A little over a month ago, I set out on my 30-day paleo challenge, in which I would adhere (mostly) to the paleo diet advocated by people like Robb Wolf and Loren Cordain. The trainers at my crossfit gym were all on that diet, and were big proponents of the diet.
When I joined the crossfit gym at the tail-end of December 2010, the first trainer to mention the paleo diet to me told me that she ate meat and vegetables at every meal—even breakfast. That didn’t seem very interesting to me, considering I do like lighter fare at breakfast, so I kind of discounted the entire diet as a result. But then a second trainer held some kind of information session about paleo, and though the wife and I didn’t hop on board then and there, it piqued our interest and we bought Dr. Cordain’s book, The Paleo Diet. We decided we would try it for a month, in May, because veggies and fruit would be more in-season than in the winter, and would therefore be cheaper and more delicious.
A month or two prior to adopting the paleo diet, I cut out wheat as per a naturopath’s recommendation. This made the transition to paleo a lot easier, because wheat and any grain are big no-nos according to the diet. The difference I felt after cutting out wheat (and beginning to take Bio K) was remarkable—no bloating, no major stomach pains or digestive issues, improved regularity. Now, a month in to my paleo adventure, I’m beginning to wonder if I was ever really sick at all. IBS is known as a catch-all term to define any digestive or intestinal issues that can’t be identified by medical testing. In short, doctors don’t have a way of telling whether you have IBS or not—they just assume you have it if you don’t have other, more important problems (like a gluten allergy or Crohn’s disease). So, was my IBS real, and I was just able to reverse it? Or was the food I was eating and the way I was eating it making me so sick it appeared as though I had IBS, even if I didn’t really? Robb Wolf’s book, The Paleo Solution, makes me think perhaps I was never truly ill, if his and his family’s experiences are any indication.
Before paleo, everything I ate made me sick.
Eat a salad, be in the bathroom in 20 minutes flat. Eat an apple as a snack, be subjected to stomach pains. Eat pasta, be extremely bloated. I couldn’t win, and I resigned myself to a lifetime of feeling like shit. I couldn’t lose weight anymore even though I was putting forth the physical effort. My weight plateaued for nearly an entire year and I was depressed. I was still 55 pounds away from my goal weight, and it felt pretty much like a battle I was destined to lose. I felt like shit all the time, and let me tell you—feeling like shit all the time is fucking exhausting.
Challenges of the paleo diet
As you are all well aware if you have read any of my previous blog entries, I love sweets. A LOT. I love baking, and I love things with sugar in them, and I’ll forever and ever have a sweet tooth. This was the biggest challenge for me, and one I frequently let get the better of me. I could resist grains, wheat, butter, chips, fast food—even popcorn, my most favourite snack on the planet—but I had an extremely hard time resisting sweets. Surely a handful of dark chocolate chips wouldn’t kill me, right?
Of course, it wouldn’t, and won’t. And Wolf speaks of an 80 per cent compliance/20 per cent non-compliance ratio—that is to say, no one can be good 100 per cent of the time, and to expect yourself to be compliant 100 per cent of the time is a sure way to fail a diet—any diet, not just the paleo diet.
But I found that when I ate anything sweet, it derailed my adherence to the diet by making me crave more sweets. Sweets beget sweets. Soon enough, I would have something sweet every other day. This is not 80/20. Because of this, I found my commitment to paleo waning toward the end of my 30-day challenge. Luckily, about a week ago, I went to Robb Wolf’s website for the first time, and discovered his online forum, where hundreds of paleo subscribers go to look for, and share, information. It’s infinitely reassuring to know that not only am I alone in facing these challenges, but that I had faced them better than some.
Former vegetarian, now voracious carnivore
I stopped being a vegetarian because of my IBS. Now that it looks as though I may not have IBS, will I return to vegetarianism? The short answer is NEVER!
Five reasons I won’t ever be a vegetarian ever again:
- Many of the staples of the vegetarian diet (primarily anything soy-based) are so extremely processed, that your body doesn’t know how to handle them. Humans are not meant to consume vast amounts of soy. It’s not good for you, and anyone to argue this point has obviously not taken a balanced look at the facts.
- Vegetarians primarily eat a very carb-heavy diet—pasta, oats, flour, rice, quinoa, couscous, bread, potatoes. As a vegetarian, I thought I was doing something good for myself by eating whole wheat pasta, whole grains and rolled oats. Truth is, grains are not good for you and they disrupt your entire digestive process. Starch is converted into sugar by your body and makes your insulin levels spike. That’s why you generally feel satiated right after eating grains, but then are hungry an hour later. The goal in life and in general health, particularly to prevent diabetes, is to maintain a steady level of insulin—don’t allow it to spike and drop many times over the course of the day. You’re not doing yourself any favours by allowing that to happen.
- I developed a lot of cavities over the course of my vegetarianism, and it’s not because of poor dental hygiene (though I should floss more often!). Vegetarians often consume a lot of food throughout the day—healthy food, like fruit—but it’s been proven that your teeth don’t respond well to continuous exposure to sugars. If you eat a bowl of berries in the morning and then don’t eat fruit at all for the rest of the day, and only eat your meals and hardly any snacks, your teeth will fare better. As my dental hygienist told me, it matters how frequently your teeth are exposed to sugar. If you eat “healthy” food all day long, you’re putting your teeth at more risk for decay, cavities and enamel erosion, than if you were to just eat really satisfying and complete meals thrice daily.
- I can honestly say that I am not as hungry now as I was before. As mentioned in the above point, I try to eat really satisfying and complete meals (and one or two snacks) every day. I eat a stupid amount of food, but it’s all good food. And I lost eight pounds during the first month of the paleo diet, so it mustn’t be all bad!
- Bacon.
Conclusion
Being on the paleo diet and reading about how it affects my body has taught me a lot about nutrition and food, but most importantly, it’s taught me a lot about how to understand my own body. It seems to me a lot of people are painfully unaware of how the food they eat is the reason for all the minor ailments they experience. I was, and just because I’ve read a couple of books doesn’t mean I know it all. But I know a lot more than I did, and it’s taught me that a lot of people think they’re doing right by their bodies when really all they’re doing is causing harm.
If you feel like shit, cut out grains, dairy, legumes (beans, peanuts, etc.) and starchy vegetables for a month. Eat lean meats, omega 3 eggs, 1-2 oz. of nuts a day, healthy oils, fruits and especially vegetables for a single month, and see how much better you feel. This is what the paleo diet is, essentially—it’s an extremely simple way of eating that does require a lot of preparation and planning ahead, but in the end, it’s all worth it.
