Olwen Anderson's Blog

If you ever wondered whether dropping modern foods from your diet could improve your fitness performance, take a look at this book: "The Paleo Diet For Athletes" (Note: I purchased this book).

The main thrust of the author's argument (one of the authors is a professor in health and exercise science; the other coaches endurance athletes) is that the foods our ancestors ate are the foods our genes are designed to eat; and that relatively modern foods such as sugar, grains, legumes and dairy are foreign to our bodies.

From a scientific nutritional perspective, a lot of their arguments made sense to me.

But I don't want to chase down my next meal…. Reading the book, my imagination wondered how it would have been to catch a large animal in those days, and then butcher and eat every available organ and muscle, including the brain. Yuk! I started to feel grateful for the neatly presented parcels of meat available at the supermarket!

And since I like trying out new information to see what effect it has, I've gradually cut out grains and dairy more and more. Interestingly, I find that the days where I eat no or very little grains, the next morning I wake up with a much clearer head. And my moods are more even too. I feel great, even though I didn't follow the diet precisely (I do eat one serve of grains and one serve of dairy almost every day, and I still eat legumes.)

Fibre intake wasn't a problem, surprisingly. It was actually easy to eat the minimum 25g of fibre from fruits and vegetables without feeling like I was eating like a rabbit. Surprising because high grain intake is often promoted as an ideal way to improve your fibre intake.

There were some theories presented that I wasn't convinced on, particularly the theories about legumes and peanuts: I'm sure I would have enjoyed some fresh peas (legumes) if I'd come across them, and peanuts too if I found them.

There's plenty of scientific references included if you want to venture more into the research and the data. 

So if you'd like to give the paleo (caveman) diet a try, pick up a copy of the book, give the diet a try for a couple of weeks, and then let us know what you think of it by leaving your comments below.