunate reality we live with is that the foods that our parents could eat without reading labels are far from what we can now safely eat. Thank the Baby Boomer generation for that one.

    I actually recently told friends who trust my scientific opinion that the whole GMO thing was a joke and there was no cause for alarm and I feel terrible about it now. That had been something I had believed until somehow I ended up reading a very convincing article on the topic and deciding I was not only wrong, but I had been dangerously incorrect. I'm embarrassed at the arrogance and dismissal with which I expressed that opinion too.
     
  19. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    pretty good point.

    i have also found that when people go paleo, they do go into a deficit without realizing. which does two things: makes the diet unsustainable long-term, and gives people the impression of efficacy when in fact it's just a deficit. it's important that regardless of whether you are in a deficit because you're trying to lose weight, or just trying to maintain, that a person eats enough.

    like i measure out a cup of yogurt for breakfast. at first, it seemed like a lot. but i realized that i was hungry pretty soon after i ate in the morning because i was not eating enough. so now i measure. my typical breakfast is: one cup of greek yogurt, one cup of fruit (whatever is in season, or a banana in the winter), one tablespoon each of sunflower seeds (or nuts) and maple syrup. lots of protein, fat and carbs, and enough food where i don't feel hungry for a few hours.
     
  20. John R. Gambit

    John R. Gambit The 'Rona Wrangler

    What do you consider a caloric deficit Giovanni? Specifically, what calorie range do you (or anyone else familiar with the diet) feel many people sustain themselves on using Paleo?

    The reason I ask is there is very strong researching indicating that eating about 70% of your recommended caloric intake but exclusively eating nutrient rich food without any wasteful and useless calories promotes increased median lifespan in all orgasms studied and was the basis for a lot of longevity research, specifically resveratrol, the compound found in red wine and researched around the globe for it's effects in mimicking what is called a Caloric Restriction Diet (the 70% caloric intake diet mentioned above). Even people with very low body fat %s report exceptional health and fitness using Caloric Restriction Dieting, and the food selection options don't seem that different from Paleo dieting from my cursory observation of Paleo. It is believed that CRDing activates survival genetics that make mammals overall physiology function at optimal efficiency and promote healing and telomere strengthening and potential regrowth.
     

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