14.09.09
30 Day Paleo Diet Experiment – Terminated
At the beginning of September, I decided to have a go at the Paleo Diet. In brief, you could call this the caveman diet, the stone age diet, the “don’t eat anything invented in the last 10,000 years” diet. So you can see that there’s a lot of things that you can’t eat when eating Paleo(lithic)ly. No:
- Bread
- Pasta
- Grains
- Cereals
- Flower
- Dairy (Milk)
- Cheese
- Sweets
- Chocolate
- Alcohol
- etc etc
Now I should say, that I agree with most of that, but I wasn’t doing the Paleo for the reason most do. I wasn’t doing it to lose weight. There’s no doubt at all, that if you follow a classic western diet, or even the recommended high carb, low fat diet, you will definitely shed the fat on this diet. No question. Not only that, you will feel full of energy and probably the healthiest you’ve felt since being a hormonal teenager.
But I am already at a good weight. In fact, many of my friends and family think I should be putting a few pounds on! I also have good energy levels and rarely feel tired. That’s what 2.5 years of the Zone Diet has done for me, a story I’ve told a few times on this blog. So the reason for trying Paleo, was to see if it would make me feel even better… and the short answer is: it didn’t.
You see my diet was already close to a Paleo Zone diet, as recommended by Crossfit. The Crossfit dietary recommendation is simply:
“Eat meat and veg, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar.”
However for me, I would have to rewrite it slightly, to be more like:
“Eat meat, fruit and dairy, nuts and seeds, some veg, little starch, occasional sugar, no wheat.”
Yes my balance of fruit to veg is probably off, but that’s down to lifestyle and lack of time to prepare veg for every meal. I also don’t eat wheat as I’ve discovered it simply doesn’t agree with me. The major addition is the dairy though. I drink a pint of milk a day + eat cheese regularly. That was the thing that really put the stopper on a proper paleo diet. Removing dairy would mean no:
- Milk
- Cheese
- Yoghurt
- Chocolate *
- Ice Cream *
- Cakes, even wheat free ones *
- Even salami!
* = these foods can be “zoned in” on the Zone diet, and so are not taboo from a Zone perspective.
Milk crops up in a lot of places that I must confess, I hadn’t originally thought about. I like the zone diet, because you can eat anything you want, so long as you adjust portion sizes to compensate. So that occasional chocky bar, whilst not condoned, can be fine, so long as you balance it with some protein. Or indeed, a few glasses of wine are ok with a meal, as long as the meal is light on carbs to compensate. The point is, with the exceptions of bananas, offal and egg yokes, nothing is off limits on the zone. (And they are only strongly advised against, at least in most circumstances.)
Whereas a straight Paleo diet is the opposite. It heavily regulates *what* you can eat, but places no limits on when or how much you eat. The zone diet is quantitative; the paleo diet is qualitative. So ironically, doing a Paleo Zone diet is actually the worst of both worlds, you are restricted in what you eat, and you can only eat certain proportions!
Either way, I simply decided, that for the gains the paleo might have brought me, it simply wasn’t worth the sacrifice. That’s a personal choice and I applaud the Paleo diet’s goals and ideals and heartily recommend it, if you are hoping to lose weight and currently struggling. Personally, I’d try the Zone diet first, it’s worked for me. And indeed I mostly follow a paleo zone diet, but with dairy and the occasional sugar and wine, however 90% of the meals I eat are simple meats, nuts and fruit & veg. A healthy and balanced way to live in my opinion.
oTwo said,
September 14, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Hey, intresting article. I just want to remind you of a few things.
Most worldclass athletes, Crossfitters, tri-athletes and even mixed martial artists agree that they only got the results after 5 weeks.
Most agree that the first two weeks were hard and afterwhich they thought they will not recive much benifit of following paleo. All agree that it was after about 5 to 6 weeks that they found the really good benifit.
I was at CrossFit competitions not so long ago in Ontario. I talked to so many athletes and the ones doing paleo (ALMOST ALL) agree that they were able to add more training sessions to what they already do after 5 weeks of paleo.
The answer is consistency. Stick to it. even a month is not so good. It should be more than that.
Sugar is addictive, unless you stop eating sugar you will always want fastfood, and basically more things that have sugar on them. Not going 100% strict means ou get no benifit at all. At LEAST for the first month you have to be very strict otherwise the results will slow down a lot.
On paleo its about hormon control rather than not intaking so much calories or anything like that.
Also. Dr. Berry Sears the founder of the zone has confessed to eating paleo and admits that athletes should focous more on paleo and make it a zone+paleo when there reasy to step up thier training.
For longer term health and fitness benifits its about what you eat not how much. I can eat mcdonalds and compliment it with zone, guess what, im not gonna make benifits. So is it with icecream, once only and you ruin hormonal response so its seriously important that your strict.
Conclusion is this, eat paleo. When your ready to step your game up then do both paleo and zone. It is much more important to cater to WHAT YOU EAT, not HOW MUCH YOU EAT. Train hard, eat properly and live life as RX’d
Omar =))
chris said,
September 15, 2009 at 11:23 am
no flower!
= no broccolli. I’d have thought flowers fit perfectly into the paeleo recommendations of something that you can gather!
;-P
Colin McNulty said,
September 15, 2009 at 8:40 pm
:p @ Chris.
Omar, thanks very much for the excellent post. There are a few issues I see with what you say. Most people coming to the Paleo, don’t do so having started with the Zone. As a result, I agree that 4-5 weeks to start feeling good makes sense. It took weeks for me too when I first started the Zone.
I can’t possibly step up my training. I train 4 times a week, and that’s pretty much the maximum my schedule allows, but also the most amount of time I’m prepared to invest. Take today for example, I left work at 4pm to go to the gym, and wasn’t home till 7pm, partly due to travel time and partly due to the training I’m doing at the moment. It’ll be the same tomorrow.
