There are many reasons to jump on the paleo bandwagon. Unfortunately there are a lot of misconceptions about the diet and a lot of nitpicking (Can I eat dairy? Are potatoes paleo? Can I eat white rice?). Some of these details get in the way of people achieving their health goals, so let’s focus on the main reasons to eat a paleo diet.

There are many shades of paleo and it’s a great template to begin your health journey.

Here are the top 5 reasons to eat a paleo inspired diet:

1. It’s a REAL FOOD diet.

Many diets like the slim fast diet or nutrisystem diet are nothing more than processed junk in a can. That’s not food, it’s food-like product. Health starts with real food. You might have short term success with those other diets, you may be losing weight… but are you GAINING health? Probably not.

2. It removes processed food

Processed foods generally are higher in sugar, sodium, unhealthy trans and vegetable oils and refined carbohydrates. They contain preservatives, flavorings, texture enhancers, flavor enhancers and more. They are nutrient void and don’t contain the necessary fiber we need for proper digestion. In addition they bypass our innate abilities to know when we are full and contribute to weight gain.

Many ingredients used in processed foods have not been thoroughly researched and we don’t understand the true implications of what they are doing to human health.

We are built through millions of years of evolution to live off a diet that contains nutrients. Processed food is devoid of nutrients.

3. It removes inflammatory vegetable oils (canola, soy, cottonseed, etc.)

Vegetable oils are ubiquitous in our modern lives. Just look at the ingredients in most items in the middle aisles of your grocery store, you’ll likely see canola oil in the vast majority of the products. It’s hard to escape.

There are a variety of reasons to avoid vegetable oil, the two most important being its highly processed nature and fatty acid profile. These factors lead vegetable oils to be one of the most inflammatory aspects of the modern western diet.

4. It’s naturally low in sugar

There’s no diet that advocates for high sugar (even though a lot of them actually HAVE high sugar). This is for good reason, it’s harmful to health in a variety of ways. It’s connected to every condition under the sun from heart disease to diabetes.

5. There are countless success stories of people losing substantial weight and curing chronic disease on the paleo diet

Why is this? It’s because it’s a diet of REAL FOOD. Because it eliminates PROCESSED JUNK. It’s anti-inflammatory and it’s naturally low in sugar. Of course it’s going to make people healthy!

These are the real reasons why people have success on the paleo diet.

There are no shortage of paleo dessert cookbooks, fancy bars and paleo cookies. Us paleo folk are really, really good at finding replacements for every standard junk food item out there. Paleo donuts? We’ve got em. Paleo doritos… Siete nacho flavor fits the bill.

The heart of the paleo diet is all about eating nutrient dense food. Paleo junk food.. Eh not so much.

So do I think we should all be eating strictly perfect paleo all day long, all year long, for the rest of our lives? Of course not.

Paleo junk food is still junk food but why I eat it anyway

I’m going to eat “junk food” for the rest of my life.

I enjoy food far too much to never have a cookie or potato chip ever again. But here’s the thing. Will I eat a dorito ever again? Probably not. I don’t need to. Why? Because I have alternatives made from real food with real ingredients. They may not be the most nutrient dense foods out there, and sure, maybe I’m replacing a meal of vegetables to splurge on a paleo treat every once in a while… but ya know what? I’m still “paleo” and I don’t care.

Would I maintain a paleo lifestyle year after year if I didn’t allow myself to eat “junk food.” No, I’d go insane. There is absolutely no way I would maintain a healthy long term paleo lifestyle sticking to the best of the best, day in and day out.

I’m still going to occasionally use food to self medicate. I don’t think I need a therapist. I think I’m normal. But I don’t have to eat crap, even if I’m in one of those moods. I can find a clean, reasonably healthy alternative to almost anything. So I will.

It may not have been nutrient dense or amazing for my health but it doesn’t wreck havoc on my body like processed food. It’s been at least 4 years since I’ve had a dorito or a real, gluten filled, sugary-frosted donut.

I lead a paleo lifestyle now. I don’t eat crap.

