I have always thought that if I wanted to write a diet book I would use some time and place in history to justify my logic. It's brilliant because I could justify pretty much any diet I wanted.
That said-eliminating processed crap from your diet is unlikely to hurt you and will most likely get you in better shape. If you are truly allowed to eat fruits and veggies than there is no real health down side.
Grizz wrote: How is eating what our body is supposed to be eating a fad diet? Seriously, paleo is called paleo for a reason, it as close as you can get to what we ate for the few hundred thousand years before we figured out agriculture and starting berkeleying stuff up.
Catchy name, celebrity adherents, cash cow books written = fad diet.
People have been eating bread, cheese & beer for literally thousands of years before anyone had even heard of the phrase "obesity epidemic." Honestly, adding salt to food is a more recent invention than bread. No caveman ever ate a giant slab of red meat with each and every meal like I've seen advocated by these people, in fact they probably didn't even have "meals" the way we do. They also lived 30-40 years. Palaeo what?
If you want to be on a "steak & veggies" diet, that's fine, but call it what it is.
As a former Atkins dieter, I know that this approach will certainly work, but it is NOT a cheater's diet. One little slip-up with the Carbs can drop your body out of ketosis. It is hard to stay on for a long time as well, like any diet.
For me, simply cutting out all of the stuff I couldn't eat reduced my calories per day significantly, and I added exercise. That will make anyone lose weight, regardless of what you are allowed to eat.
If you want to try it for 6 months, I would say go for it but stick to it strictly and try to keep the reduced intake of calories and carbs afterwards.
Grizz wrote: How is eating what our body is supposed to be eating a fad diet? Seriously, paleo is called paleo for a reason, it as close as you can get to what we ate for the few hundred thousand years before we figured out agriculture and starting berkeleying stuff up.
Just because that's what humans did for eons doesn't necessarily mean it was the healthiest thing to do. Humans died from simple infections for hundreds of thousands of years until antibiotics were discovered. Healthy carbs are essential, no question about it. Where we run into trouble is the sheer volume that many people eat, in combination with all the starchy processed foods.
I eat roughly 300g of carbs per day. Once per year, my wife and I do a Bod Pod test, which measures body fat. We just did it a few weeks ago. I came in at 5.3%. No fancy diets. I'm an avid weight lifter, I run some. I also eat a balanced diet, including carbs.
I stay away from fad diets or anything where you have to pay to "gain knowledge" on how to be healthy. My game plan is fairly simple. If something has high fructose corn syrup or MSG in it, I don't consume it. I cut those two things out of my diet and added in some cardio to my calisthenics and weight lighting and I have gone from being 210 to 175 and can see my high school six pack again.
I love bread and I'm not gonna cut it out of my diet because "carbs are bad" they are a great source of energy. I don't really go after white bread any more, I tend to stick to wheat or ryes. All the pasta I eat is either wheat or vegetable pasta. I also thing fruits are great for the vitamins they provide. A glass of grapefruit juice a day and some pineapple slices are my favorite. I'm just ranting now......If you don't make time to ramp up your exercise or "don't have time" to then I suppose one of these diets is okay to stay in shape, but you should have a cheat day every now and then or a big plate of pasta, I mean marathon runners/cyclists/triathletes down that stuff and most of them look like they are in pretty good shape :)
Klayfish wrote: I eat roughly 300g of carbs per day. Once per year, my wife and I do a Bod Pod test, which measures body fat. We just did it a few weeks ago. I came in at 5.3%. No fancy diets. I'm an avid weight lifter, I run some. I also eat a balanced diet, including carbs.
Post that printout up!
I wouldn't look at anyone who works out 2-4 hours a day (like a professional athete) for nutritional advice, when you eat 5K calories per day you'll end up with the right stuff in there out of sheer bulk and boredom. I think paying attention is the biggest factor for health, if you are paying attention then you are making time and thinking about it which is better than most in the rat-race.
Grizz wrote: How is eating what our body is supposed to be eating a fad diet? Seriously, paleo is called paleo for a reason, it as close as you can get to what we ate for the few hundred thousand years before we figured out agriculture and starting berkeleying stuff up.
During the Paleolithic period we didn't cook, cultivate or store food yet so the diet was fruit, vegetables and raw (not necessarily fresh) meat you happened upon. So far so good, right?
