Is the paleo diet as effective as they make it to be? Does it help you with losing weight? Is it a healthy alternative that people can choose without the thought of facing repercussions? Is it the right choice for you? Before we go looking into any of those questions, let us first understand what this diet is made up of.
What Living On A Paleo Diet Can Do To Your Body In Only 1 Week
What Is a Paleo Diet?
Suppose you are a beginner going through the basics. In that case, the paleo diet is a nature-friendly meal plan that originated in the 1970s despite its increase in popularity in the 21st century. Common names for this diet include the stone-age diet, cavemen’s diet, or even the hunter-gatherer diet. It is intended to resemble the food habits of our ancestors, the human hunter-gatherers, and how they may have eaten in the Paleolithic age, thus one of its names also being the paleo diet.
Of course, it is nearly impossible for us to know what people of that age had honestly eaten in different parts of the world, but it is believed that their food intake mainly comprised a whole-food-based diet. The exact meal plan of troglodytes had variation because of differences in the location of their habitation and food availability. With the consumption of such a diet and leading high physically active lives, our ancestors were able to achieve lower chances of being affected by lifestyles disease and disorders such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
The rule and regulations of this diet are pretty simple: if the caveman did not eat it, then it shouldn’t be consumed by you either. This means that, in the hunter-gatherer diet, only the food ingredient which could have been obtained through hunting or gathering are to be considered and consumed. But in a more straightforward and shorter-term, the primary goal of this diet is to eat whole foods and avoid overly processed foods. Moving forward, let us look into which foods you can and cannot eat while doing this diet.
Foods You Can Eat:
Meat
Fish and other kinds of seafood
Vegetables
Fruits
Nuts
Seeds
Herbs and spices
Healthy fats
Cooking oils
Plant-based milk
Starchy vegetables
Foods To Avoid
Trans fats
Grains
Legumes
Diet products
Salt
Refined sugar
Artificial sweeteners
Dairy and dairy products
Highly processed foods
High fructose corn syrups
Some extracted seed oils
Some Easy And Simple Snacks To Munch On:
Baby carrots
Slices of pear with honey
Bag of mixed nuts
Almond butter on a banana
Apple slices
Hard-boiled eggs
Positive Effects Of The Diet
A paleo diet helps lose weight, have more energy levels, lesser chances of inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, and reduce blood pressure. It is shown that the person who went paleo saw a bigger improvement in abdominal obesity and lost more fat.
Positive Effects Of The Diet
Negative Effects Of This Diet
One of the rules that this diet comes up with is that we have to stick to the paleo menu to see what improvements we have approached. This may look easy, but many people find it challenging to stay on the diet because the approach is restrictive and is not favorable to eating out, lacking various flavors and variations in the foods.
It is also commonly noticed that maintaining such a diet can be pretty expensive, so not everyone can afford to continue with it for a long duration. This diet may not be safe for everyone as people can suffer from nutrient deficiency after being on this diet for the long term. Due to these factors, people are always advised to consult a doctor to see if this is suitable for their body.