BUT I DO EAT “JUNK FOOD”.

And I do stay sane.

Paleo junk food should be treated just like normal junk food was once treated in your life. It’s an occasional treat that keeps you from feeling deprived and helps you get through those tough times when it’s easy to “cheat” and reach for some processed poison.

I don’t need to eat poison because ingenuity is one of the paleo community’s best traits.

When it comes to the world of healthy eating, there are a lot of different schools of thought. I’m a little bias towards an ancestral perspective, as following our biology makes the most sense (we are animals after all), but to give credit to some of the other diets out there (not the ones that come in boxes or cans like Nutrisystem or Slim Fast)…

Any diet that removes processed crap is a pretty decent diet.

Although there’s a lot of value to our health in eating nutrient dense food, high quality pastured animals and loads of healthy fats (including saturated!)… I think you get the most benefit to health in dropping the poison from your plate.

Yes poison, let’s call it what it is.

Processed food isn’t food at all, it’s food like product. It’s made in a lab with some fancy technology that depletes it of any nutritional value. Those nutrients you see on the label? They are likely added back in and manufactured from petroleum or in some fashion equally as off putting.

Those ingredients you can’t pronounce?

Sure, on a one off basis, not a big deal. They aren’t going to kill you (quickly anyway). But when you take meal after meal, day after day, year after year of hundreds of random chemicals, working in synergistic fashion, it becomes a problem.

It’s a very slow poison, but a poison indeed.

Poison: a substance that is capable of causing the illness or death of a living organism when introduced or absorbed.

Yep, that’s it. Poison!

There’s one common feature to most diseases and that’s our modern lifestyle. Of course there’s more to it than food. Our lack of sleep, high stress, and toxic world doesn’t help. But what we eat directly contributes to our health and it starts with the food you put on your plate.

Evolution hasn’t equipped us for highly processed foods stripped of nutrition, high sugar foods, trans fats, food dyes, preservatives, artificial fillers and empty calories.

Let’s get the poison off our plates and go back to eating real food!

End rant!

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor nor claim to be. Please seek medical advice should you choose to begin a fasting protocol.

I won’t keep you in suspense. I think intermittent fasting is all the rage and with good reason (mostly).

Before I get into why, let’s talk about what intermittent fasting is. You may also see it simply referred to as IF.

Intermittent fasting is purposeful fasting in order to improve health and/or lose weight. It’s an eating pattern that cycles periods of eating with periods of fasting. There are many methods to achieve this with varying hours of fasting and in varied frequencies.

Why would anyone not want to eat?

That’s a good question. Food is awesome, right? So why on earth would we purposefully not eat if we have the means to do so?

From an ancestral perspective we would fast on a regular basis. Our bodies are built to function assuming periods of fasting.

It makes sense.

Food wasn’t always abundant and you ate when you had access to food and sometimes would go long periods without. Our bodies are built to have breaks of time to regenerate and heal. Fasting brings about cellular repair processes, such as removing waste from cells.

It’s nature’s detox, essentially.

In addition, extending time between when you eat allows your insulin levels to drop and increase your rate of fat burning. Intermittent fasting changes hormone levels to make stored fat more accessible. This is why it is often used as a tool in weight loss.

Finally, due to lower insulin levels, hormone changes and cellular repair, intermittent fasting reduces oxidative stress and inflammation, reduces risk of diabetes, can improve risk factors for heart disease, and most impressively, it has been found, at least in mice, to reduce the risk of cancer.

Check out these studies showing the impressive benefits of intermittent fasting on health:

“Periodic cycles of fasting reprogram pancreatic cells and restore insulin production”

“Relatively mild dietary restrictions should be included in clinical trials designed to inhibit cancer growth and enhance the survival of human cancer patients.”

“Fasting cycles retard growth of tumors”

“Alternate fasting could exert a beneficial antioxidant effect and a modulation of the oxidative stress associated with aging.”