The analogy works only if you consider that our ancestors starved until they found food and only lived to an average of about 13yrs old up to a maximum of about 30. Ofcourse, it was also a different species from us and there were more than one so... why not call it the H. neanderthalensis or the H. rhodesiensis diet?
It is marketing, people - of the P.T. Barnum variety.
Ask a dietitian about it. Chances are they'll say something to the effect of "Don't do it," or "Carbs are good, just use them correctly," or "Don't do it for more than a week".
In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:
That is exactly what I wanted to say. But me not smart with words.
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:Grizz wrote: How is eating what our body is supposed to be eating a fad diet? Seriously, paleo is called paleo for a reason, it as close as you can get to what we ate for the few hundred thousand years before we figured out agriculture and starting berkeleying stuff up.During the Paleolithic period we didn't cook, cultivate or store food yet so the diet was fruit, vegetables and raw (not necessarily fresh) meat you happened upon. So far so good, right? The analogy works only if you consider that our ancestors starved until they found food and only lived to an average of about 13yrs old up to a maximum of about 30. Ofcourse, it was also a different species from us and there were more than one so... why not call it the H. neanderthalensis or the H. rhodesiensis diet? It is marketing, people - of the P.T. Barnum variety.
I agree with your position, but you might want to clarify your wording. Homo Sapiens were very much present in the Paleolithic.
MG Bryan wrote: I agree with your position, but you might want to clarify your wording. Homo Sapiens were very much present in the Paleolithic.
They didn't clarify which paleolithic man they meant. Possibly because they weren't aware that there was more than one species - since it extends from 2.6M years to about 10k ago it covers just about every diet great apes have ever had and every species of hominid that walked upright.
I personally think they should have jazzed it up a bit and gone with the Gibbon's diet. Who wouldn't want to be an acrobat that can sling themselves from tree to tree horking on fruit and the occasional small bird or insect? Plus, inflatable throat sacs? berkeley. That is livin'!
I prefer the Tercel diet. It's basically the same underpinnings, but the insurance company likes it more, and it's a little more practical.
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:Grizz wrote: How is eating what our body is supposed to be eating a fad diet? Seriously, paleo is called paleo for a reason, it as close as you can get to what we ate for the few hundred thousand years before we figured out agriculture and starting berkeleying stuff up.During the Paleolithic period we didn't cook, cultivate or store food yet so the diet was fruit, vegetables and raw (not necessarily fresh) meat you happened upon. So far so good, right? The analogy works only if you consider that our ancestors starved until they found food and only lived to an average of about 13yrs old up to a maximum of about 30. Ofcourse, it was also a different species from us and there were more than one so... why not call it the H. neanderthalensis or the H. rhodesiensis diet? It is marketing, people - of the P.T. Barnum variety.
Oh yeah? How many cavemen died of Cancer? Or high blood pressure? Or got Alzheimers? Or suffered age related bone density loss? Told you the caveman diet was better than ours mr smarty pants. 
Jay wrote: Catchy name, celebrity adherents, cash cow books written = fad diet.
See, I equate the term fad diet with the this one weird trick(always discovered by a mom in my home town, damndest thing) helps you lose x amount of pounds, or whatever nonsense my sisters friends are on for the week. Not so much something the human body does like doing.
"
Jay wrote: People have been eating bread, cheese & beer for *literally thousands* of years before anyone had even heard of the phrase "obesity epidemic." Honestly, adding salt to food is a more recent invention than bread.
Where did I say they didn't? I think you're reading a bit more into my post than I intended, might have been the berkeleying stuff up part. I don't really follow the paleo diet, mostly I just try not to eat so much crap food, although I am trying to get my mother and sisters to switch seeing as how the my moms doctor seems to think she has celiac disease and my sisters have a lot of the same issues as her.
Jay wrote: They also lived 30-40 years. Palaeo what?
Just a point here Jay, but as far as I've been reading, the top causes of death back then were: 1.Death by wild animal 2.Death by shiny happy person caveman neighbors 3.Death by nonexistant medicine.
Saying that diet was the cause of their short lifespans would be about like me saying that the bread cheese and beer diet were the cause of living for maybe 10 more years than cavemen if you were lucky to dodge whatever plague was killing most of the continent that day.
