Beginners Guide To The Paleo Diet

Beginners Guide To The Paleo Diet

The rough and tough hunter-gatherers had a very active lifestyle. They performed a lot of physical activities, including running, climbing, fighting, hunting, and many more on a daily basis. These activities helped them to test their body limits, which in turn made them active, disease-free, and extended their lifespan.

However, their activities were just one part of the story; the other was their eating diet. It was known as the paleo diet and is still considered one of the best diets even today. The following guide will tell you more about the diet and how you can enhance your lifestyle by using it. Have a look.

What Is The Concept Of Paleo Diet?

Paleo diet or the Paleolithic diet is a caveman inspired dietary plan. Its concept goes back to approximately 2.5 million to 10 000 years, to the era of hunter-gathers. It is believed that this race of humans moved from place to place, hunting and gathering several different kinds of food for them. This diversity eating habit ensured not just a variety of food but also a well-balanced diet. It is believed to be the reason for their healthy, active, and disease-free life.

The central theme of this diet has changed over time due to the changed digestive capabilities and lifestyle of humans. However, its concept remains the same, avoid processed food and use natural resources like fruits, nuts, seeds, lean meat, and more to fuel the body. These food items have much less carb than the processed ones, but have sufficient nutrients to build muscles and enhance your strength.

So, using it won’t just kill the fat deposit, but also add body mass, making you rock-solid like your hunter-gatherer ancestor. The health benefits and body vital regulation it offered are further the bonus that you can consider.

Benefits Of Paleo Diet

During a paleo diet, you imitated the diet of hunter-gatherers, which means there will be no processed food item. None of them will be processed or artificially enhanced, which will make your food free from, preservatives. It will also restrict the use of sugar, grains, legumes, or beans.  All these changes in your intake will serve a lot of benefits, like the few mentioned below.

Balance Blood Glucose: The paleo diet has no place for artificial sweeteners or refined sugar. It will help you to avoid the sudden spike of blood sugar and maintain a constant level of it. It is an excellent plan to avoid issues like sugar crash and diabetes.

Prevent Diseases: the natural sourced fruits, vegetables, and other food items that you eat during a paleo diet are well-balanced in nutrients. Most of them also have a decent content of anti-inflammatory compounds that help to eliminate the risk of many bowel and stomach diseases. Some of these edibles also contain phytonutrients and antioxidants, which help you to combat cancer and heart attack risk.  The diet also helps you to boost your immunity and body healing. In simpler words, the diet prevents diseases and helps to prolong your life.

Enhance sleep quality: being natural, the food you eat during the paleo diet will not contain any artificial chemical or unbalanced compound. There will be nothing that can mess with your body vital or disrupt your hormone level. These factors will improve your sleep quality, making you more energetic and happier. 

Detoxify Your Body: During a paleo diet, your intake of trans fat, MSG, caffeine, sugar, and gluten reduces to a safer level. The food item in this diet will also add a decent quality of antioxidants and other nutrients to the body. The fruits and vegetables here will also increase the water content of the body. All these will decrease your body’s waste build-up, which in turn will detoxify your body.

Weight Loss: This diet helps to boost metabolism, decrease sugar intake, and make you feel full for much longer than a standard diet. With it, your calorie intake will reduce, and fat burning of your body will increase. It won’t make you slimmer in just one day, but it will help to shed some pounds over time.

Build Lean Muscle: The diet plan depends on unprocessed and on cultivated eatables, and meat is one of the prime options in it. You will be consuming a lot of it during the paleo diet, which will add lean protein to your diet. These proteins will provide you the energy and build muscles without adding excessive fats to it.

What Can You Eat During The Paleo Diet?

It’s a common misconception that you don’t have many food item choices during a hunter-gatherer diet. However, in reality, there is a wide variety of eatables that you can consume during this diet. Below are some of the common food items that you can prefer during it.

• Lean meat including chicken, pork, lean beef, turkey and more
• Fishes and seafood
• Fresh fruits
• Seeds from plants such as sunflower and pumpkin
• Eggs 
• Oils developed from olives, walnut, grapeseed, coconut, and other plants
• Low starch vegetables like lettuce, broccoli, cabbage and more
• Nuts like pistachios, almonds, and walnut

Side Effects And Risk

The paleo diet is different from your everyday food source and will cause a bit of discomfort in the beginning. You may experience headaches and flu-like symptoms after starting it. Some people also complain about fatigue and headaches during this diet.

Luckily, most of these issues relate to the food changes and are non-damaging for the body. In fact, you can avoid most of them by minor adjustments. For instance, if you feel digestive issues, you can increase the intake of fiber-rich food. For fatigue and headaches, you can increase your body fluid levels.

Who Should Avoid Paleo Diet?

While the Paleo diet is safe, it is not suitable for everyone. Anyone who has a medical condition like kidney diseases, or heart disease should avoid it or at least consult a doctor before using it. The same thing also applies to people who have autoimmune conditions or type 2 diabetes.

It is also a big no for under 18 or above 50 and people with nutrient deficiency. The diet limits the nutritional intake of your body, which can hinder normal body functioning or growth of people belonging to these categories.

Considering the length and quality of life that the hunter-gatherers lived, the Paleo diet can be a robust way to improve your health. Sure, it has some challenges and limitations, but the results are worth it. You must surely try to adopt the paleo diet at least once in your life.