“Long-term IF regimen exerts an anti-promoting effect on rat hepatocarcinogenesis”

There are many other purported benefits, many of which are scientifically backed up. It can definitely be a positive and therapeutic tool.

Ok – so should everyone fast?

No, not necessarily. For women, long term intermittent fasting might be a bad idea due to its influence on reproductive hormones. Our reproductive organs might be thinking “oh no, a famine.. Don’t reproduce now” and turn your hormones out of whack. That’s why I don’t advocate any sort of long term or overly frequent fasting like many intermittent proponents might recommend. It’s a powerful tool and with such, it should be used with caution.

Dave Asprey of bulletproof fame has his version of fasting he specifically recommends for women called bulletproof intermittent fasting. Basically, he recommends having coffee or tea with fat (generally coconut oil, MCT oil or butter) for breakfast which lets your body receive the benefits of fasting because you are still refraining from carbohydrates and protein. Due to the added fat, your body has fuel and doesn’t think you’re in a famine, keeping hormones more in line.

There are also specific medical conditions that do not support intermittent fasting. If you have existing medical problems, take extra caution. Your mainstream doctors will likely think you’re crazy saying you’d like to fast to improve your health, so I recommend seeking a functional medicine practitioner or a more progressive doctor who is cognizant of the latest research in fasting.

But practically speaking, what does intermittent fasting entail?

A lot of people do a lot of different things. Some fast for a full day then eat for a few days, some fast for 18 hours every day and only eat during a small window. There are many methods of intermittent fasting.

What I advocate for is 16 hours without eating once or twice a week. It’s a small enough amount that it shouldn’t cause adverse reactions for the vast majority of people. It’s also relatively easy to do. Here’s what that looks like:

Dinner 6pm
Breakfast 10am

Doesn’t sound that crazy right? Heck, you might already be doing that sometimes. This gives your body a break and helps it regenerate and remove waste from cells!

Pretty cool, huh?

I’m leaving for vacation in a few days and staying healthy is top of mind. My healthy eating lifestyle is super easy to maintain while I’m home because I’ve set up my kitchen to make it a breeze.

Things aren’t always so simple when I leave the confines of my kitchen.

Traveling and trying to eat real food is a struggle. Most restaurants simply serve junk, even if it’s disguised in healthy appearances. Vegetable oils, preservatives, sugar… restaurant meals are full of it. Fast food, rarely an option.

So what’s a paleo momma to do? Here’s my plan and my thinking for this particular trip so you have an idea of how I plan out my travels.

First, I plan out my travel day.

I’m flying from Denver to the Bay Area, and with travel time and car rentals, I’m probably looking at about 7 hours. If I wanted to, I could simply not eat during that time period or have a quick snack… and plan for a healthy meal on arrival. But I love me some food.

So here are some of my options:

The first thing I do is I think about my options at the airport if I were to want to get food there. Denver, unlike most airports, actually has 2 really good real food options (Mod Market and Root Down if you’re wondering). I won’t bother looking into Oakland, because if I’m at my destination that means I have options OUTSIDE the airport which are much more plentiful.

My other option, and the option I’ll most likely take is to pack some food!

I could bring any of the below assorted foods, usually I just take whatever I already have so I don’t need to go to the store and make a big hubbub about the trip.

Snack type items:

• Grassfed sausage, which I would plan to eat cold
• Fruit: Anything not too messy, I usually stay clear of oranges or things that will make my hands sticky
• Veggie sticks or grape tomatoes: I rarely bring this because personally I find it boring, but it’s definitely an option for some.
• Nuts and seeds
• Bars: Lara bars or some relatively clean equivalent
• Dried fruit (high sugar but easy to snack on!)
• Cans of fish: I usually pack a fork or take one from a Fast food restaurant at the airport (something about stealing their utensils to eat my healthy food makes me feel good). Options include: sardines, tuna, oysters, whatever you can find in a can! Don’t eat this on a plane though unless you want to get the stink eye from everyone around you.
• Hard cheese: I don’t eat much dairy at home, but while traveling it opens up a lot more options so I may include some.
• Dark chocolate: No explanation needed.
• Almond butter: Sometimes I’ll buy pouches ready to squeeze on a banana or apple or just eat straight
• Jerky: Grass fed of course!
• Avocado: If not too soft, I may bring one to eat with my fish

Prepared food:

• Hard boiled eggs: Sometimes I boil up a few eggs, keep the shell on and munch on them at the airport. This is also a no plane food – people don’t like the smell of eggs!
• Meat roll up: I may roll some sliced meat over lettuce or shredded carrots
• Paleo treats: I might make some paleo approved banana bread, muffins or something in that category. They are easy to eat and travel with.

