Chapter 10
The Paleo Answer 7-Day Diet Plan
I strictly followed your diet, and in the first two weeks, I lost 10 pounds! I did not exercise during this time, and I felt rather light-headed at times, but I was never hungry. I imagine that it was quite a shock for my body to stop living on sugar. I started to feel energized as my body began to learn to live on protein without sugar, and during the course of the next three months, I lost another 15 pounds. I’m now down to a normal weight of 125 pounds (I’m 5′6″). Not only am I happy with how I look, I’m ecstatic about how I feel. I’m no longer tired in the afternoons, I have a new energy, and I don’t catch every head cold that goes around.
I have relaxed in my eating habits a bit in the last few months, and I watch the scale carefully, so that if I start to gain weight, I can tighten the reins on my eating habits.
What you have given me and countless others is not a diet but new knowledge of how our bodies function and what we can do to lay down habits that are essential for good health for the rest of our lives.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
—Jennifer
In The Paleo Diet Cookbook, Lorrie, Nell, and I outlined virtually all of the practical aspects of Paleo dieting, including recipes, food choices, meal preparation, necessary kitchen utensils, and a two-week meal plan. In this chapter, for both newbies to the Paleo Diet and veterans, I want to summarize some of the practical dietary advice from the previous chapters by giving you a one-week prescriptive plan. Furthermore, I’ll add a few tidbits of wisdom involving health and lifestyle issues.
Meal plans: In general, three daily meals plus snacks are included in this prescriptive plan. As I mentioned earlier, though, hunter-gatherers typically did not eat three meals per day. After nearly twenty years of personal experience with contemporary Stone Age diets, I find that lunch is unnecessary for me, and I rarely eat it. On the other hand, Lorrie seldom misses it. Some Paleo Dieters fast for a few days each month—others don’t. As always, the bottom line is to listen to your body when it comes to the number of daily meals and snacks you require and their timing.
Supplements: Supplements other than vitamin D3 and fish oils are unnecessary because meats, fish, fruits, and veggies are such nutrient-dense foods. On days that you don’t eat fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring, and so on), I recommend that you take fish oil capsules or bottled fish oil. Try to consume at least 500 to 1,800 milligrams of EPA + DHA per day. If you have cardiovascular disease, you should include at least 1 gram (1,000 milligrams) of DHA + EPA in your supplement.
I personally prefer bottled fish oil because it goes down easier and you can smell whether it has become spoiled. Except for an increased susceptibility to nose bleeds, no adverse health effects have ever been identified with fish oil supplementation—even at extremely high doses. If you are currently not eating fatty fish on a regular basis or are not supplementing your diet with fish oil capsules, perhaps the best overall health strategy you can take is to do so.
Most of us have indoor jobs and don’t get regular daily sun exposure. If this is your situation, I recommend that you supplement your diet with at least 2,000 I.U. of vitamin D3 per day. In the summertime, fifteen to twenty minutes of sunshine exposure during midday on your face and arms will give most of you sufficient and healthful vitamin D levels in your bloodstream. If you live above 40 degrees north latitude (e.g., in cities such as Boston, New York, and elsewhere), fifteen to twenty minutes of sunlight on your face and arms during the winter months will have little or no positive effects on your blood concentrations of vitamin D. Consequently, daily supplementation with at least 2,000 I.U. of vitamin D3 becomes a necessity for most of us, except for during the summer months.
I am a university professor, and my wife, Lorrie, is an elementary school teacher, so we both are pretty much locked into indoor jobs from September until June. Accordingly, our sunlight exposure is minimal for nine months, making vitamin D3 supplementation essential for us throughout most of the year. During our summer beach vacations at Tahoe, we completely forget about vitamin D3 capsules. It is ironic that in our modern world, these three simple environmental elements—the outdoors, sunshine, and fresh air—which were originally the birthright of all human beings, have increasingly become either a luxury of the privileged or, alternatively, an obligation of the disadvantaged.
Exercise: As with sunlight and fresh air, exercise is also a luxury in our modern world. Most of us have occupations in which little strenuous physical activity is required to get through the day. Consequently, as a modern-day Paleo Dieter, try to take every opportunity to get into the open air to partake in physical activity outdoors. It may only be walking or gardening a few times a week—even eating lunch or walking outdoors at noon will help.
Any exercise is better than no exercise. Standing is better than sitting. Walking is better than standing. Uphill walking is better than horizontal walking. You get the picture—whenever you have the opportunity to use your muscles or move—do it. Take the stairs—always! Park your car a half mile from the office, and walk the rest of the way in to your office. View physical work not as labor, but rather as an escape from your sedentary prison in front of the computer or your stationary workplace. Any time and every time you can stretch your legs, walk, climb stairs, or go outside—do it!
