Going back to a paleolithic diet

Straying too far from a paleolithic diet (and the activity that went along with it), and the explosion of chronic disease and obesity over the past 30 years seems directly connected to our modern-day diet and the inactivity that seems to go with our modern tools of efficiency.

Paleolithic, to me, refers to the era before modern tools, agriculture, etc., which directly affected which foods were easiest to gather and consume.

It would help us to take a trip throughout the human anatomy to really understand why the gastrointestinal tract, and the entire human anatomy, responds so well to the same foods today that were foods thousands of years ago, such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, berries, eggs, meats from good sources, raw milk, and other fermented dairy products.

When I took my nutrition course, I remember thinking about how unsettling this study of human anatomy and physiology would be to someone who believes we evolved from anything less than the hands of a Master Architect who designed the human body to be in sync with its surroundings and the foods produced there.

It wasn’t until sometime in the past 100 years that having foods from another part of the country or even another part of the world was made possible by super-fast logistics by corporations benefitting from cheap foods produced in one area and then sold at a profit to another area, preserved, packaged, processed and convenient to the end user! Back in the Stone Age, people were forced to use a more convenient source of groceries, and that meant keeping it local.

These were the hunter-gatherer days, and there was a lot of work involved just to eat.  Fast food back then had the same thing in common with modern fast food: it was fast and convenient, but much more nutritious than the fast food of our era. Death from trauma and infection would have been a much larger cause of death, and chronic disease was probably not even considered a risk factor.

When you have healthy foods and water (from local sources) combined with steady to high levels of activity, it simply helps eliminate chronic disease as a risk factor for death. We don’t have to fully adopt this way of living; it can be as simple as eating a few items from the list below every day, combined with some extra activity: vegetables, fruits, lean meats, eggs, nuts, and healthy oils.

I like quality dairy products as part of this. Dairy products are a good source of Conjugated Linoleic Acid, which helps the body convert stored fat into energy. There are many foods that you can pick from in the nut, vegetable, fruit, and lean meat categories, so that you will always have something around that you like. You can go online and look up “Paleo Foods List” and pull foods from the different categories.

Next on the paleo list, make water the fluid of choice!

Keeping water available and foods that fit the categories above can help weed out processed foods: eating nuts instead of a cookie, a banana and nut butter instead of a processed diet bar, and water instead of a soda.

It is important to physically exhaust our pushing, pulling, and pressing muscles at least 3 times a week to not only condition our skeletal structure, but also to counter stress hormones. Longer ago, when there was stress, there was usually physical exertion that went with it (so it helped keep cortisol levels down); now we’re often stressed to the max with little physical exertion! Cortisol is a major contributor to belly fat.

We don’t have to be radical, but if we gradually adopt new healthy habits, they unconsciously crowd out bad habits, and in doing so, we will see our health and fitness levels improve and our resistance to chronic disease!