Or

I might just bring what I normally eat in a pyrex or perhaps a disposable container I have laying around, depending on the circumstances. I’ll just eat it cold instead of warm, and all is the same as if I were at home! Make a fresh salad, eat some leftovers, whatever floats my boat.

Next up, what am I going to eat when I get there?

Lucky for me, we’re staying just north of Berkeley, CA and getting fresh, real food shouldn’t be too difficult. Hippies love real food, right?

I’ve already staked out a natural health food store that sells organic prepared food. That’s a great option! There are some Whole Foods as well. Awesome.

I’ll typically search online for the city I’m staying in and the words: paleo, organic, farm to table, healthy food, etc. Lucky for me, Berkeley has a full scale paleo restaurant called Mission Heirloom. I’ve heard good things.

Outside of that, my favorite food in the world is Asian food. Generally, the following are relatively clean and filling if you’re ok eating white rice:

• Thai curries
• Vietnamese soups
• Indian curries (though do expect them to use vegetable oil)
• Sushi (avoid artificial crab and most sauces)

I also have a backup of chain restaurants I know sell a few things I’m ok to eat: Chipotle, Panera, Ruby Tuesday (they have a salad buffet), Wahoo Fish Taco (they have a paleo plate), and some american style restaurants have ok meat/veggie plates. I won’t have to extend this option in such a culturally diverse area as the Bay area, but sometimes when I travel that’s not the case.

Any American chains you’ve found healthy meals at?

Next up, hotel living.

If you’re staying somewhere with a fridge and microwave, you can go a long way! I will have access to both.

Some things I may be able to find at a grocery store for snacking at the hotel:

• Ready made hard boiled eggs
• A small bottle of olive oil (to put on something I make at the salad bar instead of their vegetable oil poison they call salad dressing).
• Amy’s Organic Soups. They aren’t perfect, certainly not ideal eating soup from a can, but they are relatively clean and a good snack item to have lying around. Plus, they are cheap.
• Steamables. Sometimes you can find vegetables in a steamable bag you just put in the microwave. You could buy butter to put on it or snatch some salt packets.

Concluding thoughts

Part of why I make such a big deal about staying healthy while traveling is because my diet at home is clean 95+% of the time. I just can’t handle processed food anymore. My body knows best and it says poison! My main goals while traveling are to 1) be gluten free and 2) eat as few processed ingredients as possible.

I don’t want to feel like crap all vacation.

But at the same time… It’s a vacation.

I want to indulge a little.

That’s why I stick to foods that generally don’t make me feel sick but aren’t necessarily perfectly paleo. I love ethnic food and it’s a real treat, so that’s the direction I’ll likely take for many meals. If I find a gluten free bakery, I may splurge.

I also have a toddler to travel with, so it’s a whole new ballgame. I may be ok eating some vietnamese pho, but my 19 month old? It’ll be on the floor in 3 seconds flat.

Wish me luck.

I have a lot of issues with the way the term “science” has been used to push GMO agenda over the last few years.

Skeptical about GMOs? You’re anti-science. You’re now lumped in with climate change deniers. But is that fair?

Hardly so.

“Science” is used to prove GMOs are safe, but it’s the very same “science” showing how little we actually know. I think it should be re-phrased as:

“The science that can be linked, in one way or another, to Monsanto is settled. GMOs are safe.”

Independent research? Not so much.