MrJoshua wrote:Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:Oh yeah? How many cavemen died of Cancer? Or high blood pressure? Or got Alzheimers? Or suffered age related bone density loss? Told you the caveman diet was better than ours mr smarty pants.Grizz wrote: How is eating what our body is supposed to be eating a fad diet? Seriously, paleo is called paleo for a reason, it as close as you can get to what we ate for the few hundred thousand years before we figured out agriculture and starting berkeleying stuff up.During the Paleolithic period we didn't cook, cultivate or store food yet so the diet was fruit, vegetables and raw (not necessarily fresh) meat you happened upon. So far so good, right? The analogy works only if you consider that our ancestors starved until they found food and only lived to an average of about 13yrs old up to a maximum of about 30. Ofcourse, it was also a different species from us and there were more than one so... why not call it the H. neanderthalensis or the H. rhodesiensis diet? It is marketing, people - of the P.T. Barnum variety.
And getting attacked by a mountain lion was dying of natural causes.
Grizz wrote:Jay wrote: Catchy name, celebrity adherents, cash cow books written = fad diet.See, I equate the term fad diet with the "this one weird trick(always discovered by a mom in my home town, damndest thing) helps you lose x amount of pounds, or whatever nonsense my sisters friends are on for the week. Not so much something the human body does like doing.Jay wrote: People have been eating bread, cheese & beer for *literally thousands* of years before anyone had even heard of the phrase "obesity epidemic." Honestly, adding salt to food is a more recent invention than bread.Where did I say they didn't? I think you're reading a bit more into my post than I intended, might have been the berkeleying stuff up part. I don't really follow the paleo diet, mostly I just try not to eat so much crap food, although I am trying to get my mother and sisters to switch seeing as how the my moms doctor seems to think she has celiac disease and my sisters have a lot of the same issues as her.Jay wrote: They also lived 30-40 years. Palaeo what?Just a point here Jay, but as far as I've been reading, the top causes of death back then were: 1.Death by wild animal 2.Death by shiny happy person caveman neighbors 3.Death by nonexistant medicine. Saying that diet was the cause of their short lifespans would be about like me saying that the bread cheese and beer diet were the cause of living for maybe 10 more years than cavemen if you were lucky to dodge whatever plague was killing most of the continent that day.
Sorry, was only quoting you for the "how is this a fad diet?" comment. To address the rest of your points, you may well be right that starvation didn't kill the majority of adults, but infant/child mortality rates were phenomenally high, much of which is directly attributable to poor nutrition/starvation, and the adults didn't have it easy either... It may be the infection that kills you but it's entirely possible you could have fought it off if you hadn't already been sickly & weak because you're not eating well enough. We are remarkably adaptable omnivores compared to a lot of species, but that still has limits.
Anyway it doesn't matter at all. The modern fruit & veggies we eat, and meat as well for that matter, are almost uniformly products of deliberate cultivation over thousands of years of agriculture. Among the things that cavemen didn't have are: potatos, peppers, lettuce, bananas, cows (wild buffalo are hard huntin'!), apples, beans, chickens, corn, wheat, rice, etc... Need I go on? Probably the closest thing left to "paleo food" is seafood, but even a lot of that has been selectively bred or discovered recently. The idea that our food quality is somehow worse than the days when we were boning our neanderthal cousins back into the species is simply ludicrous. You're going to be using some of the benefits of cultivation & agriculture no matter what you eat anyway, so you really can't pretend you're aspiring to some "noble savage" ideal that doesn't exist.
In reply to Jay:
Oh, I'm aware, pretty sure the reason steak and veggie diets say to take it easy on most fruit is because they're basically bred to be plant grown candybars.
Yes, most of it is marketing, but that's really only because the average person has the intelligence of a boiled turnip. You tell someone your weight loss plan is not eating garbage food and exercise and they'll say that sounds too hard/doesn't sound that effective. People are conditioned to want results quickly and easily and don't seem to get that it don't work like that. But that's not really the point of the thread, so I wont start raving again.
Paleo(Steak&Veggies): Good for cutting fat when paired with exercise, after a while phase additional stuff back into your diet. Avoid poopy food and stuff that only looks edible.
Grizz wrote: Yes, most of it is marketing, but that's really only because the average person has the intelligence of a boiled turnip. You tell someone your weight loss plan is not eating garbage food and exercise and they'll say that sounds too hard/doesn't sound that effective. People are conditioned to want results quickly and easily and don't seem to get that it don't work like that.
