Progression to Paleo: Evolution Step II

Fitch's Corner lets you Pick Your Own. By Leslie Why Reap

Hello my tall, speedy, well rested readers!   How are we doing with Step 1 of the Nutritional Evolution?  21 days have elapsed.  Are you in charge?  Consuming your veggies, fruits, water and real?  Shunning the refined and packaged nastiness containing HFCS, Polyunsaturated Fats (PUFAS), and other unrecognizables?   Excellent!  I deem you ready to tackle Step 2.   You are going to focus on high quality foods with nutrient density (think yams not grains) and in some cases energy density (think good fats not baked goods) while steering clear of those center grocery aisles.

One newly acquired pearl of wisdom from the author (that’s me!)…remember that we all have varying abilities to handle higher protein/“good” fat diets.  Just because a 40 year old, 150 lb male can eat 6 ounces of protein and a nice dose of fat at every meal and successfully go Paleo overnight, does not mean that everyone can.  So please proceed with your head attached to your shoulders (I’ve earned the right to say that) and be smart about this transition.   Check in with yourself after each meal and throughout the day.  How is my energy?  Is my digestion the same, better or worse?  Going 100% Paleo overnight with a dramatic increase in animal protein and fat can affect your digestion (read : liver, gallbladder, gut).  The typical American lifestyle has taken a toll on your body.  If you start to feel any bloating or sluggishness, increase your water intake, ensure that 50% of your plate is fruits and vegetables and start with smaller amounts of protein and good fats and increase slowly as your body adjusts.  This approach will facilitate a healthy transition  and allow your liver and gallbladder to bounce back a bit.

Okay, here we go!

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Celiac disease is not a disease

“HLA antibodies complexed to alpha-/beta-gliadin.” Image: Wikimedia CommonsThe New Oxford American Dictionary defines a disease as:

a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, esp. one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury

For this discussion, the key point is “a disorder of structure or function.” With celiac disease (CD) however, there is a problem: the person does not have “a disorder of structure or function.” Their structure or function would have been just fine before the agricultural revolution. There is nothing wrong with the person; the problem is the invented diet of the agricultural revolution. (Consider it this way: if someone is suffering from chronic mercury exposure, you do not say they have mercury disease, you say they have mercury poisoning.)

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Paleolithic Nutrition: Refined Carbohydrates

By John Michael

It was our aesthetic sensibility, a preference for white flour, which aggravated our current predicament. We’re eating processed grains that have been refined to please our eyes, noses, and taste buds, but which are mostly devoid of nutritional value, because this value has been removed in the effort to make these foods more palatable, in a process that “gives foods a finer texture and prolongs shelf life, but also removes important nutrients, such as B vitamins, fiber, and iron.”

These refined grains are often no better than sugar. We digest them quickly, leading to a rapid increase in blood sugar that’s followed by an equally precipitous decrease, which we feel as a bump in energy and then a crash. Unsurprisingly, then, both white flour and white sugar are refined carbohydrates, which are “produced when whole plants which are high in carbohydrates are processed in a way to strip out everything but the highly digestible carbohydrate (starch or sugar).”

Why, if they’re so unhealthy, are refined carbs so prevalent? For one thing, we’ve become accustomed to eating them. The intense sweetness that sugar adds is something we’ve come to desire; ominously, one rat study showed it to be more addictive than cocaine. While we’ve also become accustomed to white flour, its power over us doesn’t have to do with any addictive qualities, so much as with its ability to take on the flavors of whatever ingredients are added to it, like sugar or salt, among others.

One of the biggest problems with these refined carbohydrates is that they’re nutrient deficient; they take up a large part of our diets, and so reduce our overall nutrient intake by replacing healthier foods. Another problem is that the energy we derive from them, if not quickly used, is stored as fat, which is why in America we often find the overweight are malnourished. According to some speculation, the short uptick in blood sugar caused by refined carbs leads to an excess of insulin, which, after removing the sugar from the bloodstream, causes a sudden lack of it that could possibly lead to severe problems, like the exacerbation, or even the cause of, cancer.

