Paleo Cookbook For Dummies (8 page)

Fruit is healthy, so eat as much as you want.

Red meat is really bad for you and will make your heart explode.

Fat is evil.

You should eat eggs in strict moderation because they raise your cholesterol.

Vegetarian-based diets are the healthiest.

These statements may have been a big part of your life, so the Paleo principles may take you by surprise. Until of course, you see the cold hard truth: the undisputable results.

The question becomes will you make the paradigm changes necessary to live your healthiest life? Some people may need to make only small changes, but others may need to make bigger changes. Shifting your belief system requires a conscious choice to embrace health. Your choices determine your health, not bad genes or bad luck.

Adjusting your belief system so that you constantly work toward choosing health may be one of the best gifts you can give yourself. When your body gets the raw material it requires to function at its best, the magic starts to happen.

Considering the living Paleo solution versus modern medicine

In 2004, Former Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Richard Carmona stated, “Because of the increasing rates of obesity, unhealthy eating habits, and physical inactivity, we may see the first generation that will be less healthy and have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.” That's an unbelievable statement: that U.S. children today will be the first generation to not outlive their parents simply because of lifestyle choices!

Modern medicine isn't the answer. All the modern drugs and surgeries clearly aren't making the population well or improving lives. The United States spends about $1.4 trillion annually on the supposed health care system, but studies show about one-third of medical spending is now devoted to services that don't improve the quality of care. In fact, in some cases treatment may even make your overall condition worse.

A lot of what falls under the heading of health care is really more like sickness care. Drugs were never designed to get patients healthier. They were designed to get them out of crisis mode, not to move them toward health. And taking medications does nothing to change behavior. If you want health, that job is up to you. No shortcut or magic pill can do it for you. Only the lifestyle you choose to live can. Don't let modern medicine give you permission to lead a life that doesn't serve you.

You have to be a participant in your healing to get results. Discovering the right paradigm and making smart choices go a long way in helping you lose weight, heal your body, boost immunity, and fight aging.

Following Basic Rules for the Paleo Lifestyle

When patients come to me for nutritional consultation — whether they want to heal themselves of something or lose weight — I want to know about their lifestyle patterns right off the bat. That's the treasure map. When I learn how they eat, move, think, and live their daily lives, the pieces to the puzzle of why they don't look and feel as amazing as they should start falling into place.

Your habits create your destiny, and that plays out profoundly in your physiology. Like it or not, the human body is designed to live a certain way, and the more we stray from nature's blueprint, the more we suffer. The environment you choose to live in and stay in determines whether you create a healthy body or an unhealthy body, so choose an environment that lets your body function the way it was designed. The following sections point out a few major guidelines for creating a Paleo-conducive environment (don't worry; none of them involves moving to a cave).

Sticking to the 80-percent rule

To get long-lasting results, you can benefit from spending at least 30 days eating a strict Paleo diet (flip to
Chapter 4
for details on this Paleo cleanse). After that, the 80-percent rule keeps you in check both physically and health-wise. The
80-percent rule
means that if you adhere to Paleo principles at least 80 percent of the time, you'll experience the benefits of Paleo. If you eat poorly, you'll feel bad. What you eat is like the foundation of a house, and you must build a healthy framework to build a solid house. That said, you do have a little life leeway; you can adjust the rule to fit your personal needs.

This 80-percent rule assumes that you're not trying to heal yourself of an illness or lose considerable weight. If you are, you may need to be 90 percent compliant or more for a while.

The 80-percent rule isn't a license to fill 20 percent of your diet with crummy processed foods or go to town on cookies, pancakes, bread, or muffins — even if they're Paleo! Sugar is still sugar, and too much of it is going to send you right back to needing a 30-day Paleo cleanse.

Some people choose to eat Paleo 90 or even 100 percent of the time, which is very powerful. Others feel that eating Paleo even 80 percent of the time causes constant cravings. It really comes down to food choices and what works best for you in your life.

Increasing the amount and quality of sleep you get

Quality
sleep is what's essential for losing weight or being healthy. One of the most priceless factors when eating and living a healthy lifestyle is improvement to your sleep cycle. After your body adjusts to eating cleaner, more nutrient-dense foods, you find your sleep is deeper and more restful. One of my personal motivations for living Paleo is it helps me get restful sleep. It really does make a tremendous difference.

Think about living by your body's design. Your hunter-gatherer ancestors naturally dozed off when the fire went out at the end of an evening. They didn't have a light switch or pill to keep them up. They trudged along their day, and when their meal and socializing were over, the flames blew out and they naturally went to sleep.

Not getting quality sleep is one of the more common frustrations of patients. Maybe you have trouble falling asleep, or you wake in the middle of the night, unable to drift back to sleep. No matter what the scenario, eating Paleo foods completely changes the quality and duration of your sleep. Here are some of the reasons this shift happens: