Lately I've been seeing a lot of clients under the sway of yet another new diet trend: the Paleolithic diet. This is a diet plan that involves eating like it was the year 8,000 BCE, meaning lots of meat and fish, plenty of root vegetables, nuts and berries, but no dairy, no sugars and, most problematically, no grains. Now, I am not a fan of eating processed food, but I've seen this diet distorting people's relationship to what they eat, and to their own appetites, and it's troubling.
Recently, I began seeing a client whose trainer had told her to give up carbohydrates. He'd told her to stop eating bread completely, and even made her feel guilty for eating a potato! She came to me because she was fatigued -- she had actually fainted at one point -- and she still hadn't dropped a pound. I asked her what she'd most like to eat. She said she wanted nothing more than to eat a sandwich. I told her there was no reason she shouldn't eat sandwiches if she wanted them. A week later she returned, two pounds lighter and having eaten only one sandwich. "Once you gave me the permission to eat the sandwich," she said, "it relieved the pressure on me -- I felt so liberated just knowing that you'd given me the OK." It turned out that that set her free to control her own eating. "I thought I needed the sandwich," she said, "but once I could have it, I realized I didn't really need it after all."
I see many clients like this lady. Many have been advised by fitness trainers that they need to follow one diet or another. Some of this is novelty -- trainers, like many people who see clients, are looking for new things to try, and ways to change things up. And not all of aspects of the Paleo diet are bad -- for example, if done properly it involves hours per day of movement, based in the two most basic forms of exercise, walking and weight-bearing. But the fact is, you don't live like Paleolithic man. Just as you unfortunately probably don't have hours and hours per day to spend in constant motion, you also don't live in a world without grains. In fact, many healthy diets -- a traditional Mediterranean diet, a modern vegan diet -- are organized around grains. What they have that our current eating habits don't is portion control.
Go back to my conversation with my client. She ate a sandwich, and she lost two pounds. The key element was a sandwich. She ate what she wanted, but she ate it in moderation. In fact most traditional diets -- Italian, French or my native Peruvian -- eat a full range of foods, but in smaller portions. If you eat pasta in an Italian restaurant in Italy, for instance, you will most often be served a small plate, with perhaps a third as much pasta as you would be given in an American restaurant. But it is plenty for a single meal. And like my client, if you give yourself permission to eat what you want -- as long as it is real food -- you may find that you are able to eat less of it.
For myself, I am a food lover and so glad to be living in the 21st century, when, unlike Paleolithic man, we have access to all the amazing cuisines of the world. From French to Italian to Peruvian to Thai -- you name it, I love it. I celebrate food and love to eat! You should give yourself permission to do the same. Just remember that, like grains, moderation is a key part of those great traditional diets.
Manuel Villacorta is a registered dietitian in private practice in San Francisco, Calif. He is a national media spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association and the founder of Eating Free.
Follow Manuel Villacorta on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EatingFree
It doesn't even define the difference between complex carbohydrates that are good for you (whole grains) vs. processed ones (white flour, white pasta, white bread).
"[My client] ate a sandwich, and she lost two pounds."
Totally unhelpful: was this a multi-grain bread and lean chicken sandwich with spinach? Or a meatball grinder? Big difference.
Respectfully, food is too complex an issue to waste our time with simplistic articles like this, Huffpo.
The discussion of whether grains can be part of a healthy diet or not often ignores an important aspect of the issue, which is the individual's particular physiological response to them. On the one hand, it's obvious that grains CAN be eaten without ill effect given the many traditional populations that have thrived on grains, legumes, etc., in significant quantities in their diets for the last several thousand years. For example, the Japanese word for cooked rice, "gohan", has the general meaning of "meal", and the word for breakfast, "asagohan", translates as "morning rice", the people of India have relied on lentils, rice, and bread as daily staples for thousands of years, and in the Bible "bread" is commonly used metaphorically to refer to food in general.
But this doesn't mean that a diet high in grains is a good idea for everyone. If you are genetically predisposed to hyperinsulinism and insulin resistance, then eliminating grains, and restricting other carbohydrates, may be the ONLY way to avoid accumulating excess fat and eventually developing type II diabetes.
Think of it this way - most people who smoke do NOT develop lung cancer, but almost all those with lung cancer are or were smokers. Similarly, most people can eat a diet high in carbohydrates without triggering metabolic problems that lead to obesity and diabetes, but NO one with metabolic syndrome and insulin dysregulation can eat a high carbohydrate diet without running into problems.
That said, some points need to be made:
1) Just as no one NEEDS to smoke cigarettes, no one NEEDS to eat a diet heavy on grains, so cutting out or cutting back isn’t going to hurt anyone, and maybe it’s better to be safe than sorry. There are no nutrients found in grains that aren’t also found in other foods, and in fact grains and legumes, at least in their raw, unsprouted, unfermented forms, actually contain ANTI-nutrients, like phytic acid, that interfere with the absorption of important minerals.
2) The sooner problems with carbohydrate metabolism are detected and dealt with, the better. Once you’ve let it get so far as exhausting your pancreatic beta cells, no amount of carbohydrate-avoidance is going to help, and exogenous insulin will be the only thing standing between you and disabling disease.
3) Some here have asked, if eating grains is so detrimental to health, then why are obesity and diabetes so prevalent now when we’ve been eating grains since the dawn of the Neolithic era? Simple: the Neolithic peoples weren’t processing the hell out of their grains and rendering them into the nutritional equivalent of pure sugar. No amount of carbohydrate tolerance is going to turn Wonder Bread, Cheetos, and Coca-Cola into healthy foods. There are limits to the glycemic load that the human body, as adaptable as it is, can tolerate without regrettable long-term effects.
Where do I sign?
I lost weight a couple of years ago.
Dropped 80+lbs. A low-carb, diet worked for me.
Initial problem with fatigue, didn't eat enough calories to offset reduced carbs.
Continued after, allowing me to keep low body fat, and remain muscular.
As I increased activity levels (triathlon training), I increased carbohydrates to fuel more efficiently.
Even then, it was fairly moderate. I can feel the effect carbs have on me. I can tell when its a sufficient amount. Its different than some of my friends.
Everyone's different, you'll just have to figure what's best.
...know that, scarfing downing piles of carbohydrates is not really suited for ANYONE.
I always had high triglycerides and low HDL, which is metabolic syndrome that will lead to diabetes (my father has type 2, even if he never was obese). After 5 months of a high-fat (most of it saturated from animal sources) and extremely low-carb eating I reversed that.
All of that while eating unlimited calories and not exercising (because of a car accident, I can't even run anymore). I lost 12lbs (and I was not overweight at all) in 3 weeks and maintained it, I eat as much as I want, and I don't touch bread, pasta, potatoes and sweets anymore, including most fruits.
I never felt so energetic and satisfied. I have been fatigued only for a week: that is your body going through carb-withdrawal. Yes, carbs are addictive and they are just like a drug.
I can't believe a person who advocates unlimited grain consumption is a spokeperson for the ADA!
It's Americans without common sense who are to blame for being obese and diabetic. Put the fork down!
Good God! Do we need trainers to tell us what and if we can eat? How about common sense. Ughh!
http://dieterschoice.blogspot.com/