Cracking the Paleo Diet Code: Lose Weight Fast With Primal Eating & Intermittent Fasting (How to Lose Weight Your Way) (5 page)

When you don’t have a refrigerator to keep your vegetables and fruit lasting longer, fermentation is going to happen. Our cavemen friends were enjoying the benefits of eating fermented foods without even knowing it. They didn’t have fancy sprays, their vegetables were not scrubbed clean and their food wasn’t pasteurized.

The reality is they ate dirt and a lot of it. The soil back then was full of nutrients
, and their guts loved the healthy bacteria. By our current standards their food would have been inedible, yet they were healthier than we are. The truth is the soil our food comes out of now is not the nutrient-dense substance it once was, so don’t run out and chow down on dirt like the 1
st
graders do. Instead of needing to eat dirt, we can go back to enjoying the long lost art of fermenting foods.

Whether fermented foods can b
e considered Paleo or not seems to be of great debate and mostly a matter of personal choice. The conflict comes into play with the fact some people say grains and dairy can be consumed when it is fermented properly, thus making them Paleo friendly foods. I am not saying you should or should not eat fermented foods on your Paleo diet, just that fermented foods are a great addition. You can also skip the fermented grains and dairy and stick to fruits and vegetables.

Fermented fruits and vegetables are prepared
using lacto-fermentation. This was the traditional method used before the invention of refrigeration. The beauty of fermented foods (real, not the processed goods you find on store shelves) is it actually enhances the nutrient content of foods and provides a great dose of probiotics.

Lacto-fermented foods are ferme
nted by lactobacillus bacteria. Lactobacillus is a category of beneficial bacteria that feeds on sugar and produces lactic acid as a by-product. This is why lacto-fermented foods taste acidic.

Examples of fermented foods:

Some of the benefits of adding fermented foods to your diet are:

● Helps prevent colds/flus by boosting your immune system

● Improves your digestive system and increases your healthy bacteria

● Provides your body with vitamin K2 which helps prevent heart disease

One tip when buying fermented foods is that the label must say RAW. In order to obtain the benefits of fermented foods they need to be raw and unpasteurized. Whenever possible, make your own fermented goodies at home by buying a reputable recipe book on fermented foods.

You can choose
to include fermented foods in your diet in the form of a condiment substitute or in order to increase your consumption of vegetables and fruits. Most people recommend consuming fermented foods on a daily basis, and not just one big dose every few days.

Ti
m Ferris in
the 4 Hour Body
says he consumes 5 forkfuls of sauerkraut each morning before breakfast and also adds kimchi to almost all home-cooked meals. You cannot overlook the health benefits of fermented foods and the healthy bacteria they provide.

As far as beverages are concerned the only ones you should really focus on consuming are water, tea and coffee (in moderation). I know coffee may be a bit controversial, but how do we know the cavemen didn’t find coffee beans and historians just don’t realize they were all jacked up on caffeine all the time?

All forms of alcoholic beverages should be removed from
your diet if you are going all-out Paleo. I know, what about the brewskies after work or wine with dinner, right? This is where you need to make a personal choice. Like I have said before you can modify most diets to match your lifestyle, but there is a reality to it all. If you are a 6 pack a day or a bottle of wine a night type person, you are going to need to cut back substantially to see real results, but having a cold one on a hot day or a glass of wine with your meal is up to you.

I hope this extensive list
helps you in your journey of finding Paleo-friendly foods. Let’s move on to the foods that you are going to want to eliminate from your diet or eat in moderation. As you can see, you don’t really have the excuse to say there is nothing to eat on Paleo. There is a limitless supply of different combinations of foods and meals you could make out of these lists.

In the previous chapter we went over all the foods that were great for Paleo, with some guidance around what to avoid in those food categories. Now we can look at some specific foods that you will want to avoid on the Paleo diet.

Oh how I love sugar. I admit it openly that I love everything with sugar and my body has paid for it. I know sugar addicts will not believe me when I say this, but the cravings do go away; well the physical cravings do, but the mental ones can take a bit longer. We have ourselves convinced that we need sugar, and fill the need based on what we think and not what our body is saying.

I was a two litre of pop a day guy
, which is equivalent to 20 tablespoons of sugar a day, and I stopped craving it after the first month of eliminating it from my diet. It was a rough month but I felt better than I had felt in years.

It only makes sense that if you are following a Paleo diet you will be giving up any drink that comes in a can and is full of sugar. Cavemen had water and teas to drink. When it comes to food
, basically anything that is processed is going to be eliminated. The caveman wasn’t out eating lollipops, Oreo cookies or Snickers.

