best approach is to stay away from these foods. Stick with humanity’s original fare: fruits, vegetables, and lean meats.
What to Expect on the Paleo Diet
The key to the Paleo Diet is to stay with this wonderful way of eating. I can guarantee that you will immediately feel better. Your energy level will increase; you won’t have to endure that late-afternoon tiredness or “blah” feeling. In the morning, you’ll wake up charged and ready to greet the new day. You’ll feel better with each passing day, and as the weeks go by, you’ll notice that your clothes feel a bit loose. Your weight will gradually drop—week by week—until your normal, healthy body weight is restored. For some people, this may only take one or two months; for others, six months to a year; and for those with severe weight and health problems, a year or more. But the bottom line is that it will happen.
Many people also experience clearing of their sinuses, less stiffness of their joints in the morning, and normalization of bowel function. Indigestion, heartburn, and acid stomach are reduced and may even vanish completely within a few weeks of adopting this diet.
People with high cholesterol and abnormal blood chemistry can expect to see improvements within two weeks of starting the diet. Blood triglyceride levels will drop within days, and the good HDL cholesterol will rise rapidly as well. In addition, for most people on the Paleo Diet, total blood cholesterol and LDL cholesterol drop within the first two weeks.
The Paleo Diet is particularly helpful for people with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, kidney stones, asthma, acne, and osteoporosis. There is also a significant body of evidence suggesting that the Paleo Diet may be helpful in certain autoimmune diseases such as celiac disease, dermatitis herpetiformis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and Sjögren’s syndrome. It even reduces your risk of many types of cancer.
So eat well, lose weight, and be healthy with the Paleo Diet.
3
How Our Diet Went Wrong and What You Can Do about It
The blink of an eye. That’s how long, in the grand scheme of human history, we have grown food and domesticated livestock. It’s been only 333 generations since this change—known as the “Agricultural Revolution”—happened, and yet we have almost completely lost track of the foods our ancient ancestors ate. The so-called new foods that agriculture gave us so completely displaced the old foods that most of us are unaware that these foods were ever new. Many people assume that cereals, dairy products, salted foods, legumes, domesticated meats, and refined sugars have always been part of our diet. Not true! We need to rediscover the foods that brought our Paleolithic ancestors vibrant health, lean bodies, and freedom from chronic disease. The foods that agreed nicely with their genetic blueprints are the same foods that agree nicely with our genetic blueprints.
But what are these foods? How can we possibly know what our Paleolithic ancestors ate? My research team and I have been asking these same questions for the past decade. I am happy to tell you that we have found answers to these questions by carefully piecing together information from four sources:
• The fossil record
• Contemporary hunter-gatherer diets
• Chimpanzee diets
• Nutrients in wild animals and plants
The Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) era began some 2.5 million years ago in Africa when the first crude stone tools were developed. It ended about 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, with the first ancient farms. (Perhaps twenty different species of ancient humans lived in the Paleolithic era. However, for the purposes of this book, we’ll cover only the diets of our direct ancestors.) We can trace the evidence showing the dominance of lean meat in human diets from our origins 2.5 million years ago until the beginnings of agriculture 10,000 years ago.
Lean Meat Is Brain Food
The notion
What to Expect on the Paleo Diet
The key to the Paleo Diet is to stay with this wonderful way of eating. I can guarantee that you will immediately feel better. Your energy level will increase; you won’t have to endure that late-afternoon tiredness or “blah” feeling. In the morning, you’ll wake up charged and ready to greet the new day. You’ll feel better with each passing day, and as the weeks go by, you’ll notice that your clothes feel a bit loose. Your weight will gradually drop—week by week—until your normal, healthy body weight is restored. For some people, this may only take one or two months; for others, six months to a year; and for those with severe weight and health problems, a year or more. But the bottom line is that it will happen.
Many people also experience clearing of their sinuses, less stiffness of their joints in the morning, and normalization of bowel function. Indigestion, heartburn, and acid stomach are reduced and may even vanish completely within a few weeks of adopting this diet.
People with high cholesterol and abnormal blood chemistry can expect to see improvements within two weeks of starting the diet. Blood triglyceride levels will drop within days, and the good HDL cholesterol will rise rapidly as well. In addition, for most people on the Paleo Diet, total blood cholesterol and LDL cholesterol drop within the first two weeks.
The Paleo Diet is particularly helpful for people with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, kidney stones, asthma, acne, and osteoporosis. There is also a significant body of evidence suggesting that the Paleo Diet may be helpful in certain autoimmune diseases such as celiac disease, dermatitis herpetiformis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and Sjögren’s syndrome. It even reduces your risk of many types of cancer.
So eat well, lose weight, and be healthy with the Paleo Diet.
3
How Our Diet Went Wrong and What You Can Do about It
The blink of an eye. That’s how long, in the grand scheme of human history, we have grown food and domesticated livestock. It’s been only 333 generations since this change—known as the “Agricultural Revolution”—happened, and yet we have almost completely lost track of the foods our ancient ancestors ate. The so-called new foods that agriculture gave us so completely displaced the old foods that most of us are unaware that these foods were ever new. Many people assume that cereals, dairy products, salted foods, legumes, domesticated meats, and refined sugars have always been part of our diet. Not true! We need to rediscover the foods that brought our Paleolithic ancestors vibrant health, lean bodies, and freedom from chronic disease. The foods that agreed nicely with their genetic blueprints are the same foods that agree nicely with our genetic blueprints.
But what are these foods? How can we possibly know what our Paleolithic ancestors ate? My research team and I have been asking these same questions for the past decade. I am happy to tell you that we have found answers to these questions by carefully piecing together information from four sources:
• The fossil record
• Contemporary hunter-gatherer diets
• Chimpanzee diets
• Nutrients in wild animals and plants
The Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) era began some 2.5 million years ago in Africa when the first crude stone tools were developed. It ended about 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, with the first ancient farms. (Perhaps twenty different species of ancient humans lived in the Paleolithic era. However, for the purposes of this book, we’ll cover only the diets of our direct ancestors.) We can trace the evidence showing the dominance of lean meat in human diets from our origins 2.5 million years ago until the beginnings of agriculture 10,000 years ago.
Lean Meat Is Brain Food
The notion
Similar Books