Unfortunately, as good as these job-related efforts are to help you become more active, you will still have to do much more to catch up with the activity patterns of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Our scientific analysis of forager-movement behavior shows that a hunter-gatherer mom normally hiked four miles with a child on her hip or shoulder. Double this distance, and we get into the activity levels of hunter-gatherer men when they left camp for a hunt and returned. Few of us have two to six hours per day to hike for four to ten miles with a load on our backs. Nevertheless, these kinds of activity patterns and energy outputs are typical for our species and tend to improve almost all health parameters, particularly if we observe a Paleo Diet.
Exercise alone is a powerful panacea to restore health. A few years back, one of my departmental coworkers applied for a sabbatical leave to hike the Appalachian Trail for the fall semester. Forty-nine-year-old Dale started out weighing a flabby 188 pounds, but after 118 days of trekking from dawn until dusk—typically, ten-hour days—with a 40-pound pack, he ended up at a lean and fit 163 pounds. More important, his total blood cholesterol fell from 276 to 196 and his triglycerides dropped from 319 to an amazing 79 (a 75 percent reduction). I barely recognized Dale when this former fat man walked into the office as a slim, fit man restored to his high school weight.
During Dale’s 118-day hike, he didn’t eat Paleo but rather consumed hikers’ dried and concentrated trail foods (gorp, refined sugars, dried fruit, nuts, and processed dehydrated foods). His notable changes in body weight (a 25-pound loss) and health occurred despite his eating a diet consisting mainly of processed trail foods. Had he the chance to eat real foods (fresh meats, fish, and fresh fruits and veggies) during his 118-day journey, I suspect that his weight loss and health gains would have improved even more.
You don’t have to walk ten hours a day for 118 days with a 40-pound pack, as Dale did, to lose weight or experience dramatic improvements in your health. Rather, the Paleo Diet allows you to produce these therapeutic body and blood chemistry changes almost entirely through diet alone. Clearly, any regular exercise program on top of a modern-day Paleo Diet will accelerate your fitness and health gains.
As I outlined in The Paleo Diet and in The Paleo Diet for Athletes, your conditioning program should include all types of exercise. Try to regularly mix aerobic and strength-training activities, along with stretching. If we heed the example of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, hard workouts should be followed by easy or rest days. I also support the nationwide CrossFit movement and know that it dovetails nicely with the Paleo Diet. You may want to visit the owners of your local CrossFit Gym and see the type of fitness program they have to offer.
The starred items (*) are recipes in The Paleo Diet Cookbook.
| Sunday | |
| Breakfast | Omega 3 eggs scrambled in olive oil with chopped parsley Grapefruit Herbal tea |
| Snack | Sliced lean beef Fresh apricots or seasonal fruit |
| Lunch | Caesar Salad with chicken (olive oil and lemon dressing) Herbal tea |
| Snack | Apple slices Raw walnuts |
| Dinner | Tomato and avocado slices Grilled skinless turkey breast Steamed broccoli, carrots, and artichoke Bowl of fresh blueberries, raisins, and almonds 1 glass white wine or mineral water (Clearly, wine would never have been available to our ancestors, but don’t forget the 85/15 rule, which allows you to consume three non-Paleo meals per week.) |
Supplements: Fish oil and vitamin D3 (if you don’t get sufficient sun exposure).
Exercise and Relaxation: If you have a sandy beach nearby, try walking or running barefoot at an intensity and duration that are appropriate for your fitness level. Get your feet wet, and let the sand naturally massage your soles.
Health tip: Peaceful sleep is absolutely essential to our health and well-being. Two dietary elements that can impair restful sleep are alcohol and salt. Try eliminating both of these substances for a few days and see how you do.
| Monday | |
| Breakfast | Banana Blast Smoothie* Hard-boiled omega 3–enriched eggs |
| Snack | Apple with ¼ cup raw walnuts |
| Lunch | Grilled halibut steak on a bed of spinach with mandarin orange slices and slivered almonds Herbal tea |
| Snack | Sliced lean flank steak Melon balls |
| Dinner | Cucumber with avocado dip Cold peel-and-eat shrimp Steamed carrot and celery slices with parsley Bowl of fresh boysenberries, raisins, and hazelnuts Mineral water |
Supplements: Fish oil and vitamin D3 (if you don’t get sufficient sun exposure). Try to eat your lunch outside if the weather permits.
Exercise and Relaxation: Try to give yourself a least an hour a day alone for relaxation (meditation, quiet reading, listening to music, walking the dog, sewing, wood working, or fishing).
