About Darwin’s Table
I decided that I have had enough of being and feeling fat. I had a hiatus of a few years of attempting to lose weight. I had enough of trying and then failing to do it. But then I read the paleo diet by Dr Loren Cordain. The premise of the book is to eat what we as humans have evolved to eat. He uses his own and others research to determine what humans ate during the paleolithic times and also what hunter gatherers eat today. Then he developed guidelines on how to best simulate this diet. Why would you want to do this? Well humans have had around 100000 generations since our existence and of which 500 were after the agricultural revolution. Our bodies simply have not evolved to eat these newly introduced foods to our diet, such as potatoes, grains, junk food, dairy etc. We should (evolutionary speaking) be eating vegetables, fruits, nuts, lean meats and fish. Evidence shows that our ancestors, and todays hunter gatherers, were not plagued by the modern diseases of civilization and instead died from infectious diseases and trauma ie breaking a leg. As a biologist myself who studies evolution I can personally back this philosophy. So I choose to once again try and attempt to lose weight following these principles. Forget all the other diets Im going to follow one that was written by evolution itself – our greatest master. This is my journey…..
PALEO DIET (foods known to be eaten by our paleolithic ancestors)
What I Can Eat:
Oils (with no trans fats)
Lean meat
Seafood
Nuts
Vegetables
Fruit
Eggs
What I Cant Eat:
Dairy Products
Grains
Rice
Pasta
Starchy Vegetables (ie potato, sweet potato)
Beans, legumes or peas
Animal products high in saturated fats
What I need to watch out for:
There are three problems with the modern diet that have been heavily linked to the modern diseases of civilisation (diabetes, cancer, heart disease, alzheimers, stroke etc).
Modern diets are high in carbohydrates – Carbohydrates increase insulin levels, which wreak havoc on our bodies including promoting the storage of fat. Our paleolithic ancestors consumed diets low in carbohydrates and our genome is not evolved to deal with large amounts of this substance. Therefore, I aim to keep my carbohydrate intake to less than 100g a day.
Modern diets are high in Omega 6 fats – The modern diet heavily leans towards Omega 6 over Omega 3 fats. The ratio is well over 10:1 in favour of Omega 6 fats. Omega 6 causes inflammation, which has devastating impacts on our body. I aim to keep my ratio similar to that of our paleolithic ancestors – a 1:1 ratio. I do this by consuming fish (especially oily fish), lean red grass-fed meats, and fish oils.
Modern diets are high in acid - Hunter gatherer diets achieved a acid/base balance whereas modern diets lean towards the acid side of the spectrum. Incorporating grains and dairy severely increase the acidity of your diet and in order to compensate your body strips your bones of calcium to keep an acid/base balance. To keep the balance I eat plenty of vegetables and fruits (base yielding) and avoid grains and dairy.
Best of luck to you! So my header has my goal figure… which one is yours????
I think I want to get down to about 80kg. I am 6ft tall or 182cm. So that seems to be an ideal weight. But I guess I will just see how it goes. Ideally I just want to look at myself and be happy.
Love your illustration of human progression. I have been eating somewhat similarly to this for about five years, which does a very good job of maintaining my weight (and my family’s) at a reasonable level and achieves mostly normal glucose regulation (I show impaired glucose tolerance on a higher carb diet and had to follow a LC diet ten years ago for gestational diabetes).
Mostly I’m in agreement, but I do not follow the paleo guideline strictly as outlined by Cordain. Our family consumes some raw and minimally processed dairy from a pasture-based farm, too. We like dairy and I’m picky about our dairy foods, but I know that dairy is not essential to good health, the dairy council’s mustache ads notwithstanding.
Aside from dairy, the saturated fat part is always the sticking point for me with Cordain’s advice. I do stock my freezer with range-fed (grass) bison from Montana, and mostly pastured poultry, lamb, goat, and pork from a local farm (and hunted big game when my hunting sister and BIL are able to share), but they always trim away too much of the fat that surrounds the muscle meat and kidneys, and are more often unable/unwilling to make a special effort to save organs/offal and enough of the bones, etc. The local farm will save heart, liver, and kidneys for me, but I also use some of that for the raw cat food. I just find bison and game meat too lean overall, so I like to cook it with some added fat and I don’t see a reason to worry about it, if it is natural fat and from well-raised animals (not feed-lot or grain-fed). I get some nice pork fat (which is nearly 50% MFA and not as saturated as most people think), from the local farm and I render that for cooking or I use grass fed butter (raw or clarified).
I also minimize or avoid PUFA vegetable oils (canola, corn, soy, cottonseed, etc.) that are very recently introduced to human diets. Plant oils like coconut and palm oil are ok (low in pro-inflammatory omega 6 FA).
I’m getting a lot closer to not needing stores much for food, except for a few imported things (plus we have given up a lawn and are increasing edibles in our garden-fig, citrus, most recently an olive tree). Most of our family’s produce comes from area farms, especially from a CSA farm share subscription with biweekly boxes. We are fortunate to live in a milder climate where produce is grown year-round, but that does mean there is less affordable green pasture for raising animals, so I’ve had to work harder to find good sources for that.
Anyway, nice website. I enjoyed the Barry Sears video and sent the link to a few people.
Sounds awesome. I would never hold it against someone who ate animal fats. I think that they are very misrepresented and probably do nothing bad for your health. My only thing with it, and its a personal choice, is that I want to follow a paleolithic style diet as close as I can, and Dr Cordains work has shown wild game to be very low in saturated fat – as you mentioned in your comment. So I try to keep my monounsaturated fats and Omega 3 fats high by eating fish oil. But your way of eating is very impressive.
ps – I think the main thing is your eating unprocessed local food which is awesome and certainly healthy!
[...] lecture, by Dr Loren Cordain, on the Paleo Diet and Multiple Sclerosis, brought to us by Dr. Dan at At Darwin’s Table. The lecture, in its entirety, will cost about an hour of your time [...]
I’m wondering if you’ve signed up for the Paleo Diet ‘Implementation Program’ (for $597USD)? If so, what do you think of it?
i understand fish is ok , but how one can prepare it ? because if you fry it with vegetable oil , it`s not good , and raw fish is not an option for eating. so how can i eat it ?