These refined carbohydrates are playing a role in the spread of several modern diseases, among them diabetes and hypertension. While it’s easy to make villains of the corporations that use refined carbohydrates in their products, we also have to accept some of the blame ourselves. By overindulging our tastes, we went too far down the wrong road, refining carbohydrates so much that we stripped them of their beneficial qualities. At the same time, we over-exerted our tongues, over-stimulating them with the crude tastes of refined carbs, and so allowed ourselves to forget the deliciously subtle flavors that natural foods like those found in the Paleo diet have to offer.

Paleolithic Nutrition: Diabetes and the Modern Diet

Copyright iStockphotoBy John Michael

Diabetes, especially its Type 2 variant, is spreading around the world. Globally, there are now “more than 350 million people” who suffer from this insidious disease, according to an article in the British newspaper The Guardian. This article goes on to state, “About three million deaths a year are attributed to diabetes and associated conditions.” Here at home, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) disclose, “25.8 million people in the United States (8.3% of the population) have diabetes,” and, “of these, 7.0 million have undiagnosed diabetes.” They conclude their list of statistics with this sobering appraisal: “If current trends continue, 1 of 3 U.S. adults will have diabetes by 2050.”

While only a small portion of people with diabetes worldwide suffer from Type 1, which is, according to the CDC, “an autoimmune disease that may be caused by genetic, environmental, or other factors,” the majority of suffers worldwide have Type 2 Diabetes, which is “usually associated with older age, obesity and physical inactivity, family history of type 2 diabetes, or a personal history of gestational diabetes.” Both disorders concern either “a shortage of insulin” in the body, “or a decreased ability to use insulin, or both.” Mark’s Daily Apple has a great blog that explains the complex dynamics of this disease here.

In an excellent article on the growing consensus that excess dietary carbohydrates are connected to the growth of modern diseases like heart disease, obesity, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes, The Los Angeles Times quotes several medical experts. 

"Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases."

"Dietary fat used to be public enemy No. 1," says Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University. "Now a growing and convincing body of science is pointing the finger at carbs, especially those containing refined flour and sugar." 

"The country's big low-fat message backfired," says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today."

While a consensus has not yet been achieved among medical professionals as to whether excess carbohydrates and sugar are indeed responsible for the uptick in modern diseases like type 2 diabetes, the message captured in the Los Angeles Times article is echoed by Mark Sisson, who, on his blog, excoriates a reputable diabetes organization’s suggestion that sufferers include in their diets large portions of “breads, grains, beans, pasta, and other starches.” “If you want to develop type 2 diabetes,” he writes regarding the organization’s nutritional advice, “I’m stumped for a more expeditious way to do it.”

By shifting from the typical American to a modern approximation of the Paleolithic diet, we come to eat foods that our bodies are adapted to digesting efficiently. Novel foods like the processed grains that comprise the typical diet's excess in carbohydrates, are quickly converted to blood sugar, which, if not used, as is often the case with calories in our sedentary society, is then stored as fat. As our waistlines burgeon, our risk for type 2 diabetes increases; a Paleo diet, which avoids industrial foods in favor of more ancestral fare, reduces our waistlines, and so, by restoring our natural state of health, protects us from the specter of modern disease.

Related Entries
Paleolithic Nutrition: Diet in the Neolithic  
Paleolithic Nutrition: Diet and Modern Disease 

Paleolithic Nutrition: Diet and Modern Disease

By John Michael & Dr. John

In the United States and most Western countries, diet-related chronic diseases represent the single largest cause of morbidity and mortality. These diseases are epidemic in contemporary Westernized populations and typically afflict 50–65% of the adult population, yet they are rare or nonexistent in hunter-gatherers and other less Westernized people. Although both scientists and lay people alike may frequently identify a single dietary element as the cause of chronic disease (e.g., saturated fat causes heart disease and salt causes high blood pressure), evidence gleaned over the past 3 decades now indicates that virtually all so-called diseases of civilization have multifactorial dietary elements that underlie their etiology, along with other environmental agents and genetic susceptibility.

Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century
Dr. Loren Cordain

From the Neolithic, through the age of discovery and the industrial revolution, up to the present day, human invention and innovation have introduced numerous foods into our daily diets, including vegetable oils, salts and refined sugars, and the multifarious forms that processed grains can take. Along with the introduction of these foods, people in Western Civilization have begun to suffer from many diseases that have a low prevalence among hunter-gatherer and even traditionally agrarian societies. According to Dr. Loren Cordain in his paper, Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet: Health Implications for the 21st Century, “The evolutionary collision of our ancient genome with the nutritional qualities of recently introduced foods may underlie many of the chronic diseases of Western civilization. 