Health Tip: Following a hot shower, turn the water to cold and stand under the spray for about a minute. The invigorating cold water will improve your circulation and increase substances called heat shock proteins, which improve long-term health and resistance to chronic disease.
| Tuesday | |
| Breakfast | So Cal Omelet* Kiwi fruit Herbal tea |
| Snack | Steamed broccoli, drizzled with olive oil, topped with shredded chicken (use last night’s leftovers) |
| Lunch | Lean turkey breast on mache lettuce, drizzled with flaxseed oil and lemon Fresh pear slices Spa Water* |
| Snack | Mixed fresh berries Lean beef jerky Celery sticks |
| Dinner | Paleo Tuna Niçoise Salad* Steamed cauliflower 1 cup red or green grapes Baked Apples* Herbal tea |
Supplements: Fish oil and vitamin D3 (if you don’t get sufficient sun exposure).
Exercise and Relaxation: Improvements in long-term physical fitness occur due to three variables: exercise intensity, frequency, and duration. Of these three, the intensity of the exercise bout is most important to fitness improvement. Whether you are a novice or a seasoned athlete, try to step up the intensity of your workout as you become more fit. You will find that brief, intense bouts of exercise will ultimately make you stronger and fitter more rapidly than will lower-intensity exercise of a longer duration.
Health Tip: If you have recently adopted the Paleo Diet, you may want to take two tablespoons of psyllium (such as Metamucil) once or twice a week to help normalize bowel function and reduce intestinal permeability as you transition from a typical low-fiber Western diet to a high-fiber Paleo Diet. After a few months on the Paleo Diet, this recommendation will no longer be needed, as you gradually change your intestinal flora to a healthier, less inflammatory pattern.
| Wednesday | |
| Breakfast | Bowl of diced apples, shredded carrots, and raisins Poached omega 3 eggs Cup of decaffeinated coffee |
| Snack | Cucumber, carrot, and apple, chopped and tossed in olive oil, lemon juice, and mint leaves |
| Dinner | Caramelized Broccoli with Orange Zest* Bison-Stuffed Bell Peppers* Sliced tomatoes and cucumbers with olive oil and freshly ground pepper Half a cantaloupe stuffed with sliced strawberries and mint 1 glass red wine or mineral water |
Supplements: Both omega 3 enriched eggs and grass-fed bison are moderate sources of the healthy omega 3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA). To obtain sufficient amounts of these healthy nutrients, you need to either eat fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring, and so on) or supplement with fish oil. If you didn’t get into the sun today, you will also need to take vitamin D3 capsules. Your body stores the vitamin D it makes from sunlight, so if you were able to sunbathe for a while on the weekend, then you wouldn’t require supplements during the week.
Exercise and Relaxation: I favor exercise in which we minimize machines and maximize our bodies’ natural movements. Lifting free weights appears to have certain advantages over machine-generated workloads, because it stresses muscles more naturally throughout their entire range of motion and prevents overuse injuries. Lifting free weights, climbing rope, doing pull-ups and pushups, and tossing medicine balls around sounds archaic in this day and age of computerized ergometers and stair-step and lifting machines, but it is precisely these tried-and-true exercises that are being successfully used in CrossFit Gyms throughout the country.
Health Tip: In dry climates, some otherwise very healthy people experience recurrent nose bleeds that are difficult to stop—even following cauterization by their physicians. A surefire cure, known to few health professionals, is to coat the inside of the nostrils with zinc oxide ointment (I recommend Desitin) for a few days. The healing power of this ointment stems from zinc that potently stimulates the growth of new tissues.
| Thursday | |
| Breakfast | Salmon, green onion, and mushroom omelet Tangerine segments Herbal tea |
| Snack | Apple mixed with raw almonds |
| Lunch | Mixed green salad with Salad Dressing Starter* Sliced lean beef, topped with blueberries Steamed artichoke Herbal tea |
| Snack | Paleo Warrior’s Jerky* (homemade beef jerky) Sliced avocado, drizzled with lime juice and cilantro |
| Dinner | Greek Salata à la Paleo* Baked haddock Steamed asparagus Almonds, raisins, and peaches 1 glass white wine or mineral water |
Supplements: Because salmon was on the menu today, no fish oil supplementation is necessary. If you were unable to get a minimum of 15 to 20 minutes of sunlight exposure during the day or an extended bout of sunbathing earlier in the week, supplement with 2,000 IU of vitamin D3.
