Paleo for Beginners - The Primal Way to Lose Weight and Improve Your Health

By Susan Ellerbeck

The Paleo diet has become a global success. Also known as the Caveman diet, the Primal diet, and the Stone Age diet, the reasons for the Paleo diet's success are obvious: it is the way humans were intended to eat.

Obesity, chronic disease, diabetes, heart disease, celiac disease, and cancer rates are at all time highs, and scientific evidence shows that this is directly related to the Standard American Diet.

We need to rid ourselves of the processed foods that are ruining our health. The Paleo diet is not another fad diet. Instead it focuses on unprocessed nutrient-dense foods that can help you to:

Lose weight
Burn fat
Boost metabolism
Build muscle
Relieve stress
Improve your health

But how does it all work and how do you begin? Paleo for Beginners explains how the Paleo diet works, and how easy it is to adjust your lifestyle and reap all the benefits Paleo has to offer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Ellerbeck
• Release date: Jan 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781497724747

Book preview

Paleo for Beginners

The Primal Way to Lose Weight

and Improve Your Health

Susan Ellerbeck

Copyright © 2013 Susan Ellerbeck. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, in any manner whatsoever without written permission.

Disclaimer

This information is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice and treatment. Readers are strongly advised to consult a qualified medical professional regarding the treatment of medical conditions. The author and publisher shall not be held liable or responsible for any misunderstanding or misuse of the information contained in this guide or for any loss, damage, or injury caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by any information, treatment, action, or application of any food or food source discussed in this guide. This information is general and is offered with no guarantees on the part of the authors or publisher. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Nothing in the guide is to be considered personal, legal, or professional advice. 

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Eat Like a Caveman

Understanding the Paleo Diet

The Reality of Paleo Eating

Chapter Two

The Paleo Diet In-Depth

USDA Guidelines

The Noticeable Differences

Nutrients and the Paleo Lifestyle

A Look at the Essential Differences

Making the Right Food Choices

Use the Information

Chapter Three

Paleo Food 101

The Main Food Groups

Foods You Can Always Eat

The Foods You Cannot Eat

Chapter Four

Planning to Be a Paleo Eater

How to Do It

Meeting Special Demands

Vegans, Vegetarians, Kosher Food, and More...

Meeting Challenges

In Closing...

Chapter Five

Paleo Guidelines Reviewed

Top Recipes

Beef and Cabbage Casserole

Chicken and Vegetable Soup

Grilled Chicken

Nutrient-Dense Smoothie

Paleo Mayo

Potato-Less Salad

Sauerkraut

Super Paleo Salad

Shellfish Dish

Tuna Salad

Chapter One

A lot of people are advocating for the Paleo Diet as a way to lose weight and build muscle, but this leaves many confused.

What is it?

How does it work?

The answers to those questions are actually quite interesting...

Eat Like a Caveman

The Paleolithic period on Earth ran for around 2.5 million years, and it only came to an end around ten thousand years ago; when humans began to organize themselves into larger communities and practice such things as agriculture and the raising of domestic livestock.

This is an important point because it is the main reason that so many advocate for the use of the Paleo Diet. What does that mean? Essentially, many medical and health experts indicate that the use of the Paleo eating plan is much more in sync with the human body than the modern diet. This is because the human genome has not had enough time to adjust to radical dietary changes in only ten thousand years.

What they mean is this:

The broadest definition of the human genome is the complete genetic material of the organism. In other words, our entire genetic code has not yet had enough time to adapt to the major dietary changes that occurred at the end of the Paleolithic era.

For more than two million years, humans evolved and were eating foods that they hunted, gathered, and foraged during the different seasons of the year. The evolution of the human body was designed around that pattern, and those specific foods. The way we used foods, the manner in which our bodies responded to them, and even the natural compounds inside of the body were all directly related to the foods we ate over that 2.5 million year span.

Then, almost instantly, the discovery of grains and agriculture created an entirely new way of eating.