The Inside Scoop on Paleo: How to Live like a Caveman

The idea of a diet has always scared me.  When my roommate first told me about the paleo diet eleven months ago, I never thought it would be something I would participate in.  It took too many of my favorite foods away, I thought.  It was too hard!  Well, here I am after my freshman year of college, a victim of limited and greasy food options.  Here I am six weeks into my paleo diet. 

The paleo diet focuses on foods that were hunted and gathered in the Paleolithic Age.  It limits your food intake to that of what a caveman would consume, including four main food groups: meat, vegetables, nuts, and fruit.  While nuts and fruit are included in the diet, it is supposed to be primarily meat and vegetables because of the fat content in nuts and sugar content in fruit. 

I’ve had both positive and negative experiences with the paleo diet depending on the day.  Paleo has helped me control my food intake and understand the importance of balanced and healthy eating.  I’ve struggled with choosing the right paleo foods at the right time, and beating those late night cravings.  It has worked its way into other aspects of my life like my skin clarity and general wellness feeling.  Through the good and the bad, I am glad I started this diet because it has taught me many lessons about eating healthy besides simply what to eat. 

My Experience

Starting the Diet

My paleo diet started with my dad handing me a raw piece of steak saying “here’s your dinner, caveman.”  The first few days were very hard for me because of the immediate elimination of the fatty foods I loved.  I am the kind of person who enjoys a dessert with every meal.  I started getting withdrawals, not only because I wasn’t eating sweets but because the idea of not eating sweets for weeks (I embarrassingly admit) took a toll on me.  We mark food as a way to bring people together, like having cake on birthdays and going out for brunch/lunch/dinner as an excuse to catch up with friends.  It is also one of the greatest coping mechanisms we have: eating ice cream when sad, baking to calm nerves, bringing someone brownies as an apology.  Additionally, I work at kids’ birthday parties every week, where I am regularly surrounded by and offered pizza, cake, and ice cream.  The idea of not being able to partake in these festivities was the main roadblock to starting my diet.  I remember desperately craving just one piece of chocolate for dessert during the first week, but I knew that one would lead to two which would lead to three and suddenly I would forget the whole idea of a diet.  In my past, I’ve been an all-or-nothing kind of person, and I knew that if I was not 100% in from the beginning, my diet would quickly fall apart. 

A huge part of partaking in this diet, especially if you are an all-or-nothing person like me, is the internal voice in your head that tells you to keep going.  It took me a while to find the motivation to start.  Throughout the last month of school, I told myself I’d start a diet when I moved back home, thinking I was doing the right thing and getting my life in order, but truthfully I was just pushing it off because I did not want to start.  Even when I got home, it took me over two weeks to actually start the paleo diet.  Though it took me a while to start the diet after my initial thought of it, it was beneficial because that time was spent finding my inner voice that pushed me to try harder.  Had I started during my last month of school, I would have probably given up fast because I would not have been pushing myself to the extent that I am now.  Waiting over a month to start allowed a buildup of excitement, which kept me going when I wanted to quit. 

One thing I would recommend is wading into the diet instead of jumping in.  When I started, I went cold turkey on all the foods that I love, which was the cause of some early-diet anxiety.  I would recommend removing sugar from your diet first, and then carbs, and dairy, and so on, giving yourself time to adjust to each food removal instead of going from pizza and bagels to salads and apples overnight. 

Earlier, I talked about how removing sweets from my diet was hard for me.  The way I got over my sugar withdrawal was by convincing myself that fruit was my dessert.  My sweet tooth was satisfied with the natural sugar in strawberries, pomegranate, kiwi, and blueberries, which were always go-tos for me.  While it is hard to compare them to a warm chocolate chip cookie or a fresh scoop of ice cream, they were just the thing I needed to end my day while staying in my diet. 

Obstacles

In the beginning, the weight loss was promising.  It was a steady dropping of one pound every few days but after five pounds, it seemed like I hit a threshold that I could not break.  For two more weeks, I stayed at that weight, unsure of what I had done wrong because I was eating the same paleo foods with the same discipline as before.  I took a step back and evaluated exactly how I was dieting.  This is when I realized that dieting is more than the food you eat, but a whole lifestyle change.  Here is everything that I was doing wrong:

1. I was still late-night snacking frequently. 
2. My food intake was primarily meals of fruit, and a very small amount of vegetables.  While fruit is healthy, the natural sugars can build up and hurt you if too much fruit is consumed.
3. I was not measuring how many nuts I was eating.  I only found out recently how many calories nuts actually have, and it is truly astounding.  Almonds, pistachios, and macadamia nuts are my favorite, and I would eat an oversized bowl of them at a time.  One cup of almonds is 529 calories, one cup of pistachios is 691, and one cup of macadamia nuts is 962.
4. I had an all-you-can-eat mindset, where I would eat as much food as I wanted, but inside the paleo food group parameters.
5. I was not working out at all.

