Quick Guide to an Ancestral-type Diet
You’ve probably heard about Paleo and how people are taking up the lifestyle to get healthy, but do you know exactly what it is or how it works?
What is an Ancestral-type Diet?
Basically, this is a lifestyle that involves eating whole, real, natural food (like our Paleolithic ancestors did for more than two million years). In other words, human bodies are meant to thrive on real foods. In the same regards, we need to avoid the highly processed, grain-‐based foods, sugar, and hydrogenated vegetable oils that only came into our diets most recently (in the last 10000 yrs during the agricultural revolution, the Neolithic era). One MAJOR cause of Obesity is diets high in processed foods, processed carbohydrates, and sugar. Obesity also leads to a higher risk of many diseases like cancers, heart disease, type-2 diabetes, and strokes.
The Basics of an Ancestral-type Diet
How to Succeed: Getting Over Grain Addiction
You can get healthy, lose weight, or maintain a healthy weight quite easily. Here’s how to get started:
- If you are really serious about giving this a try, start with a 30-‐day challenge. Cut out all the bad stuff and eat as much of the good stuff as you want. You’ll feel better, look better, and you’ll lose some weight.
- Get rid of all junk food – now. Donate all the junk food, packaged stuff, and other undesirable food from your pantry. Give it to a homeless shelter or food bank. Or throw it away!
- If you won’t do it all at once, cut out MOST bad foods and leave in one day where you will eat a “cheat” meal or day. That will make a difference, too – although not as dramatic as if you cut it all out entirely.
- Don’t eat out at restaurants until you know you can resist temptation – and know which foods do not have gluten/dairy in them.
- Don’t overthink it. Some people like to over-complicate an ancestral “clean” Diet -‐ but what it really comes down to is “Just Eat Real Food.”
By weight, your diet should be about:
2/3 plant foods,
1/3 animal foods.
Fats should supply most (50-70%) daily calories.
* White rice is a benign grain, with very few lectins or gluten, as long as it hasn’t been contaminated. Whether you eat white rice is up to you.
Useful Resources:
Dr. Oz on Paleo (Watch part 1 and 2)
Intro to Paleo
FATHEAD: part two explains the science and research and it begins at 43:52 minutes.
The Cholesterol Myth a beneficial article from the Huffington Post.