Cordain bases this statement upon the idea of evolutionary discordance, which occurs when an environment changes in such a way that its inhabitants are no longer properly adapted for survival within it. Because the majority of human evolutionary history was spent within a hunter-gatherer context in which fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts and seeds, along with some tubers, were the dominant food sources, our bodies are adapted to consume this diet. The modern Western diet contains refined sugars, processed grains, and vegetable oils, among other novel foods, that were not available to our ancestors, and so our bodies perform sub-optimally when it comes to their digestion. And not only are our bodies poorly adapted for the consumption of these modern foods; in many cases, their consumption is causing us harm.

This damage takes the form of illnesses like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dementia, cancer, osteoporosis, and autoimmune disease, to name a but few. Scientists working in Burkina Faso, Africa, believe that overall health may be tied to the bacteria people have living in their gut, basing this belief on their observation that traditionally agrarian Africans have healthier gut bacteria due to their diets and lifestyle, which implies that our own guts, which are more susceptible to allergies, autoimmune disorders, and inflammatory bowel disease than those of the Africans in this study, are in such a sorry state because of what we eat and how we live. After stating that our Western diet is “killing us,” the Coronary Health Improvement Project (CHIP) presents this somber collection of statistics.

Because of thickened, narrowed and hardened arteries, 4,000 Americans succumb to heart disease and have heart attacks every day.  Every third adult has high blood pressure, and thousands are crippled from strokes. Because of disordered metabolisms from unbalanced lifestyles, obesity is epidemic, and a new diabetic is diagnosed every 50 seconds.

And, according to Cordain, “Cancer is the second leading cause of death (25% of all deaths) in the United States, and an estimated one-third of all cancer deaths are due to nutritional factors, including obesity.”

To understand the gravity of this situation, one need only look to the executive summary of the WHO’s Global Status Report on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) 2010, in which unhealthy diet was included among the four risk factors that contribute to the majority of NCD deaths worldwide. The UN report goes on to state, “People in developing countries are increasingly eating foods with higher levels of total energy and are being targeted by marketing for tobacco, alcohol and junk food, while availability of these products increases,” which is to say that this dietary problem is spreading globally. The epidemic of diet-based poor health has an economic impact as well, which the report addresses with this sobering statement, “Each year, an estimated 100 million people are pushed into poverty because they have to pay directly for health services.” The report concludes by suggesting that governments enact legislation and propaganda campaigns to inform and protect their citizens from the dangers of an unhealthy diet, and that they do so now. However, the slow swell of education by knowledgeable health care providers and online primal & Paleo educators should result in a more powerful and lasting dynamic for change.  

Progression to Paleo: Evolution Step I

By Leslie Why Reap

Changing the way you eat may be the most transformative action you can take.  

Terri Trespicio

The goal of evolving to “Paleo,” in my mind, is really the goal of evolving to a healthier, happier, and more energetic you.  It’s a better you, plain and simple.  Just think, you get to keep all of your good traits while throwing out some of the bad stuff - like mood swings, low energy and feelings of irritation.  With your renewed energy, you can acquire some fabulous, new "you" bits and bobs - like a more active/fun lifestyle, a leaner physique, relief from a chronic illness or a more positive outlook.  Our very fundamental goal here is to feel great - consistently.  We can start to do this by choosing to nourish ourselves with high quality, nutrient dense foods and eating at regular intervals.  This will allow us to begin to take control of our energy levels by better controlling our blood sugar, the subsequent insulin response, and the chronic inflammation it can produce.  Chronic inflammation is viewed as a deadly condition and it is the underlying, contributing factor for all chronic and degenerative diseases today, such as heart disease and cancer and more.

On a more positive note...today we are going to tackle Step I of our Evolution!  If this step is too rudimentary for you, then give yourself a hug and see if you can help your child, parent, sibling or friend evolve and look forward to Step II.  However, make sure you are doing Step 1consistently since it is the foundation upon which all else will be built.  It is also the most difficult Step, I believe, because you are overhauling your nutritional beliefs at the very core.  When things start going south for me, I return to Step I, the basics!  If you can accomplish Step I, you can do anything.