When I realized all of this, I made some huge changes that resulted in continual weight loss.  I set a goal not to eat anything past 8pm.  I have stuck to it pretty well except a few days when I got home late from work and needed a snack to hold me over.  I have found that it is not difficult; late night snacking is more of a habit than actual hunger, and instead of trying to eliminate the habit, I just changed the time of it to 7:45 rather than 11:45. 

Another thing I did was integrate more vegetables into my diet in place of fruit.  My favorite vegetable serving is spinach sautéed with olive oil, garlic, and salt.  An interesting thing about greens is that they shrink to about 1/3 of their size after they are sautéed.  This means you could fill the pan up completely and after sautéing, it would only be a few bites to finish them.  I usually fill up a pan as much as I can, and it is truly amazing how many vegetables you could consume in a few bites.  This is a good way to eat a large amount of vegetables without feeling like you are.

Going along with the the increased vegetable intake, I limit myself to one fruit with each meal, which has cut down on my sugar intake.  Another part of eating fruit is finding the right fruit to eat.  For example, 1/2 cup of pomegranate is 72 calories, while a banana is 105 calories.  This does not seem like such a huge difference, and they might be categorized as equally healthy.  However, a pomegranate has 16 grams of carbs while a banana has 27 grams — a huge difference over time if bananas are constantly chosen over 1/2 cup of pomegranate.  When deciding what to eat, I look at calories, but I also pay attention to carbs and sugars because those both convert to fat. 

I also started measuring the amount of nuts that I eat.  I keep a jar containing an assortment of nuts if I need to get a snack quickly, but I allow myself no more than 1/3 cup of that mix per day.  Nuts are healthy but their consumption must be limited, or it could turn bad fast.  Having 1/3 cup of my nut mix per day ensures I’m consuming no more than 300 calories from nuts.  That’s a number I can live with! 

I knew I needed to change my all-you-can-eat mindset, so I created an eating schedule and limited myself to it.  The most I allowed myself to eat was breakfast, lunch, a snack, dinner, and dessert.  Some days I would wake up late enough I could start my first meal at lunch, and the snack and dessert were extra and not eaten every day.  This regulated my eating to what was essential, but allowed me some extra meals for fun.  Just like changing my late night snacking habit, it was not hard — I just had to put the work in to make a change. 

Adding exercise to my schedule was probably the biggest improvement I made to my diet.  Throughout my first few weeks, I knew I needed to exercise but I was simply too lazy.  I blamed it on a busy schedule or a tiring day at work instead of putting in an extra 20 minutes.  I like to exercise a few days a week, and rotate between different exercises.  These include the elliptical, jump roping, jumping jacks, benchpress, upper and lower abs, arm circuits,  squats, and pushups (I hate them, but I struggle through them).  I started noticing differences within the first couple of workouts, specifically in the lower belly fat and love handles area.  With these areas shrinking, I am overall more toned and I feel better about myself looking in the mirror (that’s what it’s about anyway!). 

Tips and Cheats

Throughout the past couple of weeks I’ve learned many little cheats that have made this diet much more enjoyable.  Paleo limits what you are allowed to drink because of all the added sugar in sweet tea, fruit juices, lemonade, and soda.  Drinking water for months is achievable but not enjoyable.  In order to satisfy my flavored drink cravings, I brew some herbal tea and set it over ice to make unsweetened herbal tea.  Sometimes I drink this as is because unsweetened tea does not bother me, but when I want to make it a little sweeter, I add fresh fruit to sweeten it up.  Strawberries, oranges, and lemons are good in cold herbal teas because the flavor is absorbed quickly and the natural sugar adds sweetness.  To get even fancier, I add basil and mint leaves to my concoction.  Some of my favorite teas to do this with are peach green tea, earl grey black tea, and regular green tea.  You can experiment with different fruits and leaves to find which flavors suit you, and if you are not a fan of herbal tea, you can do this in water too.  Not only does it make you feel good, but it makes you look good too!  The amount of compliments I have received carrying my decorative drinks has only motivated me to make more. 

Snacking was a big part of my life before I started the diet, so I knew that limiting and choosing my snacks carefully would be an important step in this lifestyle change.  This one sentence has changed the way that I snack, and I plan on carrying this throughout my life, whether or not I am on the paleo diet: snack from the fridge, not the pantry.  When selecting my foods on paleo, I noticed that I was walking to fridge a lot more than I was walking to the pantry.  That is when I realized that three of the major food groups of paleo (meat, vegetables, and fruit) all lived in the fridge, while only nuts are stored in the pantry.  Taking a look in the pantry, I noticed that the majority of foods were all sugar and carbs: cereal, bagels, chips, popcorn, goldfish, cookies — nothing is healthy!  Fridge = fresh.  The food in the fridge is a much healthier option for a quick snack: cucumbers, raw peppers, blueberries, carrots, watermelon, boiled eggs, apples, basically any fruit or vegetable you can think of.  Getting into this habit has saved me from eating extra carbs that I do not need. 

