A paleo diet is a dietary plan which is based on foods that are similar to what people ate during the Paleolithic era ie. approximately 2.5 million to 10,000 years ago. However, it’s impossible to know what ancestors ate exactly in that period (paleolithic era) while living in different parts of the world. Researchers believe that their diet consists generally of fish, fruits, vegetables, lean meats, seeds, and nuts.
In the paleo diet, various foods were obtained by hunting and gathering. In this way, they were leading physically active lives and had much lower rates of lifestyle diseases such as heart diseases, obesity, and diabetes. The Paleo diet is also known as the stone age diet, the caveman diet, and the hunter-gatherer diet.
What is the Paleo Diet?
Paleo diets are based on simple rules that if cavemen didn’t eat it, you should not eat it either. Paleo diets take so long to be refined, it’s a pre-agricultural revolution of sugar, grains, dairy, legumes, and welcome meat, fish, veggies, and poultry fruits. This is the pre-agricultural revolution, and hello to meat, fish, poultry, fruits, and veggies.
In other words, what is the paleo diet basically? The Paleo diet is an idea to eliminate modern-era foods like dairy products and highly processed carbs, which can avoid or control diseases of civilization like heart disease and type 2 diabetes and lose weight too. What you eat and how you should eat is based on your goals or the specific program you are following such as the AIP diet, paleo diet, or any other diet plan. According to U.S news experts, a high protein diet is considered too restrictive to be healthy or sustainable.
Paleo Diet Meal Plan
There is no diet that is perfect for everyone and even paleolithic humans prosper a variety of diets. It depends on what was available at the period of time and where they lived. Some people ate a low-carb diet (high in animal foods) while others followed a high-carb diet that includes lots of plants. Consider it as a general guideline nothing is as such fixed in its diet plan. You can adapt a paleo diet meal plan according to your own personal needs and preferences.
These are the basics you should consider in your paleo diet:- Seeds, herbs, spices, healthy fats, meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and oils.
Here are some basic foods you should avoid- Especially avoid processed foods- Sugar, grains, legumes, artificial sweeteners, vegetable oils, soft drinks most dairy products, legumes, vegetable oils, margarine, and trans fats.
What To Eat
In the paleo diet, you’ll find limited processed foods, and you should also cut out all legumes, dairy products, grains, etc. You can include all these options in your eating plan.
- Lean cuts of pork, beef, and poultry such as free-range selections, grass-fed, and organic.
- Animals such as quail, bison, and venison.
- Some non starchy vegetables like onion, peppers, pumpkin, and asparagus.
- Some quantities of seeds and nuts such as cashews, almonds, pumpkin seeds, and walnuts.
- Consider some oils in moderation such as olive oil, flaxseed oil, and walnut oil.
- Also, consider eggs but don’t eat more than six a week.
- You should eat eggs, but no more than six a week, and preferably free-range
- Most importantly, fruits such as mango, figs, and cantaloupe.
- Fish, including shellfish
What Not To
Obviously, foods that are not easily available to paleolithic humans are not in this diet as much. It means processed foods — a diet that contains margarine, sugar and butter will not come under the paleo diet. Similarly, dairy products were not accessible to Paleolithic humans. Also, legumes are not good for the diet belief and even not easily digestible by the body.
You need to keep in mind that some versions of a paleo diet are not strict enough. Therefore some paleo diets allow some amount of dairy products or legumes such as peanuts etc.
- You should avoid processed and cured meats like bacon, deli meats, and hot dogs.
- Avoid all dairy products such as milk, butter, yogurt, and cheese.
- Cereal grains like rice-wheat, barley, and rye.
- Some of the legumes like peanuts, peas, and beans.
- Most importantly, starchy vegetables like potatoes or sweet potatoes
- Sweet items that include all forms of candy as well as honey and sugar.
- Artificial sweeteners
- Fruit juices and sugary soft drinks.
- Avoid high-processed foods
Paleo Diet Daily Menu
The paleo diet is the most popular approach, you can easily find various paleo-friendly recipes online and on bookshelves too. But if you are a beginner then you should consider a sample menu of the paleo diet for a start.
Sample Paleo Menu for One Week
The below-mentioned sample menu is based on a balanced amount of paleo-friendly foods. However, you can adjust this menu based on your own preferences.
Monday
- Breakfast: You can eat eggs and vegetables but only fry these in coconut oil. You can also have some amount of fruit.
- Lunch: Prefer chicken salad with olive oil. Also, eat nuts with your hand.