Nutritional Evolution, Step I:

A.  Add in 6 servings of vegetables and 3 servings of fruit everyday

Vegetables and fruits come center stage or center plate, if you will.  Vegetables and fruits should become the base of each meal/snack and fill about half of your plate.  A serving of vegetables equals a ½ cup of raw or cooked veggies or 1 cup of leafy greens.  A serving of fruit is 1 small banana, 6 strawberries, or 15 grapes.  Don’t go crazy on the fruit.  Yes, fruit has wonderful vitamins, minerals, fiber and free-radical fighting antioxidants, but it is also high in sugar.  We are trying to avoid large doses of sugar.  Even fruit, if eaten in excess will elevate blood sugar and trigger a rapid insulin (and inflammation) response. 

This produce should be organic and/or locally grown and in season whenever possible.  I know that organic/local/in season can be a stretch for many of us so do the best you can, especially with soft skinned vegetables and fruits where you eat the "skin." 

I am willing to bet you, my evolving self-educating friends, that by simply adding in 6 servings of fresh vegetables and 3 servings of fresh fruit, you will see your consumption of “fillers” diminish.  What are "fillers?"  Energy/granola bars, pretzels, crackers, and other packaged "whole grain" carbohydrate foods.  These are the same foods that spike your blood sugar and provide quick energy that converts to stored fat unless immediately utilized.  Heading out for a run?  Fine, grab a piece of granola bar if you must.  Sitting at your desk?  Don't do it!  You will end up with one more dose of unwanted body fat plus cravings for more within an hour or two.  Looking for a better choice?  Keep reading....

B.  Just drink water  http://nutrition.about.com/library/blwatercalculator.htm

I like this little calculator.  It’s handy and pretty accurate.  However, if you don’t have time for handy and accurate, then you can estimate your fluid needs at approximately half your body weight, converted to ounces.  For example, if you weigh 125 lbs, exercise 45 minutes a day and live in New England (among a few other parameters), then you need to drink about 67 ounces (2 liters).  If you eat a healthy diet consisting of the above servings of fruits and veggies, then you can reduce that amount by 20% and drink 53.6 ounces (1.6 liters).  Yes, a cup of organic coffee or herbal tea (preferably decaf as excessive caffeine will also trigger that insulin and inflammation response in your body); a smoothie made with unsweetened coconut milk, greens & fruit; and a glass of red wine with dinner, all contribute to your water goal for the day. 

Time for some forced elimination.  Soda, juice, sports drinks, flavored waters and any drinks with High Fructose Corn Syrup, artificial sweeteners, food colorings, and unrecognizable ingredients need to be eliminated.  They are addicting by design.  Someone is making a LOT of profit by your addiction and what do you get?  Weaker bones, a higher BMI and an empty wallet.  Drink your water, eat your calories and stay away from toxic, scary artificial stuff.  If it doesn’t bubble up from a spring somewhere, don’t drink it.

C.  Eat three meals and two snacks a day of REAL food

This step requires a little preparation.  So recognize that fact and give yourself over to it.  If you want to evolve, you need to put in a little effort.  

What is Real food:  Vegetables, fruits, nuts, minimally processed dairy (plain Greek yogurt, plain kefir), nut butters, unsweetened nut milks (coconuts, almond, skip the soy), eggs, chicken, fish, and meat (preferably organic, grass fed, free range) and fun items like homemade salsa, hummus, guacamole, and some limited amount of beans/legumes.  If you are going to continue with grains, transition to sprouted Ezekiel bread and muffins (do contain some gluten), wild or brown rice, quinoa, millet and more gluten free grains.  These low or gluten free grains are a SIGNIFICANT improvement over your wheat based products such as most pastas, crackers, pretzels and breads.  Just remember, the Latin root for the word "gluten," is "glue."   Hmmmm.....Finally, if you need a little sweetener for your yogurt try a tiny amount of liquid stevia or a drizzle of raw honey.

Where to find Real Food:  Start with the perimeter of your grocery store and you will find Real Food.  (As a guide, if the food comes in a package and has more than 5 ingredients, put it back.  These are usually found in the center aisles).  If you are a little more adventurous, head out to a local farm stand or farmers market.  No time or in the city?  Check out this link http://www.localharvest.org .  This can be an excellent tool to get you more familiar with the farms and offerings in your extended area as well  shop online for grass fed meats, free range poultry, dairy and much more! 