Science from government and corporate funded studies should not hold more value than independently researched science, in fact, much the opposite. The conflicts of interest in science are immense.

According to a cellular biologist (referenced here), “Funding, much of it from the companies that sell GM seeds, heavily favors researchers who are exploring ways to further the use of genetic modification in agriculture. He says that biologists who point out health or other risks associated with GM crops—who merely report or defend experimental findings that imply there may be risks—find themselves the focus of vicious attacks on their credibility, which leads scientists who see problems with GM foods to keep quiet.”

“Science” is being used as a term to justify the use of GMOs, by belittling people and labeling them anti-science. But to refer to the term science, as if it’s one thing and not something immensely complex, is anti-science in itself. It’s anti-science is say that science is settled. The science is never settled, we should always be pursuing further information and evaluating risks and benefits to everything, always. You can cherry pick science all day long and get whatever result you’d like… painting science with a broad brush as a reason to be for or against something is misleading.

Just because a short term study looking at a specific number of factors doesn’t find anything egregious about GMOs does not mean they are safe. We don’t know their true impact and we probably won’t for a long time. This “it’s safe until proven otherwise” mentality needs to stop. It’s UNSAFE until proven otherwise.

I’m tired of being an experiment.

Research into GMOs is in relative infancy, there are many health risks that we have yet to fully understand, and it’s naive to think otherwise. I prefer to err on the side of caution. For me as a consumer, besides a minor dent in the pocketbook, there are no actual benefits to buying GMO (eating real food makes that dent much smaller, which I’ll discuss later). I confidently believe that feeding the world is simply a myth perpetuated by big agriculture. I’m not the only one who thinks that, here’s a report from the Environmental Working Group on how GMOs don’t feed the world and in fact, helping small farmers is the right approach.

Most of Europe doesn’t want anything to do with GMOs. A lot of times when I look at health decisions I step outside my American box and think about the rest of the world. Most of the world is skeptical, yet in American culture you’re supposed to just accept them because science says so? There’s enough science in Europe to warrant debate, but why not here?

But don’t trust me, let’s look at some science (from Europe, of course).

According to a consensus statement of 300 independent scientists published in the Journal, Environmental Sciences Europe:

“This statement clearly demonstrates that the claimed consensus on GMO safety does not exist outside of the above depicted internal circle of stakeholders. The health, environment, and agriculture authorities of most nations recognize publicly that no blanket statement about the safety of all GMOs is possible and that they must be assessed on a ‘case-by-case’ basis. Moreover, the claim that it does exist – which continues to be pushed in the above listed circles – is misleading and misrepresents or outright ignores the currently available scientific evidence and the broad diversity of scientific opinions among scientists on this issue. The claim further encourages a climate of complacency that could lead to a lack of regulatory and scientific rigour and appropriate caution, potentially endangering the health of humans, animals, and the environment.”

Simply put: THE SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED.

Their conclusion?

• There is no consensus on GM food safety
• There are no epidemiological studies investigating potential effects of GM food consumption on human health
• Claims that scientific and governmental bodies endorse GMO safety are exaggerated or inaccurate
• List of several hundred studies that purportedly show GMOs are safe do not show GM food safety “Examination of the studies listed reveals that many do not provide evidence of GM food safety and, in fact, some provide evidence of a lack of safety.”
• There is no consensus on the environmental risks of GM crops
• International agreements show widespread recognition of risks posed by GM foods and crops

The safety of GMOs is misleading and misrepresented. And I’m not even getting into the fact that glyphosate is used alongside GMOs, which California has recently decided to label as “possibly carcinogenic.” Glyphosate is reason enough to avoid GMOs, but alas, that’s for another day.

So here’s where a real food diet comes in. The debate as to the safety of GMO’s will rarely affect you if you don’t eat processed foods. What foods are most commonly GMO? Corn, soybean, canola, sugar, and cotton.

Yup, we don’t eat those foods. (but we do eat zucchini, yellow squash and papaya, so watch out there and buy organic if you can afford it)

Eat real food, buy organic if you can afford it, and be on your way.