The Paleo Diet might be the one for you if you’re trying to eat healthier and lose weight. The Paleo Diet is based around eating as our ancestors did. This means avoiding processed foods, sugar, and grains. Instead, you focus on eating foods high in protein, healthy fats, and fresh fruits and vegetables.
Because it’s not a low-calorie plan, you can still have a cup of coffee while following the Paleo Diet. Does it sound appealing? Unlike other weight-loss strategies, the Paleo Diet tries to look for the ingredients and the nutrients you need from nature while avoiding empty calories that usually come from synthetic derivatives and processed foods.
In this article, you will get a rundown of the Paleo Diet, the appropriate foods for Paleo, and what foods to avoid. We will also give you some tips to get started.
What is the Paleo Diet?
Weight loss diets usually follow similar recommendations intended to create a negative calorie balance to promote fat burning. In other words, most of them aim to reduce carb intake by choosing veggies over potatoes and cereals, increasing fluid intake, and other techniques. However, most of them are just isolated weight-loss strategies with no specific reasons.
The Paleo Diet is radically different. It is based on the type of diet followed in the Paleolithic era when it was very unlikely to see fat individuals with cardiovascular problems and metabolic disease. This diet is made to listen to our genetic configuration and improve our health by following the diet we are genetically adapted to. Thus, you will be required to cut all modern and processed foods and those included in our diet after the Paleo era, such as legumes and cereal grains.
An overview of the Paleo Diet
This diet was developed by Dr. Loren Cordain and his colleagues at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. The research has shown that it helps reduce the risk of many chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. The Paleo Diet is one of the most popular diets in the world, and for a good reason.
The Paleo Diet emphasizes meat, fish, fowl, vegetables, fruit, and nuts. It eliminates grains and dairy. You may also want to add eggs, but ensure they’re from organic sources.
On a typical day in the Paleo Diet, you would eat a lot of lean protein like grass-fed beef, wild-caught salmon, and organic chicken; healthy fats like avocado, olive oil, and coconut oil; plenty of vegetables and fruits; and healthy carbs like sweet potatoes, quinoa, brown rice, and oatmeal. There are many variations of the Paleo Diet, but they all have similar goals: to eat foods our ancestors ate for the longest period.