Paleo Diet...

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Not good for weight loss?

I tried the low carb version, with my lifestyle it is unsustainable and made me feel rather unwell, and not just for a few weeks. If I try to do a work out without sufficient carbs I feel irritable past the point where it's reasonable (ie belligerent, aggressive, spaced out, angry..) until I eat some carbs again.

I exercise with weights..it's not working. I am not losing body fat. I do cardio and swim..still not losing body fat.

I am out all day I can't forever just carry cold chicken with me in a lunch box...its a crappy meal on a cold winters day when its freezing outside. I don't spend hours cooking. I hate cooking. Just because I have a vagina don't assume I like cooking. The only traditionally girly thing I like is needle crafts and I am growing bored of that lately.

I am fed up with being fat now. I am fed up with non of my clothing fitting me, I am fed up with attracting fat men who want to sit around all the time (I get soooooooooooo bored and fidgety when I have to sit making chit chat or just watching tv around other peoples houses. I can't get up and do anything really....and then they think Im anxious. NO im fidgeting because IM bored!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !). I know the latter is because of my weight. People make assumptions because I am large.

I just want to lose some weight! And I have been on and off the paleo diet now for 2 years...I have not lost anything! In fact I am slowly gaining. I was 15 stones when I started, lost half a stone, put it back on again, ballooned up to 16 stones 8lbs., lost 8lbs and got stuck.

I know I keep coming on and off it but not that drastically (i stop for a hot takeaway sandwich now and then as its god damned pain not being able to buy food out and I don't want cold chicken or boiled eggs (I hate boiled eggs...and they give me stomach ache and wind) on a freezing day).

It's useless basically, especially for someone who doesn't spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking.

I am beginning to wonder if some of the effects are placebo and if in fact it is a reduction in the amount of junk food I am eating that has made the difference in terms of my energy levels as opposed to it being things like avoiding gluten or dairy. Ie the removal of things like MSG, Aspartame and Fructose syrups. Food processing.

I wanted to build muscle but nothing seems to be happening in terms of removing body fat and reducing my dress size. So I don't know whether to put myself back on my old diet even if my energy levels drop a bit and i get my IBS back. I mean at least I was losing weight on it.

I'm sure someone will lay out a more detailed post but here's a primer. Lay off that paleolithic diet!

There's no real way to tell without samples of your daily food, though from the sound of it, you might not be eating enough fat when you reduce your carbs. This goes for any low carb way of eating, not just Paleo. Carbs and fat are the fuel sources, and protein should be used for building and maintaining muscle.

That said, while one of the effects of paleo is often weight loss, its primary goal is health, and it, and similar diets can be beneficial for many of the various non-NT types, for various reasons.

You don't need to live on chicken breast and hard boiled eggs, either. In fact, Dr. Cordain's original recommendations for eating lean meats and avoiding saturated fats was largely due to the influence of the old "fat is bad" mantras, and he later, after more research, reversed his opinions on saturated fats and, by extension, fatty foods. Getting more fat is the key to making any low carb way of eating sustainable in the long run.

However, if you don't like cooking and don't want to start (regardless of your gender), then it's possible it's not for you, at least not right now, because it does take a certain amount of cooking. That said, if you're willing to put at least a little time into cooking, and are okay with left offers, you can cook stuff on the weekend and eat leftovers the rest of the week. This is even more plausible if you have access to a microwave.

As for hot and comfort foods, there are tons of recipes. I recently picked up a cookbook called Quick and Easy Paleo Comfort Foods. It's great, because they all take less than half an hour to make. There are two chili recipes, a couple of soup recipes, and even meatloaf muffins. You can find tons more online, too.

As for your workouts, many people who switch to low carb find that their performance dips for a while, until their body adjusts. Once that happens, many people do quite well.

If you decide that paleo isn't for you right now, I recommend at least trying to focus on whole foods, getting your carbs from vegetables, protein from high quality meat, and fats from good sources (including meats, coconut oil, dairy if you can tolerate it, and olive oil). Try to focus more on making healthy food choices and being consistent with your workouts than adhering to someone's rules or whatever. If you're data-oriented, it might also help to sign up on a food tracking website and track your calories and exercise.

Hope this helps.

Try GAPS diet

I'm on paleo, and one BIG problem I had was eating enough fats. Since on most versions of paleo you get your carbs from green veggies, you will need to replace them with fatty meats. I love pork since it is very fatty and thus replaces the lost carbs. Pork chops, ham, Spam, and stuff like that. I also eat some chicken. I eat goat cheese, which isn't poisonous like cow cheese, and that helps give me enough fats as well. I don't like veggies, so I have found that I get enough carbs from a small can of pork and beans every couple days or so. If you can afford beef, beef is also fatty and helps. I am not a "cook" in the traditional sense, I use a small clamshell grill and cook most of my meat that way. I hate cooking too, and I still don't cook in the way that a famous cook like Guy Fieri does, I just grill meat. I have a convection oven for meat that's too much for the grill, such as beef roasts. I found that I was addicted to refined sugar, maybe that's part of your problem. The only way out is to go through withdrawal. I've heard that sugar is as addictive as cocaine. Throw away everything sweet in your house, put your money/debit card/credit card in an out of the way place, do whatever you have to to break the grip of sugar.