Paying attention to what I was eating at what time of the day was something I had to get used to.  Fattier foods should be reserved for the morning because there is more time during the day to burn them off, where the healthier foods are better at night.  For me, a banana with almond butter is my favorite snack.  However, bananas are high in carbs and almond butter has a lot of fat in it.  I used to eat this for dessert, but when I realized this could contribute to some undesired weight gain, I switched this to my breakfast and added blueberries or pomegranate as my dessert.  This small change made me feel better about eating fatty foods like almond butter because I know I am eating them at the best possible time during the day. 

One of the hardest things about switching to paleo is giving up your favorite foods.  Instead of giving them up, I convinced myself I was simply replacing them with something else.  Throughout my first year of college, peanut butter was a staple in my diet.  However, peanuts are legumes, not nuts, and cannot be eaten in the paleo diet.  Instead of giving it up, I replaced it with almond butter.  Peanut butter with graham crackers became almond butter with apples.  This way, I still get that delicious nutty taste in a healthier way.  Another replacement I made was eliminating milk and adding unsweetened almond coconut milk (unsweetened almond milk and unsweetened coconut milk are fine, but I like Silk’s almond coconut milk mix).  Dairy is not allowed in the diet, so milk is gone, but unsweetened almond coconut milk has no dairy or sugar in it, and is perfectly allowed.  In place of cheese on sandwiches and burgers, I would cook up an egg.  While the flavors do not match, the texture of an egg similarly resembles that of a slice of cheese, and it tastes just as good amid the other flavors.  Another thing that is hard to give up is pasta.  However, stores like Target and Walmart sell spiral slicers that can cut vegetables into the shape of spaghetti.  My favorite vegetable pasta is zucchini pasta.  The shape and texture of the zucchini pasta is the same as regular pasta, and I can barely tell the difference while eating it.  When you are craving carbs, just pull out your spiral slicer and your favorite vegetable, and let your brain think you are eating pasta!  Lastly, pancakes cannot be eaten on the paleo diet; however, there is a brand of pancake and waffle mix that is made wholly of paleo ingredients.  When I found this, I was ecstatic.  I could finally eat something that tasted like bread!  It can be found at regular grocery stores (I get mine at Harris Teeter and Costco).  

Just like any other diet, having people do it with you is a huge advantage for when that little voice in your head is weak.  I dieted alongside my family, which helped as they convinced me not to have that brownie or piece of cake.  It also makes eating together a lot more enjoyable.  Instead of watching everyone around you eat all your favorite foods, you can all share the experience of eating healthy together.  This includes cooking together, trying new foods together, and motivating each other to be the best that you can be. 

Paleo Versus Calorie Counting

Months ago when my roommate told me about paleo, she told me something that changed the way I look at eating: it’s not about how many calories you put in your body, but what foods you put in your body.  As I reminisce on the days where I tried a calorie counting diet, I see this to be completely true.  When on the calorie counting diet, I found no success because I would still eat the foods that were bad for me and I would tell myself they fit in the diet because they fit in the calorie count.  For example, if I was trying to eat 1500 calories per day, I would eat a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast (350 calories), two slices of pizza for lunch (570 calories), chips for a snack (150 calories), and a burger for dinner (400 calories).  While this totals up to 1470 calories, which is under the goal, I was still eating massive amounts of carbs and dairy which converts to fat.  Similarly, I would skip meals for having a sweet treat.  If cheesecake was 400 calories, I’d have that instead of a healthy dinner because they are the same amount of calories anyway, so what’s the difference!  While I wish dieting worked that way, your body is getting no nutrients and you’ll be left hungry because of it.  On top of this, you are adding fat to your body instead of burning it off.  Eating paleo has showed me that its all about what you are putting in your body, not how many calories you are trying to shove into a diet. 

Eating Out

Eating at restaurants on the paleo diet has been easier than I thought.  Since I am not as much worried about the calories, it is easier to choose foods based on ingredients.  At nicer restaurants, it is easy to find meals that are already paleo, like steak and vegetables.  At sports bars, I usually go with a burger (without the bun) and a side of fruit or vegetables.  It is harder to find food at the more fast-food-like places, but there are a few restaurants that make it easy.  Panera, Chipotle, Moes, and Pei Wei are good places to go.  Panera has a large salad selection and offers an apple as a side instead of bread.  At Chipotle and Moes, you can customize your meal to fit paleo standards.  It is harder to get around paleo at Pei Wei because almost everything comes with rice or noodles, but their chicken lettuce wraps (without the rice sticks) are absolutely to die for and they are paleo.  When looking for a place to eat, check out their menu online first and see if their meals are easily customized to fit the diet. 

Other Perks

While the main purpose I started paleo was for weight loss, it has benefitted other aspects of my life as well.  Because I am not eating any fried, greasy foods, my skin is clearer than it has ever been.  It has also contributed to a general wellness feeling because I know that I am doing the best for myself, and my body is thanking me. 

Paleo Cookbook

I started taking pictures of everything I ate because making my food look aesthetically pleasing motivated me to eat it.  I recommend taking time to plate and decorate your food to have a more pleasurable experience when dieting.  Here are the pictures that I took with a description of the food: my own paleo cookbook!

Thank you for reading!

*this article is based on my personal opinion and is not based on medical advice