I could go on a rant listing all
the negative things excess sugar does to our body, but you already know that too much of it is a bad thing. Mind you, knowing it is unhealthy and doing something about it are two different things, as studies are proving. In the year 1900, the average person ate 10 pounds of sugar a year; in 2012 we were consuming around 130 pounds a year. We know it is killing us but, like any addiction, breaking the cycle is difficult to do. It is possible with dedication and perseverance.

Artificial sweeteners should be
eliminated from your diet also. There is an entire list of the unhealthy side effects of artificial sugars. Honestly if you are going to have a pop anyway, have it with real sugar and not some sweet chemical. When you look at any processed food label you are going to see a ton of sugar in most things, or sugar equivalents like high fructose corn syrup. The fact you are looking at a label should be the first indication that it most likely is not Paleo-friendly.

Your sugar consumption will come from the
fruits and vegetables in your diet. Everything gets converted to sugars, but these will have the biggest percentage. Another area of debate is whether or not you can add honey into your Paleo diet.

You can consume honey in moderation
if it is raw and unpasteurized. Several studies have found raw, unpasteurized honey to have anti-bacterial properties which is a big bonus for your health. It is important that the unpasteurized honey is organically produced and carefully collected. You will want to ensure the supplier has a good reputation for quality control and sanitary practices.

I would recommend finding locally produced and seasonally appropriate honey in order to ensure the highest quality and safest product. Ensure you keep your jar sealed tight so the moisture from the air will not mix with the honey.

From what I understand the caveman did not consume milk because animals were not domesticated and everyth
ing was running around wild. It is not like they snuck up on a Bison standing there in the meadow and grabbed themselves a pint of milk, right?

Well, honestly, I
don’t believe that for a second. When you have a bunch of guys running around in the woods there is no way, caveman or not, that one of them wouldn’t have dared someone to try to milk that Bison. I bet they did drink milk, but they just had to be more creative on how to get it. I just can’t see how they wouldn’t have figured out how to capture the animal and milk it long before they officially domesticated cattle.

I mean someone at one point had to watch a baby animal nursing and think to themselves “I wonder what that tastes like?” And then they figured out how to milk whatever wild thing was in front of them.
I’m just saying it was possible, but for our Paleo purposes today let’s just say milk is out. No point in arguing with the historians.

Besides
, we are the only animal that continues to consume milk after the infancy stage and from another animal none the less. So I am going to go ahead and say that it is possible that our bodies were not designed to consume the milk of other mammals. You don’t hear of baby bears out trying to nurse off a momma moose do you? If other mammals know instinctively it is not natural then why don’t we?

The milk we consume now would be much different than the milk the caveman would have drank if indeed they drank it at all. M
ost milking cows today are fed a diet consisting of corn, grains and soy and are given high doses of antibiotics and growth hormones. The milk we consume from the store looks nothing like the milk animals would have produced back in the day.

Even if you do not feel you have any intolerance to dairy
, it is suggested you refrain from consuming it on a Paleo diet. Again the choice is yours but I would suggest eliminating it for a couple months and see if your health improves.

The caveman didn’t eat grains being they hadn’t invented agriculture yet, and the fact that grains need to be cooked to be edible. Grains also contain a collection of “anti-nutrients” like lectin, phytates and gluten that can cause intestinal damage and immune problems.

Maybe the tribe all tried grains once and then spent the next day unable to hunt because of the intestinal discomfort and musical noises they were making. It would be hard to sneak up on a pack of Bison sounding like the brass section at a grade 7 band concert.

The grains you are avoiding include rice, corn, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, wild rice, spelt, rye, sorghum, oats, and even gluten free oats. This also includes any products that are made with grains like pastas, pancakes, crackers, etc.

We also have a tendency to eat way more pasta and breads then ou
r body could ever need to replenish our glucose. We justify eating all these carbs because we need the energy. The average person is walking around feeling tired and sluggish with all these hard to digest carbs sitting in their bellies; then we eat more carbs because we feel tired. All that happens is those carbs get stored as more fat and we get heavier and more tired. What a great cycle we are in.

Your energy will come from the meats, vegetables and fruits you eat
, and grains are unnecessary for energy. The cavemen were not all wandering around the forest dragging their clubs behind themselves without grains and you won’t be either.

Legumes
and beans are also off the list. They are very similar to grains as they contain the same “anti-nutrients” and have the same potential negative health side effects. The main difference between legumes and vegetables is that legumes grow in a pod.

Avoid the following:

If you want to keep beans etc. as a part of your diet you will want to learn how to soak them for proper digestion and nutrient absorption. This removes some of the anti-nutrients and helps with the flatulence you can experience from beans.