Can the Paleo Diet Plan Shed Excess Body Weight That Easily?
Instead of waffling on about how the Paleo diet has helped me lose weight and achieve new levels of fitness I think it would be more useful to provide you with some scientific facts on this issue.
Professor Gary Frost, who is the Chair in Nutrition and Dietetics at the Imperial College in London (UK) and some of his colleagues performed a study to see what foods our Paleolithic (cavemen) ancestors ate and how they addressed their nutritional requirements and energy needs.
To determine this they decided to examine three baboons, whose eating habits were very similar to those of our Paleolithic ancestors as well as three humans.
The Paleo diet was the most search diet last year and its success is testament to its huge celebrity following which includes celebs such as Matthew McConaughey, Megan Fox, Tim McGraw, Jessica Biel, Kellan Lutz and supermodel Adriana Lima.
They extracted fecal samples which were swimming with gut microbes that help digest & break down foods in the gut from all of the subjects above – the 3 humans and the 3 grass grazing baboons.
To the samples above they added digested solutions of a grass-based diet and a high-carb one to each respectively to observe how the gut bacteria responded to the different food solutions – in other words to see whether your gut handles Paleo type foods any differently to foods high in carbohydrates.
Surprisingly they found that the grass based solution did not stimulate the appetite suppressing hormones, but that the high-carb solution created higher levels of these type of hormones.
According to Prof Frost, he says that the result of this study is not surprising as eating grass does not provide much in the way of nutrition or energy which is why grass grazing animals are seen to be eating continually in order to get enough protein in to their systems.
It therefore follows that our Paleolithic ancestors would have had to graze continually throughout the day if grass was their only source of food in order to survive.
For Effective Weight Loss Should We Ditch the Paleo Diet?
No, as these are test tube results and do not reflect the “modern” Paleo diet which seemingly does a really good job of keeping our appetites in check.
This doesn’t mean that eating insoluble fibers such as those found in grass, leafy vegetables, vegetables and fruits are no good, because they are, but it is just that they don’t send the satiety signal to your brain in the same way that soluble fiber does.
This means that eating insoluble fiber leaves you feeling unsatisfied and hungry whereas eating foods with soluble fibers are metabolized by the body in such a way as to produce compounds that set off those signals to the brain to tell the body that it has had enough which gives the the feeling that you are full and do not need to eat any more.
What Fiber Should You Eat To Lose Weight?
The bottom line is that all fiber, soluble & insoluble, is good for you however, if it is weight loss that you are trying to achieve you need a diet that suppresses your appetite and controls your cravings.
To achieve this you need to make sure your diet is rich in the healthy soluble type of fiber which can be found in a healthy Paleo diet which includes grass-fed meat, free range chicken, fruit, nuts, flax seed, cucumbers, celery and leafy vegetables.
Therefore, for a healthy way to lose weight naturally you should follow a Paleo styled diet that eliminates processed foods & simple carbs and allows you to eat the way mother nature intended.
How Fiber In the Paleo Diet Is Effective For Weight Loss
The Paleo diet plan is high in protein and fiber which anyone knows are the key components to losing weight and getting slim.
The high-fiber part of the Paleo diet is an important component to weight loss as it is bulkier, takes longer to digest & helps suppress your appetite thereby leaving you full & satisfied – no hunger cravings.
This guide to Paleo eating will help you avoid the usual pitfalls when it comes to dieting and ensure that you won’t regain the weight once you’ve achieved that slim & sexy body
This is due to the fact that fiber takes longer to digest, and therefore gets processed efficiently, as opposed to sugars, simple carbs & processed foods which race through our systems without getting processed properly and end up getting dumped into our fat cells where they remain.
The result is that a poor diet and eating too many sugary foods & simple carbs leaves you feeling hungry with the added “bonus” of getting fatter.