I've been dropping fat & gaining muscle on the diet I'm on. That may be your reason to give it a shot.

I attribute it to a few things:

1.) Cleaning out the digestive tract has enabled me to absorb nutrients a lot better.
2.) Eating quite a bit of glutamine to repair the intestinal lining has a nice muscle building side effect since it's also for muscle repair.
3.) Of course I can't ignore that I also workout & work a physical job - but nutrition has been absolutely critical in changing my body composition. If I worked out and worked physically and ate garbage, I'd get garbage results.

I know this diet very well - it's not popular advice but you need to count calories. Low carb can be very effective for many people but some of us still have to count calories to make it all work.

Paleo has worked very well for my family.

Why don't you post your meals for the day? Maybe we can help?

If you hate cooking, try a crock pot. You throw a bunch of food and spices in it, add water, turn it on. You can leave it for hours and it won't burn. Takes very little effort.

As someone with a biology degree who used to be premed, I see carb limiting diets such as Atkins as being the stupidist thing you can do to your body! Let me start with the fact that the brain needs 150 mg of glucose a day. If your burning all your glucose duringg exercise you might not be getting enough.
Second of all, fats and protiens are NOT a substitute for carbs which ar body's source of energy. As primates, our digestive systems afe designed to process mostly carbs. You should compare ours to a cat's for example.
Now let's get to the fact that the bi products of protiens after digestion are amino acids. Amino acids have to be converted to fats and carbs in the liver which not only puts a lot of stress on this important organ but also yield toxic amines as waste products which have to be converted to urea in the kidney's, thus putting stress on these organs and when there is more urea produced than can be added to your urine, it get's reabsorbed by the blood where it can crystalize and cause gout.
So inevidably, the long term complications of such a diet are a.) Kidney failure, b.) Serosis and possibly cancer of the liver and mental instability.
So when ever I hear someone say they want to try a low carb diet, my reaction is facepalm and inside my head "You're a fool!"
Instead one can loose weight and stay healthy by eating lots of fiber and whole grains. You see since fiber is indegesable, it sticks to the glucose and prevents a lot of it from being digested. The result is that less calories are consumed but you still feel full. Not to mentions it cleans the bowels of pieces of undigested meat and healps prevent colon cancer.

I'm on paleo too and I also hate cooking. I'm trying to strengthen my body and maximize my health for my parkour training. I'd agree with other posters in that it's important to eat plenty of vegetables and also fatty meats (I also eat a lot of goats feta, and I find that rump steak and chicken thigh fillets satisfy the hunger cravings).

Cooking a piece of steak or some chicken thigh fillet (just in rice bran oil and with chopped onion - eliminate all oils from your diet except for olive oil, rice bran oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil. AVOID vegetable oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, etc.), and steaming some vegetables (broccoli and carrot for example) is often what I do for dinner, and it's extremely easy, requires absolute minimal cooking effort, and satisfies the hunger.

Another kitchen item that has been the best thing that has happened to me has been buying a veggie twister, thus being able to make zucchini pasta (literally 100% zucchini) so I can have paleo pasta bolognaise, paleo pesto pasta, paleo pasta with a tomato sauce, etc etc (I love pasta and would not be willing to give it up). I actually have it raw, I find the sauce both heats and softens it sufficiently once I stir it through, and the zucchini has the exact same texture as real pasta except it tastes more refreshing.

My other absolute favourite zucchini pasta recipe is zucchini pasta with chopped parsley, chopped green capsicum, goats feta, cracked black pepper, tuna, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and olive oil.

Here are some photos of paleo pasta dishes I've made. They are ridiculously fast and easy to make.

The tuna one (my favourite):


Pasta bolognaise:


(I sometimes cheat and add parmesan cheese to my pasta dish )

I've also made paleo breakfast pancakes that are higher in protein by using chickpea flour. They contain chia gel (made from 2 teaspoons of chia seeds mixed with 4 tablespoons of water), half a banana (mashed with a fork), 1/4 cup chickpea flour, about 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, and about a tablespoon of blueberries. You just mix all the ingredients and cook it like a normal pancake. The chia gel acts as a binding agent and holds the pancake together whilst the banana acts a natural sweetener; a replacement for sugar.



This is a review of the betti bossy veggie twister (the one I have), explaining how it works etc. http://sandysveganblogsandblahs.blogspo ... eggie.html

You shouldn't be trying to lose weight. Just eat healthy and see what you look like healthy. After all, you can be fat and strong at the same time. Some posts on weight and all that here. If your clothes don't fit or flatter, get new clothes. And then go have fun doing whatever you love to do.