When to eat Real Food:  Always.  Oh right, the timing....If you can eat at 7am, 10am, 12.30pm, 3pm and 6pm that is great.  If not, adjust it to your schedule but the key is to eat about every 2.5 to 3.5 hours in order to prevent a big dip in your blood sugar.  Ever feel a dark mood coming on quickly?  Irritation, hunger pangs, headache, and foggy thinking?  First two things to ask yourself:  when did I last eat?  Am I hydrated?  Most likely, your blood sugar is low or less likely, you are dehydrated.  Snacks should consist of: 1 serving of fruit or 1-2 servings of vegetables and a small amount of protein with some fat, such as nuts, nut butter or a little plain yogurt (add in spices and make it a veggie dip!).  Meals should consist of: 2 servings of brightly colored and/or dark green vegetables (perhaps one starchy such as a sweet potato), a 3-5 ounce serving of protein (eggs, chicken, fish, meat) and 1-2 TBSP of healthy fat such as flaxseed oil dressing, avocado, or walnuts.  This combination of carbohydrate, protein and fat should keep your blood sugar stable and provide you with consistent, predictable energy throughout the day.

So, eat your fruits and veggies, drink your water and eat Real Food regularly.  Simple concepts that are challenging, but worthy evolutionary steps.  Give yourself as much time as you need to make each one of these your new lifestyle, your new eating habit.   Step up and own the change.  Aim for 100% but recognize that if you eat this way 80% of the time, you have evolved considerably.  You are moving significantly closer to your very early ancestor that stood straight and tall, ran like the wind and slept like a baby, congratulations!

Leslie Why Reap
“Evolving, one day at a time….”

Nutritionist Leslie Why Reap brings a fresh and dynamic approach to helping you build your Paleo/primal health. Learn about Leslie in the About page.

Paleolithic Nutrition: Diet in the Neolithic

By John Michael & Dr. John

Early farming archeological site, Picos de Europa, Spain. Copyright 2011, CyberMed, LLC..In the Upper Paleolithic period, which ranged from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago, our human ancestors roamed the Earth in hunter-gatherer bands that probably only rarely exceeded sizes of 150. During this time, our forbearers ate only food that could be hunted or gathered, and which required minimal, if any, processing. The industries required for the process and preparation of food did not exist then; it is only at the beginning of the Neolithic, when our ancestor’s roaming tribes began to form settled communities, that we find the appearance of agriculture and complex industry, which together led to the creation of processed foods.

While we probably settled down long before widespread farming began, it wasn’t until the agricultural revolution that large settlements started to appear. With farming, more food could be obtained from fewer acres; while a hunter-gatherer might have to roam over large spaces to find enough to eat, a farmer could remain on his plot of land, and was often able to feed more than just himself. The surplus of food created by agriculture then led to the emergence of civilization: because some people were able to dedicate themselves to pursuits other than finding something to eat, specialization occurred, and the various offices of modern society, among them the priesthood, the soldiery, the politicians, and the merchants, began to appear.

But, while the free time created by agriculture led to the invention of new technologies, like the wheel and written language, the Neolithic also saw the inception of food science, or, the fine art of turning the unpalatable palatable. Grains were the major crop of early agriculture, and evidence of their processing for human consumption, in the form of grinding stones, goes back as far as 15,000 years ago.

So, while the ratio of number of calories to the amount of effort expended to obtain those calories increased in the Neolithic, their nutrient quality diminished considerably, and this change in diet caused health problems for our ancestors. Among Neolithic Europeans, height, which is a reliable indicator of health, dropped as much as five inches for men, and three inches for women. Diseases like osteoporosis and rickets appeared. Animal husbandry further exacerbated the poor health of our ancestors, as diseases began to jump between animals and their caretakers. Among these originally animal-illnesses were tuberculosis, smallpox, and measles, scourges that have only recently been brought under control. 

We continue to move farther from our original diet. The consequences are only now beginning to be understood.

Brain Health: Fish oil helps maintain brain volume

By Dr. John

The first signs of human consciousness were found in Blombos Cave, South Africa and date to 70 to 80 thousand years ago. It is probably no accident that the site is littered with evidence of seafood consumption. Indeed, significant inclusion of seafood and fish in the human diet may represent the final nutritional factor in development of the human mind. 

