I’m sure if you’ve read about any sort of diets in the last several years, and which ones are most popular right now, you’ve stumbled across the Paelo diet. If you search for the word “paleo diet” online you will get more than 15 million results pages, nearly all giving out guides, articles, recipes or nutrition books. Why has this diet grown to be so popular and how does it work? What is this diet about and why have so many people taken it to heart? Let’s have a real look at how this diet works and what is advises for users.
What is the Paleo Diet?
The Paleo diet is more about changing your habits with a change in the way you associate with food. It’s not a set plan that a person has to follow, but instead a lifestyle change. There’s no set or established “Paleo” diet method that everyone needs to follow. There’s also not just a “guy” out there who developed this diet on his own. The Paleo diet was a culmination of significant research that was packaged into a usable format for individuals.
There are several tenets of this diet that can be summarized, however. When humans evolved, we only had a select foods available to us which helped us to survive and thrive. We also avoided foods that did not provide proper nutrition typically, as these would harm us. Through this “trial and error” process humanity was able to improve our circumstances and improve our ability to survive. For thousands of generations, we did not have access to food that was very high in carbohydrates. Most of what we had was lean meats, naturally scavenged fruits/vegetables and other things. Dairy and grains were never a part of our diet until farming materialized and was widely available some 5000 years ago. Eating these whole, unprocessed foods is claimed by this diet to allow people to lose weight and remain healthier, while also cutting your risk of disease.
But What is Science Saying About These Claims
Sugars and processed food removal certainly makes sense, researchers have been advising avoiding these foods for nearly a decade as an abundance of research shows their harm. Yet, what about dairy and whole grains? The science is a bit mixed on this and this is really where people need to think about adding these in with some moderation. Certainly dairy has a lot of fats, and grain has a lot of carbohydrates. However, fat and carbs are not bad for you in any amount, just in excess. For this reason, dietitians and USDA guidelines do advise having some of these foods each day.
Many of the paleo studies which have been completed show some good support for the overall diet and its goals. A recent study showed that on average people lose 15 pounds per month with just this change in diet (note: calorie controls are not part of this diet, so this is indeed fairly remarkable). The Paleo diet has been transformed int the Mediterranean diet as well, which is just a different name for the same overall program. The long term effects of the diet are not well understood as of yet, but they do appear to reduce waist size, improve glycemic controls, increase energy, and increase weight loss.
Does the Paleo Diet Actually Work?
This is probably the single most important question. Yes, the studies resoundingly point to the Paleo Diet providing extremely good weight loss results to users. The results of these studies indicate that this diet does provide a reduction in blood pressure, blood sugar and some of the indications of early heart disease. In spite of these exceptional results, there is still much more than needs to be studied before doctors should be widely recommending this. The long-term impact of this diet still remains a bit unclear, though there should not be any harm from simply eating these more natural foods (after all, vegan diets have been shown in numerous studies to be extremely healthy).
While you may not experience the huge gains and benefits touted by many proponents of this diet, it certainly has a lot of potential benefits and the weight loss results are undeniable. It is a lifestyle change, which are historically the most difficult diets to stick to over a long period of time. Still, if you do manage to stick with it well, you can expect about half a pound of day of weight loss, without needing to starve yourself. While not the best diet in the world, it’s perhaps one of the more easy ones to adopt successfully.
Dr. Jeff Volek of Ohio State university actually looked at the benefits of this diet in more detail in recent years. He found that most athletes favor high fat/high protein and low carbohydrates as part of their diet. The effects are often seen in more modern methods known as the “Paleo diet” or ketogenic diets. These dramatically reduced fat in patients, increased muscle and promoted significant health benefits. Drastic reduction in carbohydrates, was found in his research, to induce rapid weight loss through a state dubbed “ketosis”, which causes stored fat to be burned instead of glucose as we typically would so with a carb rich diet.
In recent years a lot of investigation has been conducted by researchers trying to pin down just exactly is causing so many people to not lose weight permanently when they try to do so. For the most part, people who try to lose weight in the longer term fail to do so. The relapse rate after dieting is over 95% after only 6 months. What studies have found is that people who try to lose weight actually think about it as a “temporary” hurdle they have to tackle and once they do, it will be over. The reality is that people need to think of it is a fundamental life change. one that requires long term commitment. In order to maintain any weight lost you must successfully lose weight quickly as studies have shown, but also maintain your diet indefinitely afterwards.
Green coffee now comes in supplement form, that makes it at lost easier to take each day. This chlorogenic acid is preserved and high quantities of green coffee extract is delivered to users. This raw green coffee would be far too bitter to eat directly, but in this way it preserves the good parts of the green coffee and makes it easier to take each day. If you roast coffee up to 70% of the acids above are actually lost. Typical dosages of green coffee as recommended by doctors to patients now are along the lines of 1000mg per day. This works out to around 500mg twice per day which is fairly typical. Green coffee does not have high concentrations of caffeine that are created through the roasting process as well, which cuts down on feeling “buzzed” while on this supplement.
In this particular study as published, a team of researchers tested fourteen healthy subjects to see what happened if they were given a low dosage of green tea “catechins”. They were also given a combination of Vitamin C as part of this trial. It was found that those who had green tea extract had a much higher level of metabolites in their skin. Researchers observed additional benefits that reduced the inflammation of skin markets, such as PGE2 and 12-HETE. The researchers as part of this study believed these effects were caused by green tea through the production of skin cells that offered protection against long term damage from UV rays. These catechin metabolites were linked directly to protection against sunburn inflammation and even longer UVR style damage modes.
Many weight loss methods claim to offer quick results, sometimes even within a matter of days. Not all of these methods are bogus, but many of them don’t have any sort of clinical basis for their claims. Not only are you battling your body’s own natural instincts by trying to lose weight so quickly, but there are a host of additional potential problems. Your metabolism is highly sensitive to impacts in diet, particularly if you’re not taking a product that stops it from dropping when you cut calories. Naturally your body will attempt to stop any sort of weight loss if you decrease your caloric intake, and it will also increase your hunger as well. There’s no good that will come from trying to go through an all or nothing style weight loss plan.
When you drink juice each day, it’s a great way to detoxify your stomach, your cravings and also decrease your appetite. Your body if it has all of the nutrients it needs will not “crave” food nearly as often as you would typically experience. The result is a much more stable and easier maintenance of your weight. In addition, juice diets are now popular and being highly recommended by physicians. There is good reason for this, as eating fruits and vegetables (as well as drinking them) has been shown in many studies to boost your metabolism. On average someone on a juice diet (drinking juices for a meal per day) is going to lose roughly 10 pounds every two weeks. This is a very fast level of weight loss.