PALEO FOR ATHLETES OF ALL ABILITIES

Because the Paleo diet is a lifestyle, you don’t have to be an extreme athlete to benefit from it. As a matter of fact, it’s important to keep in mind that the diet was created by a gastroenterologist in order to help restore his patients’ health. The Paleo diet is beneficial to athletes of all levels primarily because it promotes general health, which in turn helps your body perform at optimum capacity.

You Don’t Need to Be an Olympian to Benefit from These Plans

The beautiful thing about modifying a healthful diet to complement your physical fitness plan is that you’re just increasing and manipulating the amount of nutrients you consume. This means you’re not filling your body up with chemicals or performance-enhancing drugs that damage your organs and detract from your overall health.

What may seem incredibly intense to you may actually be effortless to someone else, but that doesn’t make it any less taxing to your body. If you’re sweating and experiencing muscle burn from trotting around the block, your body is experiencing as much trauma as a person who has to run full speed uphill to break a sweat. You need to fuel your body to replace the lost minerals and fluids, as well as provide the BCAAs and other nutrients required to repair and rebuild.

For these reasons, the plans you’ll find here weren’t written exclusively for Olympians and super-athletes. If you’re working hard simply to get fit and improve your health, you’re still putting your body under stress, and you need to nourish it appropriately. The following recipes and plans are therefore just as applicable to you as they are to extreme athletes.

Eating Paleo Style to Reach a Healthful Weight

If you’ve ever fought the weight-loss battle, you’ve no doubt been told that you need to eat a low-fat, low-calorie diet in order to shed the pounds. Well, guess what! That’s not the best way to go about it, especially if you want to keep the weight off permanently. Traditional weight-loss plans are bad for a couple of reasons:

• You may lose the weight, but you’re not going to live the rest of your life depriving yourself of food simply to maintain your new weight. This is one of the main reasons that people yo-yo.

• Your body needs good fats in order to stay healthy. Categorically eliminating them deprives your body of essential vitamins and nutrients, including brain-healthful omega-3s.

• You’re still permitted to eat processed, refined foods generally considered healthful as long as you don’t consume more than your allotted calories for the day. You’re not learning to eat properly for good health and long-term weight loss; you’re just learning how to lose weight short-term.

By switching to the Paleo lifestyle, you’re not going to feel deprived. Because vegetables and lean meats are naturally low in calories, yet high in fiber and nutrients, you can eat them until you’re full anytime you feel hungry and still lose weight. Fruits and nuts are higher in calories and need to be eaten in moderation, but there’s nothing better for a sweet tooth than a handful of strawberries or some cantaloupe.

Since you’re eating healthful foods and avoiding processed foods and toxic chemicals, your body will naturally cleanse itself so that it can function optimally, which will also help you meet your weight-loss goals. Then, once you reach your goal weight, maintaining that weight will be a piece of, er…watermelon, because you’ll already know how to eat well.

Maintaining a Healthful Weight with the Paleo Diet

Chances are good that once you start following the Paleo diet, you’re going to lose weight if you’re carrying around a few extra pounds, even if you’re not trying, and maintaining a healthful weight won’t be such a struggle either. Tweaking your weight is actually fairly simple, because you’re eating natural foods and skipping the high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods that are a traditional part of a Western diet.

The fiber and nutrient content of the foods you’ll be eating will keep you feeling fuller longer, and once you get past your sugar addiction, you won’t crave food just for the sake of eating. You’ll reach a point where you’ll feel hungry when it’s actually time to eat instead of simply having the munchies, caused by a sugar addiction. That makes it easier to maintain a healthful weight as well.

Finally, if you find your weight creeping up, simply cut back a bit on the higher-calorie fruits, nuts, and red meats, and increase your vegetable, leaner meat, and low-glycemic fruit intake. Once your life isn’t centered on eating, your weight will no longer be such a struggle, and you’ll find it’s pretty simple to maintain a healthful weight.

Now that you know the basics of the Paleo diet, let’s move forward and discuss some meal plans that will help get you through each phase of your training.