The typical American diet is profoundly different from that of our Paleolithic ancestors and is increasingly considered the root of many modern diseases.

In a new study reported by EurekAlert, researchers at Rhode Island Hospital's Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders Center revealed older adults taking fish oil supplements preserved brain volume and had smaller cerebral ventricles (a healthy sign suggesting less brain atrophy). Lead investigator, Lori Daiello, PharmD, states:

"In the imaging analyses for the entire study population, we found a significant positive association between fish oil supplement use and average brain volumes in two critical areas utilized in memory and thinking (cerebral cortex and hippocampus), as well as smaller brain ventricular volumes compared to non-users at any given time in the study. In other words, fish oil use was associated with less brain shrinkage in patients taking these supplements during the ADNI study compared to those who didn't report using them."

This observational study is just one additional piece of evidence demonstrating our continued movement away from the original human diet comes at a price. In this case, a shrinking brain. 

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The Standard or Average American Diet  
Inflammation impairs frontal lobe brain function 
Brain Health: Omega-3 fatty acids reduce anxiety
Loren Cordain - Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet 

Progression to Paleo: Evolution versus Revolution

By Leslie Why Reap

Evolution, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary is “(2a): a process of change in a certain direction: unfolding ….c (1): a process of continuous changes from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state: growth.  Wow!  Well who doesn’t want to EVOLVE?  To unfold? To grow?  That is pretty exciting stuff.  I want to evolve, unfold and grow, everyday!  Now, how about revolution?  Two things come to mind when I think of the word revolution: radical change and revolving doors.  Neither of which conjure up images of lasting, lifestyle change.  So let’s choose to evolve instead of revolve.

What are we talking about here anyway?  Why do we need to evolve?  Well, let’s take a look.  66% of our adult population is obese or overweight.  62% of Americans don’t eat even one fruit or vegetable a day.  Our children are the heaviest, the most sedentary and the sickest they have ever been in history.  Rates of cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases are skyrocketing and with that, healthcare costs.  Pouring money into researching cures is one approach but whatever happened to “prevention is the best medicine?”  Bottom line, we need to become educated and take responsibility of our health and we can start by examining what we put in our mouths each day.  How far have we devolved nutritionally in the US?  I would say pretty darn close to rock bottom.  

Where do we need to evolve?  One suggestion is the Paleolithic approach.  Why Paleo you say?  Dr. John, John Michael and several other Paleo authors have gone into great depth as to why a progression or return to the diet of our ancestors is one of the healthiest paths.  I like this laymen’s summary of the top reasons to go Paleo:  http://neo-paleolithic-diet.com/index.php/364/the-best-way-to-lose-weight-paleo-diet/  and for a more in depth and balanced review of the Paleo Diet check out wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet .

Why did I choose this path?  It works for me.  Grains and dairy make me feel lethargic, they slow my digestion and increase mucus.  I discovered this before I discovered the Paleo diet.  The Paleo approach simply put it into context for me.  What does the Paleo diet do for me?  It helps me maintain a lean body mass around the year, not just during race season.  It helps me maintain energy throughout the day, enables me to think clearly and to multi-task.  It helps me manage the balance of good/bad bacteria in my gut that on a more traditional diet with sugar and refined carbohydrates, I fail to do.  It allows me to train, recover and regenerate muscle tissue so I am able to get stronger and faster even though I am 41 years old.  It helps me be the best role model I can be for my two children.  Most importantly, it has allowed me to heal from brain surgery free of addictions and with a positive outlook, a strong mind and a healthy immune system. 

We all live in a world of stress and bodily inflammation.  We do not need regular doses of sugar, caffeine, alcohol, refined carbohydrates and grains to further aggravate it, and we need a dietary lifestyle to counterbalance it.

I feel blessed to be a contributor to Paleoterran.   Please check in regularly to learn more about my stepped approach to “going Paleo,” the 80/20 rule, and pulling off great recipes!  I will also dive into how to get more delicious sleep, energizing fitness, and delightful rejuvenation into our daily lives.  Are you excited?  Ready to evolve?  I am! 

Leslie Why Reap
“Evolving, one day at a time….”

PaleoTerran welcomes nutritionit Leslie Reap. She brings a fresh and dynamic approach to helping you build your Paleo/primal health. Learn about Leslie in the About page. 

