GUEST POST :: Paleo Diet 101

Author: Eric Wood
The Label Says Paleo

After the 1.1. Run, I was talking to a friend who told me that she’s going gluten-free this year. This Ironman athlete made an intriguing find during her 2009 season: she planned gluten-free meals in the weeks leading up to her races, and she performed and felt better than she ever had before. Through the season, she killed her age groups, and is looking at making a more permanent diet change. While her training is of course key to her success, her diet is more important, as we only perform as well as the fuel with which we race. Why did the move to gluten-free work? Read on…

There’s been a ton of press lately around a “new” kind of diet. The Caveman Diet, Paleo Diet, Primal Diet – they’re all used to describe similar diets, yet none of them are particularly new. Instead, these diets take an evolutionary perspective, and look back in time to see what we ate before modern agriculture came around. The theory is simple: genetically-speaking, modern-day humans are not much different from pre-agricultural humans, and since agriculture really hasn’t been around too long, we should eat like we’re genetically built to.

Researchers around the world have found the following: in modern-day hunter-gatherer societies, people are healthy. There is very little evidence of obesity, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disorders, or any of the several other health issues plaguing industrialized societies. These societies eat meat, the entire animal (seriously, just about the whole thing); vegetables as they can find; berries are a treat; nuts and seeds are around. What’s missing from this list? Any kind of processed food: bread, protein bars, bagels, oats, refined sugars. In other words, they eat what man has always eaten, before the advent of grains and processed foods.

What about science and medicine, you say? This flies in the face of the Food Pyramid, of almost everything we’re taught, and certainly contradicts the endurance athlete’s carb-loading traditions. Look no further than your waistline to see what’s going on.

Extra fat around the waistline, the kind that you just can’t seem to get rid of, is a sign of insulin resistance. Processed carbs and sugars, particularly those found in gluten-bearing foods like breads, are known to spike your insulin levels, leading to systemic inflammation and resultant chronic disease. For those of you not only looking out for your health, but also your figure: wild fluctuation in insulin levels leads to the storage of excess energy as fat (the culprit of those extra inches around your waistline.

Want to look better, perform better, and feel better? Regulate your insulin levels by eliminating processed foods and focusing on high-quality foods that we were meant to eat: meat, vegetables, some fruit, nuts and seeds. Try it for a month. Replace the missing carbs with high-quality vegetables and fats. The first two or three weeks may be tough, but your body will adjust, leaving you with more energy, a slimmer waistline, and better biological markers like the following: reduced inflammation (recover from your workouts faster!), improved cholesterol readings (healthier hearts!), reduced body fat (look good in those cycling kits!), and improve the immune system (no swine flu for you!).


Interested in knowing more? There are a ton of books, resources around the Internet, and people here in Austin are living the Paleo lifestyle daily. For more information and pointers to resources, check out Austin-based blog The Label Says Paleo at http://thelabelsayspaleo.com.

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Note from RLE: This is the first of a series of guest blog posts we'll be doing covering some different nutritional approaches for athletes. Here's some more info and a little disclaimer from RLE.