I’m not sure I agree that the quantity free Paleo is about hormonal control. On the paleo you can eat as much sugar, in the form of nature fructose in fruit, as you want in one sitting. Although granted, that would have to be a lot of fruit! The Zone is all about hormonal control, and that’s what I do.
Maybe it’s just where I am, but I’m not sure that a life without ice cream is worth it! I’m already at a strength, fitness, weight and body comp level beyond my wildest dreams only 3 years ago. I don’t see it getting much better than this.
Colin McNulty said,
September 16, 2009 at 6:18 am
Omar, perhaps an example daily menu would help illustrate. Here’s everything that I ate yesterday, split across 4 meals:
- 1/2 lb of roast beef
- 1/4 lb of wild atlantic salmon
- 1 lb strawberries
- 2 satsumas
- 1/3 of a whole pineapple
- 6oz blueberries
- 1 peach
- 1 kiwi
- 2 figs
- some black olives
- 42 almonds
- water
- 3 cups of coffee
- and……. 1 pint of organic whole milk
- 1 oz soft cream cheese
As I see it, there’s nothing on there that’s not Paleo, except the milk and cheese. (Though it seems some people do do Paleo+Dairy.) What do you think?
Matt Baldwin said,
September 25, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Loved this post. Brother I am with you. I follow what I call a Flexible-Paleo-Zone diet. Mostly I do the CrossFit recommended foods, but like you, I do a little sugar, a little dairy (less than you), more fruits than veggies. I also do a LOT of fat, but Zone portions and ratios of Protein and Carbs (about 22 blocks of protein per day, ideally).
Colin McNulty said,
September 25, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Cheers Matt. I’m sort of coming to the conclusion that I follow a Paleo+Dairy diet, with about 10% cheat rate.
That’s a great weightloss chart you’ve got on your blog; you’ve had an amazing year in 2009! 22 blocks of protein per day? Wow, that’s a LOT! I eat 15!
2010 – I Bet I’m Giving Up More Than You said,
January 2, 2010 at 12:03 am
[...] is in some ways both more and less controversial. As I’ve posted previously about paleo eating, my diet is 90% sugar free anyway, but it’s that 10% that has got out of hand. Ironically [...]
james caudill said,
March 24, 2010 at 9:07 pm
The crossfit gym I go to (www.lowcountrycrossfit.com) has started a 30 day paleo challenge and about 30% of us are doing it. I definitly noticed that my workouts were a LOT harder during the first week of the diet. I could finish them, but it was like I just didn’t have what it took to really bust out my best performance. I’m in week two now and slowly feeling some improvement. It’s most likely from my body getting used to pulling more energy from fat than carbs. (Determined that from my fitday food journaling). I’ll try to update this again in a couple of weeks on my progress as far as energy and sleep quality goes. All in all, if you’re going to try it, make it last and stick with it, we’re all doing it.
Matt Everhart said,
March 26, 2010 at 6:20 pm
I would say it is based ENTIRELY on the type of person you are. I HATE the Zone diet because it is so incredibly tedious to measure everything I eat. There is no way I could ever follow it.
Paleo allows you to eat whatever you want within the restrictions of the types of food allowed, but doesn’t care about measuring or counting anything.
As long as I shop and buy the right foods, there’s nothing in the house to temp me otherwise.
Now – I will say eating out is a pain in the butt…NO restuarant is healthy and absolutely none of them will really allow you to stay within the paleo diet, but you can get close.
Zone dieters like the idea of measuring everything that goes into their body, knowing exactly to the letter what to expect from a caloric perspective.
Paleo would argue that Zone allows you to eat any crap you want as long as you stay within your measurements. Paleo controls what goes into your body producing a healthy machine with NO junk going into your body.
I would also argue against the idea that Paleo is for weight loss. It’s not – the paleo diet is for healthy, clean fuel consumption. Weight loss is a beneficial side effect.
Anyway, not trying to contradict you at all – I would simply say the two diets are for two completely different mindsets.
Cheers!
Matt Everhart
Blackhawk Fitness
Colin McNulty said,
March 27, 2010 at 9:22 am
Thanks for the great comment Matt. Fortunately I do agree with you, which is why I would describe my diet as Paleo food + Dairy eaten in Zone proportions. (Note, since writing this post, I have ditched sugar and wine completely.) E.g. yesterdays food consisted entirely of:
- roast chicken (done myself so I know there was no sugar glaze etc)
- salmon fillets
- cheese
- tomatoes
- plums
- a kiwi fruit
- a peach
- almonds
- olives
- milk
From that food, I ate 5 times yesterday, eat meal / snack was balanced as per the Zone.
A lot of people seem to get hung up on Weighing And Measuring (WAMing) the zone, but it really doesn’t have to be the chore people make it out to be. If you WAM everything you eat for just 2 weeks, by the end you will have dialled your eye in to what makes up a “block”. E.g. I can go get a hunk of cheese and cut off very nearly a block by sight. Similarly for all meat. And how hard is it to eat almonds in multiples of 3? I would say it’s a pretty simple and easy diet to follow.
It doesn’t have to be 100% accurate either, the Zone actually gives a range of proportions, it doesn’t have to be an exact science. Indeed there are 3 different ways of “measuring” the zone, the simplest of which is as hard as mentally dividing your plate up into thirds, that’s it, easy!
Anyway, there are many paths up the mountain, each will find the one that servers them the best. I like to take the best of what the zone and the paleo “diets” have to offer and combine them.
Phentermine said,
August 6, 2010 at 8:56 am
I have heard of it, but haven’t tried it. I do not eat grain very often though as I follow (and sometimes slip up) a gluten free diet.