Becoming Paleo, Part 4: The Projections of Anxiety

The projections presented junk food as the only way to escape the anxiety that was growing within me.”Post by John Michael

For the next two months after my day of fasting, I studied my eating problem. I had a basic understanding of the mechanism that underlie it: my mind would recognize a dilemma, which I would choose to ignore instead of resolving, thereby repressing the dilemma, which would then return to my consciousness as an image of food that I would be driven to attain to soothe a growing anxiety. But in order to solve this problem, I would need a deeper understanding of it.

The projections were images of food, generally calorie-rich industrial foods, composed of a mix of flour, sugar, milk, or fat, if not all four of these ingredients. These images always had a will-violating quality: no matter how hard I tried to resist them, their power, in the form of anxiety, would only grow, until my will was overcome, and I found myself seeking out the food that they presented. I decided to begin my investigation at the root of this problem, with the issues that I was repressing by ignoring them when they appeared in my mind.

Under examination, all of these issues appeared related to one another by a theme of health. When the statement, “I am going to be alone tonight,” emerged in my consciousness, it was propelled there by a concern for my health, because, to my own mind at least, human contact is necessary for a healthy life. I repressed this thought by ignoring it as a nuisance, and so, because I hadn’t recognized the legitimacy of its concern, I unwittingly activated the projections of anxiety. It appears then that my mind contains an instinctual concern for my overall health, and that when I ignore my responsibility to both recognize this instinct and act in accordance with its concern, its frustrated psychic energy returns to my unconscious mind, where it animates the mechanism that transmits the projections of anxiety into my consciousness.

Though aware that the following is purely speculation, I would like to suggest an evolutionary rationale for this mechanism. A human being who ignores his instinctual concern for his health and the health of others predisposes himself to be less connected to his social group, because, by not caring for himself attentively, in accordance with his instinct, he can probably contribute less to the group, and because, by not caring for the members of his group as his instinct suggests, he probably reduces the group’s cohesion, at the very least with regards to his own social position. Basically, if you don’t pay attention to both your own health and that of others, you can offer less both to yourself and to your society, and will likely enjoy less of the survival advantages conferred by cooperation, in both its intra- and interpersonal forms. Without cooperation, the chances that I will go hungry in a hunter-gatherer milieu, like the one in which our ancestors evolved this instinct, increase, so the projections of anxiety activate, driving me to eat calorie-rich foods in an attempt to compensate for my reduced chances of survival.

This instinctual process, over which I should have had control, but which my willful ignorance had repressed, forcing it back into my unconscious, where it became automatized in its negative aspect, was living my life for me, but in a way that was contrary to my plans, by forcing me to act in accordance with it. Because I was content to ignore my health instinct, swatting it from my consciousness when it first appeared, as if it were an annoying house fly, it returned to my consciousness with a vengeance, and without regard for my volition, because, by ignoring it when it originally appeared, I had proven that my ego was ignorant of its responsibility to the other parts of my mind, and unaware of its position as conductor in the great mental orchestra of my thought. In its second appearance, the psychic energy of the health instinct had shed its cooperative aspect, and had become implacably coercive. It would be listened to, whether I wanted to hear it or not.

Stay tuned for Becoming Paleo, Part 5: Transforming the Projections of Anxiety.

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Becoming Paleo, Part 1: The Yale Food Addiction Scale
Becoming Paleo, Part 2: The Anxiety Barrier 
Becoming Paleo, Part 3: Breaking the Anxiety Barrier 

Becoming Paleo, Part 3: Breaking the Anxiety Barrier

The object of my cravings was often dictated by what was available. In Argentina, they took the form of local pastries, the eating of which could accurately be called a national pastime in that country.Post by John Michael

Cardboard pint boxes of frozen yogurt piling up in my bedside dust bin, alongside gummy bear and chocolate bar wrappers: this was only one of the many manifestations of my eating problem. (Yes, I would often eat my comfort food in bed.) Aside from this, there were the odd situations that I found myself in on account of it, like listening to the gripping, if still horrific, story of a recent drive-by shooting in my neighborhood, as I waited for a double cheeseburger in the 24-hour corner store below my apartment at midnight. And then there were the effects that it had on my body. With regards to my weight, the only certainty was that it would fluctuate. Because my stomach was often distended, my posture suffered, and I found it easier to develop lower back pain. One day, I was looking in the mirror at my love handles, and I asked myself, “What is this anxiety that I allow it to ruin my physique like this?”