- Dinner: Burgers fried in butter, with various vegetables, and some salsa.
Tuesday
- Breakfast: Get bacon and eggs for breakfast, with a piece of fruit.
- Lunch: Use a leftover burger from the night before.
- Dinner: Eat salmon fried in butter, with vegetables.
Wednesday
- Breakfast: Eat meat with vegetables (Use vegetables, if left at last night).
- Lunch: Eat a sandwich in a lettuce leaf with fresh vegetables and meat.
- Dinner: At night some berries and Ground beef stir-fry with vegetables will be the best option.
Thursday
- Breakfast: Eat eggs and a piece of fruit which you also had on Monday
- Lunch: Eat the leftover stir-fry which you had one night before. Don’t forget to eat a handful of nuts.
- Dinner: For the night Fried pork with vegetables will be best.
Friday
- Breakfast: You can eat eggs and vegetables fried in coconut oil.
- Lunch: Eat a chicken salad with olive oil. Also, a handful of nuts.
- Dinner: Have a steak with sweet potatoes and vegetables.
Saturday
- Breakfast: Prefer bacon and eggs with a piece of fruit.
- Lunch: Use vegetables and steak leftover from the night before.
- Dinner: For dinner baked salmon with avocado and vegetables are best.
Sunday
- Breakfast: Eat meat with vegetables (If leftover from the night before).
- Lunch: Prefer sandwich in a lettuce leaf, with fresh vegetables and meat.
- Dinner: For dinner, grilled chicken wings with salsa and vegetables.
Is the Paleo Diet Beneficial for Your Health?
The Paleo diet is beneficial for our health but it is certainly not a cure-all. However, it comes with some potential benefits. But we don’t have any search results which prove that it’s for everyone. There are some potential benefits of following the Paleo Diet.
It’s nutritious: Firstly, eat fruits and vegetables because your body needs to get many vitamins and minerals which are essential for our body. However, you can keep changes in your diet according to your need. You can eat the foods that are acceptable and avoid those that are not. You can use a prepacked meal plan or diet cycle to stick to.
However, you need to cut a lot of processed foods such as added sugar, processed grains, extra sweetened soft drinks, and juice. The Paleo diet promotes eating anti-inflammatory foods such as unsaturated fats in nuts, coconut oil, olive oil, fruits, and vegetables through which your health gets benefitted. Moreover, cutting sugar and processed foods will also lower your risk of diseases such as cancers, type 2 diabetes, etc.
Easy to follow: You can follow the paleo diet easily. It’s easy to ignore saturated fats or processed foods. Firstly, you need to simply understand what the paleo diet is. Then, what you should eat in the paleo diet and what to avoid. Just get these things for you such as eggs, meat, chicken salad, burger, olive oil, coconut oil, fruit, and vegetables for and start your diet. However, you can adjust your diet according to your preferences.
Involves Exercise: The Paleo diet emphasizes exercise. Exercise is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle because it will help you lose or maintain weight. In this way, the paleo diet is helpful in losing weight and reduces the risk of diseases by promoting a healthy lifestyle.
Is the Paleo Diet Expensive?
The Paleo diet can be expensive. Because producing food items included in the paleo diet costs high. Also, meat and chicken counters are costly corners of the grocery store.
If you buy the most expensive cut of meat, it will of course cost you more. But to control your diet expenses you can buy what’s on sale that week, whether it’s meat, chicken, fish, or veggies, and if you buy seasonally and in bulk it will cost you less.
Some Money-Saving Tips Regarding the Paleo Diet
1. Buy ingredients, not products: It’s better to cook for yourself than to buy prepackaged meals to lessen the cost of your diet. The more food you cook yourself, the more money you’ll save surely. Plus, when you’re following any diet plan whether it is the AIP diet, Paleo diet, you should avoid mystery additives, preservatives, and artificial sweeteners. Because these elements are not good for our health. And make sure to fill your cart with basics like all-season salt, fresh garlic, onion powder, and curry powder, etc instead of boxes of spices that include preservatives. Make sure you avoid using refined oil and consider olive oil and coconut oil on hand, too, and use them for all your dishes.
2. Embrace different cooking techniques: Simply use a slow cooker to cook cuts of meat that are typically tough and chewy. You need to just toss the meat into a slow cooker with a pile of onions, curry, and some hot peppers to it for taste. For another option, you can use inexpensive, low-quality cuts of meat like a chuck roast, and make it amazing to taste better. You can also prepare a big serving of ribs, and portion them out so that you end up with a couple of lunches and dinners.
