Today marks the start of a one month dietary experiment with the Paleo Diet. In short, you could call this the Stone Age Diet, or Caveman Diet if you will.
It’s allegedly the diet that evolution has designed us to eat, that the evolving human has been eating over the last few million years, but noticable before agriculture was invented in the last few thousand years. So there’s no grains of any kind on the Paleo Diet, which for me isn’t such a big deal, as I’ve mostly cust grains out of my diet already any. The Zone diet has helped with that, but also I don’t eat wheat for personal reasons.
But what is going to be a big deal for me: is no dairy! I routinely have at least a pint of milk a day + cheese and yoghurt. So cutting out the dairy is going to be tough.
This is why this is a month’s experiment. I am totally unconvinced that we shouldn’t eat (or drink) dairy products. Yes it’s cows milk, but it’s also very close to human breast milk, and that as we all know, is very good for us. Yes there’s an argument that today’s mass produced milk is poor quality, but I only buy organic milk, and have whole milk as often as not. (And raw unpasturised milk when I can get it.)
However there is only so much reading you can do on a subject and so much canvasing of other’s opinion, before you have to take the plunge and give it a try. I figure that 4 weeks out of your life is a small amount of time to invest in testing out something new. If you find it’s something that works for you, then you’ve made a wise investment. And if nothing else, it gives you something to talk about!
Personally I suspect that most of the health claims that the Paleo diet makes come from reducing the starchy carbs and processed food associated with a western diet, rather than a lack of dairy. As I eat a pretty clean diet anyway: mostly meat, veg, fruit and nuts (+ dairy atm), I suspect that I won’t see much difference. However I know enough people who eat Paleo Zone to make me think giving it a go is a good idea.
So I’ll report back at the end of September, and we’ll see if I feel better, worse (unlikely) or the same, and of course if my Crossfit workout performance has improved or not.