One thing I’d learned was that the more refined my self-awareness was, the more complex were the issues that I could address. All of my earlier approaches to solving this problem had followed a rather crude strategy: I would try to change my eating habits by force of will alone, attempting to simply resist my cravings when they awoke within me. I had failed each time because this problem was far more complex than I gave it credit for.

In March of 2011, I decided that I would try a new approach. Instead of using brute force of will, I would study my eating problem, in the hope of divining its underlying mechanism. The best method that I could think of for intensifying its symptoms to the point where I could clearly observe them was to fast. As I knew from experience, resisting the symptoms would heighten them; the idea was to let them do so, until they grew to the point where I would be able to discern their finer parts, and perhaps understand how they worked together.

Fasting for me was nothing like what you read about on hunter-gatherer.com or Mark’s Daily Apple; this was no thirty-six hour fast. In fact, it wasn’t even a six-hour fast. Instead, my fasting consisted of eating only when I was hungry, and of eating only until my hunger was sated. But even this was a challenge for me. On the first morning of my fast, I found myself light-headed as I walked through my neighborhood, even though I had just eaten. (Interestingly, one of the first things that I had to do during my fast was to learn to distinguish between my cravings and genuine hunger because I had been operating for so long according to the input of the former that I had forgotten what the latter felt like.) I had switched to Paleo foods in order to provide a contrast between what I was eating to diminish my hunger and what I craved. As the day progressed, I found myself rediscovering my connection to my stomach.

With my attention directed towards my gut, my curiosity began to generate questions. “What is hunger?” I asked myself, and immediately my mind went in pursuit of the answer. “What is thirst?” More questions followed, growing in complexity and refinement as I answered their simpler precursors. “How much food do I really need?” and, “If I eat slowly and attentively, will this reduce my later cravings?” Tentative answers began to accumulate, like, “An empty stomach is not necessarily a hungry one.” Slowly I managed to relearn the simple system of signals that my digestive tract uses to communicate with me, which allowed me to turn my concentration to the study of my cravings.

The first thing that I realized was that my cravings did not originate in my stomach; they had nothing to do with hunger or thirst. Instead, they originated in my mind, and had to do with an entirely different need. But what was it? Mustering all of the mental subtlety that I could, I set myself to observing the thought patterns that culminated in my cravings, and what I saw surprised me. The cravings often hit hardest in the evening, usually a few hours before I fell asleep, and on this particular night I watched in fascination as they activated, revealing to me their inner workings.

A craving would begin as a problem that presented itself to my consciousness – in this case, it was the statement, “I’m going to be alone tonight.” (At this time, I was living in Bogotá, having moved there from Santa Marta, where I had left behind many good friends.) I would ignore it – in this case perhaps under the influence of the belief that I could live without companions for a little while – and this would repress the problem, which would then return to my consciousness as an image of junk food. The image would remain in my mind, slowly charging with anxiety, until I went and sought out the food that was pictured within it. Once I had attained the object of my craving, there was little time spent savoring it, as a friend had once pointed out. I would eat it quickly, because I wasn’t interested in its flavor; it had only one use: the reduction of my anxiety. It achieved this reduction by filling my stomach, and so dulling my awareness, which hid the problem that had initiated all of this, until it receded from my consciousness, and I could sleep.

The following morning, my will to fast buckled, and I found myself indulging my cravings again. But I wasn’t worried, because the previous day’s efforts had yielded great knowledge, within which I knew resided the key to breaking the anxiety barrier.

Stay tuned for Becoming Paleo, Part 4: The Projections of Anxiety.

Related Posts
Becoming Paleo, Part 1: The Yale Food Addiction Scale
Becoming Paleo, Part 2: The Anxiety Barrier 
Becoming Paleo, Part 4: The Projections of Anxiety 

Quote: Agriculture's toll on health

When populations around the globe started turning to agriculture around 10,000 years ago, regardless of their locations and type of crops, a similar trend occurred: The height and health of the people declined.

Carol Clark
eScienceCommons
Dawn of agriculture took toll on health 

also see Early Farmers Were Sicker and Shorter Than Their Forager Ancestors