Exercise and Relaxation: One of the most recent developments in footwear is more natural shoes that mimic bare feet and let our feet do the walking without fancy “scientific” insoles, stiff uppers, computer-designed heel cups, and other fallible human-designed tweaks. Our feet are incredible engineering feats designed by the wisdom of evolution through natural selection over millions of years. We are perfectly suited to walk and run barefoot across all terrains that our ancestors crossed without protective foot gear. No human beings wore shoes until perhaps fifty thousand years ago, and those primitive soft leather pieces, similar to modern shoes that were designed to simulate being barefoot, provided only warmth and slight protection from mechanical footstep injury.
Our modern, style-conscious shoes force our toes, ankles, and legs into unnatural positions and don’t allow our feet to have natural contact with the earth. Because of these features, our feet are forced to become narrower and weaker; our toes grow shorter, and we lack the foot sensitivity our hunter-gatherer ancestors had throughout their lives. When we come home from a long day at work, our first response it to kick off our shoes and relax. If we take just a little bit of time to examine our suffering shod feet, they are hot, red, and swollen, and they smell bad.
The elixir for our feet, as is that of our bodies with diet, is to be restored to the environment for which they were designed. We need to walk barefoot whenever possible. I am on board with modern shoe designs that allow our feet the freedom to support our bodies with their ligaments, tendons, bones, and muscles as they were naturally designed to do.
Health Tip: As you adopt a milk-, grain-, potato-, and legume-free diet most of you will notice that your sinuses become remarkably clear. You will wake up in the morning clear-headed, with little phlegm or nasal stuffiness, and your joints will be loose, pain free, and ready for the day.
As with my recommendation for psyllium and gastrointestinal tract health, you can accelerate nasal clearances by sniffing salt water. Put a tablespoon or less of salt into a cup or neti pot of tap water, stir well, pinch off a nostril, and sniff the solution into your nose. Hold it and then release. Repeat a few times, and you have effectively cleansed your nostrils because of the hypertonic effect of salt water. This measure will clear your nostrils of all obstructions that may impair your breathing. After a few weeks on the Paleo Diet, this practice will become unnecessary.
| Friday | |
| Breakfast | Roast turkey breast, drizzled with olive oil and basil Sliced apples Water with freshly squeezed lemon juice |
| Snack | Cold peel-and-eat shrimp Fresh orange |
| Lunch | Spinach salad with tomatoes, walnuts, olive oil, and lemon juice Carne Asada* Raspberries Spa Water* |
| Snack | Pear slices Raw pecans |
| Dinner | Steamed crab legs Sandy Point Spinach Sauté* Tossed green salad with purple onions, tomatoes, parsley, and dressed with olive oil and lemon juice Iced herbal tea |
Supplements: Note that this menu is rich in shrimp, crab, and spinach (which contain moderate to high concentrations of omega 3 fatty acids), but it still does not contain sufficient long chain (> 20 carbon) omega 3 fatty acids to completely protect you from cancer or cardiovascular or autoimmune disease. I recommend that you supplement with either fish oil capsules or liquid fish oil.
Supplement with 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 (if you don’t get sufficient sunlight exposure).
Exercise and Relaxation: Although clearly not an option available to our ancestors, modern technology has given our bodies an incredible relaxation tool. It’s called a sauna, and alternated with a cooling bath or shower, you can almost guarantee yourself a long and restful night’s sleep.
Health Tip: One of the most therapeutic nonpharmacological remedies you can treat yourself to is a full body massage lasting for thirty to sixty minutes. Do this weekly, and you will feel like a million dollars.
| Saturday | |
| Breakfast | Melon Mania Smoothie* Cold broiled halibut |
| Snack | Shredded kale, tossed with lime juice, olive oil, and minced red onion, topped with chopped turkey breast |
| Lunch | Salmon Caesar Salad* (use leftover salmon from an earlier meal) Sliced tomatoes Fresh pineapple Water with freshly squeezed lemon juice |
| Snack | Grapes Cold steamed oysters |
| Dinner | Spaghetti Squash Italiano* Grilled lamb chops Sliced peaches covered with chopped walnuts and liqueur (optional) French Country Salad* 1 glass red wine or mineral water |
Supplements: If you eat Paleo (fresh fruits, veggies, meats, seafood, nuts, and healthful oils), the only supplements you will need are fish oil and/or vitamin D3. If you eat fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines, or herring) a few times a week and get out into the summer sun, fish oil and vitamin D3 supplementation are unnecessary.
Exercise and Relaxation: I have one recommendation—whenever and wherever you can use your body instead of machines to get the job done, do it! Preferably, exercise outdoors and in the sunshine—this is our species’ genetic heritage and represents the conditions under which our health flourishes.