This part of your argument I completely agree with. So many people want to be able to just eat whatever garbage they want, when they want, then take some magic pill to make it all better. There's no way around proper nutrition and exercise. I think a lot of people tried to cut out carbs completely and go with a meet and veggie diet because they couldn't grasp the concept of how to eat carbs. Candy bars, sugar soda, and cheese curls are not good carbs. Sweet potato, oats, whole grains are. It's also a moderation thing. We all have busy lives, it's unrealistic to expect not to eat an "unhealthy" food sometimes. It's OK, as long as it's done in moderation and you keep on top of your nutrition on the whole.
MrJoshua wrote:Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:Oh yeah? How many cavemen died of Cancer? Or high blood pressure? Or got Alzheimers? Or suffered age related bone density loss? Told you the caveman diet was better than ours mr smarty pants.Grizz wrote: How is eating what our body is supposed to be eating a fad diet? Seriously, paleo is called paleo for a reason, it as close as you can get to what we ate for the few hundred thousand years before we figured out agriculture and starting berkeleying stuff up.During the Paleolithic period we didn't cook, cultivate or store food yet so the diet was fruit, vegetables and raw (not necessarily fresh) meat you happened upon. So far so good, right? The analogy works only if you consider that our ancestors starved until they found food and only lived to an average of about 13yrs old up to a maximum of about 30. Ofcourse, it was also a different species from us and there were more than one so... why not call it the H. neanderthalensis or the H. rhodesiensis diet? It is marketing, people - of the P.T. Barnum variety.
Hard to die of old age diseases when the average lifespan doesn't even make it to what we know as middle age.
Steak diet?
WHERE DO I SIGN!?!?!
Ok, seriously... i think i've hit a wall with the weight i'm going to lose just by switching to diet drinks. Lost ~25lbs with no other changes in 2011.
Currently sitting at 150-155lbs, and while i'm just about as strong as i've ever been...
I don't look good naked.
I wanna look good naked.
Meat and exercise, here i come! I LOVE me some steak!
92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: I don't look good naked. I wanna look good naked.
Do 1hr/day everyday of some kind of exercise. Mix it up. Don't do cardio 7 days a week. Swim, lift different muscle groups, do calisthenics, yoga, cycling, whatever. Just keep that whole hour sacred and keep moving for the whole thing even if you just go for a walk. Lifting sometimes lends to long breaks recovering. Don't do that - use less weight or jog around the building or something.
If you have a belly - you have to lose body fat. Sit-ups and crunches just make a 6 pack under fat. You lose it with diet. You have to eat better. Sorry. No easy fix for that. Easy rule though: If it comes pre-packaged from a factory, ready to eat... you probably shouldn't. 
We all know this one - whole foods, lean meats, veggies, fruits and count the calories. The standard formulas work... count the hour of exercise and be sure to add calories to compensate or you will go berzerk on something bad for you at 8PM. Don't obsess over it, just pay attention.
Wear a heart rate monitor to keep the revs in a given range - mix that up too. One day in the 120s, the next in the 140s, etc.
Disclaimer: You might have been hideous with clothes on, if so, you will still be ugly naked or no.
92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: Currently sitting at 150-155lbs, and while i'm just about as strong as i've ever been...
How tall are you? I'm 5'9", and when I first started lifting weights and eating a clean diet, I weighed about 165lbs. From the change in diet, I quickly dropped to about 150lbs. Fast forward 3 1/2 years and I'm now hovering around 170lbs. If you want to put some meat on them bones, you need to hit the weights. Come up with a good routine that is realistic for your lifestyle and free time. Don't do the same body part more than 2x per week, once is fine. Eat slightly more calories than you burn, and eat smart.
In reply to Otto Maddox:
Yep. I was playing with the concept of claiming correlation as causation. Dead people suffer no illnesses or disease.
Klayfish wrote:92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: Currently sitting at 150-155lbs, and while i'm just about as strong as i've ever been...How tall are you? I'm 5'9", and when I first started lifting weights and eating a clean diet, I weighed about 165lbs. From the change in diet, I quickly dropped to about 150lbs. Fast forward 3 1/2 years and I'm now hovering around 170lbs. If you want to put some meat on them bones, you need to hit the weights. Come up with a good routine that is realistic for your lifestyle and free time. Don't do the same body part more than 2x per week, once is fine. Eat slightly more calories than you burn, and eat smart.
I'm 5'9" as well.
I'm really narrow and tend to look rather large when at a ripped 140, but these last 10lbs are just hanging on.
I'd like to see a healthy strong sexy 170.
You'll need to log in to post.
