Ely - Part-time paleo: how to go paleo without going crazy

WHAT IS THE PALEO DIET?

What the heck is this Paleo diet about, anyway? Do you eat nothing but mastodon steaks grilled over an open flame?

Im a part-time Paleoista myself, so I get asked questions like this all the time. (For the record, there are no mastodon steaks involved in the Paleo diet. But if you find a good source of local, free-range mastodon, let me know. Ill try anything once!)

The first thing you must understand is that the word Paleo is an abbreviated term referring to the Paleolithic age (but I bet you already knew that). This is the period in history when our ancestors ate what they could hunt, fish, or gather. That is the basis for this diet: meat, fish, eggs, and lots of veggies, berries, and nuts.

MY PERSONAL PALEO JOURNEY

Ten years ago I was diagnosed with Hashimotos thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease that makes you feel depressed, exhausted, and generally miserable. And on top of those less-than-pleasant symptoms, Hashimotos causes weight gain. I also have a skin condition called rosacea, which only added to my anguish, making me a cranky, overweight, depressed monster with a red face and pimples. Delightful, no?

I was stuck. I was in a vortex that was sucking me down. Everything was a struggle, and I just couldnt snap out of my sad, sorry state of mind.

As I researched autoimmune diseases, I kept reading over and over again about the Paleo diet and how it was reducing inflammation and healing people who were suffering from all sorts of autoimmune disorders, all the while helping people to lose weight and feel amazing.

When I first heard about the premise of the Paleo diet, to say I was skeptical is an understatement.

I kept thinking, Oh, come on! I dont want to give up bread and beans and potatoes! Ive already done the low-carb thinghow is this any different?

But after reading so many success stories, I couldnt help but think that there was a chance that changing my diet would help me, just like it was helping so many other people. I shifted my thinking, and I gave myself a pep talk: Leanne, stop thinking about what you have to give up, and start thinking about what you have to gain.

I threw myself into the Paleo diet. At first it was difficult. I missed bread, rice, and the occasional baked potato. But guess what? Things were starting to change. I started feeling better. I was feeling so good that I wanted to exercise more, which, of course, made me feel even better. I added green juicing to the mix, and I began to feel like a brand-new person.

The inflammation in my body was starting to subside and all of my symptoms were disappearing one by one. After just ten days, my skin was clearing up, I was losing weight, and my blood work was coming back with no areas of concernand let me tell you, blood work doesnt lie.

Its been about eight years since I last wrote a book. Before that, I was writing all the time, keeping my publisher very happy. Nothing has really inspired me to write again like the Paleo diet has. And thats why youre reading this very passage. I was so inspired by my own journey that I wanted to share it with you. This is a lifestyle that really, really works.

Now, if youve been doing any amount of digging into this way of eating and living, no doubt youve come across some pretty hard-core Paleo folks (more on them in Chapter Two). If the idea of eating like this seems too stringent, just relax. Theres a reason I called this book Part-Time Paleo!

I knew this book had to be about incorporating the best parts of the Paleo diet into your lifestyle so that it could be effective and manageable. Because lets be realisticwe can only do what we can do.

Now that you know that you dont have to live and die by a strict set of caveman rules, lets look a little deeper into the science of Paleo.

THE RESEARCH

Research has shown that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were lean, strong, and athletic and that they were afflicted with none of our modern-day maladies, such as diabetes and cancer. Interesting, yes?

Here we are in modern-day North America with our fancy medicine and billions of dollars spent on health care and research, and we are sick. Everyone knows someone with diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, or heart disease because the Standard American Diet (SAD) is actually substandard. We are not eating enough of the right things (organic produce and grass-fed meats), and were eating too much of the wrong things (refined sugar and processed foods).