I ate paleo on and off for years, in order to eliminate indigestion from food sensitivities, not realizing that food sensitivities can be caused by an elimination diet. And then recently when eating nothing but grass fed meat, I still got painful gas. (How?! Don't you need carbs for that??! !?) Now I am trying to relearn how to digest a wide variety of foods and it isn't easy. My brain and taste buds are happy but my gut is outraged. They say it takes a while, but it can be done.

I did lose weight on paleo, partly because I wasn't eating enough (it can be hard to eat enough on paleo if you're low income). But then I'd binge on junk food to get my weight back up to safer levels again, and end up undernourished. (Repeat cycle for far too many years.) Now I'm in recovery, and my suggestion is to eat a wide variety of whole foods most of the time and make sure you're eating enough every day. The more stable your diet is, the happier your body is, and the more your weight stays stable. Not that you can't get some really really good recipes from the paleo movement.

The paleo diet being low carb is actually a myth.

A lot of people do the low carb version to lose weight but it doesn't have to be low carb, although it is lower carb than the standard diet due to its elimination of grains and processed sugars.

I mostly chose paleo because I was suffering from horrible digestive symptoms...diarrhea, gut pain, gas, bloating, pale stools etc..., fatigue that was almost crippling me, headaches (migraine like), brain fog, numb patches of skin, palpitations, inability to stay upright and so on for nearly 10 years of my life. It go so bad towards the end of it that I was losing control of my bowel and could rarely, if ever, manage to get out of the house. The drs blamed anxiety and depression but as someone who has close relatives with celiac disease and other relatives with diabetes type 2 (although they were not overweight) I suspected there might be dietary cause to my issues and wanted to try eliminating processed foods, grains (particularly gluten grains), processed sugars and limiting dairy.

The paleo diet fits that bill....

2 years later and ALL of those symptoms have reversed themselves provided I stay away from grains (the worse culprits being gluten grains such as wheat as well as corn and oats), all processed foods particularly those with MSG, High Fructose Corn Syrup and aspartame and keep dairy limited (a few decaf cappuccinos per week as a treat at most). Start adding those things back in and the fatigue and brain fog are the first to try and come back again as is tendency to pick up infections.

The weight loss is secondary to the health reasons and I did not chose the paleo diet for the purposes of weight loss alone.

I do a moderate carb version as I still consume fruits and vegetables such as parsnip, butternut squash and (if I have just come back from swimming or the gym...weight lifting/cardio session) maybe some sweet potato. All of those are paleo foods.

I even include a little good quality dark chocolate once in a while as a treat.

Breakfast today was a banana, pecan nuts and fresh dressed crab purchased from a local fishmonger (they come from Cromer, some 30 minutes away from me...complete in their shell), lunch was fresh (not reconstituted) turkey breast with carrots, mushrooms and onion. I also ate some walnuts, an apple and a clementine. Dinner will be tender pork loin from outside raised pigs (pasture raised animals or grass fed animals are preferable as they tend to be better quality meats...I do not consume processed deli meets. wild fish is also preferable over farm raised and game/wild meats such as venison are also good choices too), butternut squash and various other mixed vegetables.

I may have a square of chocolate later if i fancy it. I don't eat it every day and I did have a cappuccino this morning with dark chocolate topping so I may not bother having any more today.

If I want more food I will pick at the rest of the pork joint, boil an egg (or scramble a few...I use the omega enriched eggs for extra omega 3 fats) or chomp down on some fresh coconut.

Right now I'm not hungry.

Weight loss has started happening since limiting the dairy and the bloating I was having has gone away as long as I keep the dairy to a minimum.

I don't remember Neanderthin saying anything about restricting carbs at all (and that's where I got the idea of apple slices fried in bacon fat. yum!). All they say is that for some people, going low or no carb seems to work best. But the Mark Sisson version currently so popular is definitely low carb for everyone.

Yep, with the paleo diet you get your carbs from vegetables and such - which are healthier sources of carbohydrate than grains. Grains, including whole grains, do not do good things to the body. Obviously if you try to eliminate carbs altogether that is stupid, the point of the paleo diet is definitely not to eliminate essential nutrients from your diet - the point is to change the source of those nutrients to make sure they are coming from the right foods. In my opinion it's the equivalent of recognizing that 200 calories worth of fast food is not the equivalent of 200 calories of vegetables. The source matters.

What Sunshower said.

Eating carbs that have little-to-no nutritional value is just as stupid as giving them up altogether, in my opinion. It really is about the source.

I also went on Paleo diet and just started, mainly because of chronic fatigue but it really depends on your metabolism. Not everyone has the same and not everyone is made for the same food. I never believed in "one diet suits all". Paleo is just the one who helped me the most. I don't have much experience with it until now, but that was my feeling right from the start that it helped and gives me more energy. I also tyred the GfCf diet, but never helped much. Everyone has to find out their personal best combination.