The Paleo Diet - Loren Cordain [41]
In 1986, I began a job at a health spa and naturally emphasized foods in my diet that I thought were healthy—bagels, muffins, chicken-pasta dishes, chicken-rice dishes, and turkey sandwiches. This type of diet was disastrous for me. During the next year and a half, I gained 30 pounds and developed a whole host of health problems, including a very severe flulike illness that I could not shake, which was much later diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome.
In an effort to regain my health, I tried several popular and recommended vegetarian, macrobiotic, and high-carbohydrate diets but grew weaker and sicker on each one. I continued to experiment and eventually stumbled upon the diet that turned my health around. It was based on lean animal protein and lots of nonstarchy vegetables and was entirely free of wheat or other gluten grains, dairy, legumes, processed fats, and sugar.
When I ate this way, the difference in my health was dramatic. I quickly felt more energetic, mentally focused, and less sick. I also began to effortlessly lose the excess weight I had put on. Within about six months, I lost all the weight I had gained and was back to 115 pounds—size 6 for me. It was hard to turn against established nutritional wisdom, but I kept eating this way and totally recovered from chronic fatigue syndrome. The diet was the answer to regaining my health, and it’s kept me trim and healthy ever since.
Losing Weight the Right Way
With the Paleo Diet, weight loss is a continuous, deliberate decline that occurs gradually, over a period of a few to many months. There are no quick fixes here—but then again, quick fixes don’t work. Most people who try such diets are unable to stick with them over the long haul.
You won’t feel hungry on this diet. Protein is a great satisfier. The low-carbohydrate content of the diet combined with its low glycemic load will normalize your insulin and blood sugar levels and will also help keep you from overeating. The weight that you will lose will stay off if you just stick to the diet—all the lean meats, fish, seafood, fresh fruits, and vegetables (except starchy vegetables) you can eat.
Isn’t it time to get started and give your body what it is genetically programmed to eat?
The Paleo Diet is a lifelong way of eating that will normalize weight in everyone
5
Metabolic Syndrome: Diseases of Civilization
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
—Alfred North Whitehead
Metabolic syndrome diseases—the diseases of insulin resistance—are the main health problems of Western countries, affecting as many as half of all adults and children. There are four major metabolic syndrome diseases:
• Type 2 diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Heart disease
• Dyslipidemia (low HDL cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, and high small-dense LDL cholesterol)
Gout and blood-clotting abnormalities are usually grouped with metabolic syndrome diseases, too, and so is obesity.
When people become insulin-resistant, the pancreas must secrete more insulin than normal to clear sugar (glucose) from the bloodstream. This creates a state in which the blood insulin level is elevated all the time.
Insulin is a major hormone that affects nearly every cell in the body. A chronically high blood-insulin level is thought to be the underlying culprit in all diseases of metabolic syndrome. But these are all complicated diseases, with many contributory factors.
Some scientists believe that high-saturated-fat diets make insulin metabolism less efficient. Others, including Dr. Gerald Reaven at Stanford University, believe that high-carbohydrate diets—both low- and high-glycemic foods—are to blame. Still others single out high-glycemic carbohydrates. However, the obvious has been ignored: Most people who develop obesity and diseases of insulin resistance do it with mixtures of high-fat and high-glycemic carbohydrates. Some examples of these bad food combinations: Baked