3. Go meatless – once a week: Yes, the Paleo diet is rightly considered expensive because it is meat-heavy. There’s no reason to adopt the popular meatless Monday trend which costs you a paleo diet high. On those days, you can choose eggs as your protein diet. However, Free-range eggs are typically preferred in the paleo diet, and these are comparatively cheaper than meat.
4. Celebrate the seasons: Seasonal choices are significantly cheaper and more nutritious and beneficial for our health. In winter, you should try dates, pomegranates, and sweet potatoes in your diet. In the spring season, you should prefer mango, broccoli, asparagus, and strawberries. While In summer, cucumber, apricots, arugula, and peaches are best to eat. And in the fall, you should focus on some recipes that include seasonal fruits and vegetables such as cranberries, brussels sprouts, pumpkin, and grapes.
Should You Exercise on a Paleo Diet?
Exercise is an essential part of the Paleo diet to get faster results. Like any other diets or weight loss programs such as HIIT workout, AIP Diet etc exercise is a must. Although in the paleolithic era, people didn’t do exercise especially. But they do various physical works throughout the day which benefits them a lot like exercise. For example- hunter-gatherers of the paleolithic era were always on the move which worked as an exercise for them.
If you’re a beginner and following the basic Paleo approach, you should do at least 2.5 hours of moderate-intensity activities such as brisk walking each week along with muscle-strengthening activities for a couple of days. The Paleo Diet suggests a similar approach and offers numerous tips to do exercise while following the diet throughout the day.
Is There Any Risk of Trying the Paleo Diet?
Although cutting out whole food groups in the paleo diet can certainly help you in weight loss (for example, an all-meat carnivore diet, which generally dietitians don’t recommend), you may run the risk of missing out on some major nutrients. Moreover, some experts say against the paleo diet because eliminating dairy products totally can lower levels of vitamin D and calcium in your body. Over time, it can leave you at risk of developing bone fractures, osteoporosis, and rickets.
Many people also worry because the paleo diet is often interpreted as meat-centric. Moreover, some people use paleo philosophy as an excuse to eat too much meat and chicken. These people generally avoid plant-based food.
If you’re not careful about the protein types you eat, then the diet you take may put you at risk of developing cardiovascular disease. For instance, red meat has high saturated fats, which can raise blood cholesterol levels in our bodies and increase the risk of heart disease.
However, there’s no concrete scientific proof that the paleo diet can lead to any disease or prevent you from any disease. Because evidence of its benefits is also anecdotal. Although some research and studies seem to support the benefits of the paleo diet. Many scientists state that we don’t yet have enough evidence to prove whether the eating approach is totally healthy and without risk or not.
Nobody knows its long-term effects. Because no one has researched it to that extent. It’s not really a new concept because it’s a concept that’s been recycled through the years. For instance, fat allowance in the paleo diet may be problematic because saturated fat from meat may be linked with a high risk of early death.
The Australian Family Physician article described that potential calcium deficiency is a “major issue” with the paleo diet. One study, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that followers of the paleo diet had a 50% low calcium intake level compared to the non-followers daily intake level of calcium.
According to the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements, calcium deficiency can cause muscle cramps, convulsions (or muscle spasms), lethargy (or lack of energy), numbness, and tingling in the fingers, low appetite, and abnormal heart rhythms. Moreover, chronic calcium deficiency may lead to skeletal disorders like fractures and rickets.
If you are a beginner and want to start a paleo diet, then consult a registered dietitian to follow this plan safely and avoid deficiency in nutrients like calcium.
Final Thoughts
A paleo diet is considered a healthy diet because it was eaten by our ancestors 10,000 years ago in the Paleolithic era. This diet can help you maintain your body weight and even weight loss. With this, it has many other health benefits. However, there is no long-term research or studies about the potential benefits and risks of the diet. A Paleo diet is beneficial along with enough exercise and eating a balanced, healthy diet.
Although there is no one or strict way to follow the paleo diet, the basic idea is just to focus on healthy, whole foods and avoid processed foods. The Paleo diet includes fish, eggs, seeds, nuts, meat, fruits, and vegetables with healthy oil and fat. You need to avoid grains, sugar, dairy products, and processed foods. However, you can add modern healthy foods like grass-fed butter and gluten-free grains to your paleo diet.
You can start your paleo diet today by checking the above-mentioned sample menu for daily breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You can do any changes you want in your diet according to you but surely add enough fruits and vegetables to your paleo diet plan for a healthy and fit body.