Lots of people have been talking about the Paleo diet, also sometimes referred to as the caveman diet.
What is it?
To put it simply a Paleo diet involves eating:
Fruit
vegetables
Meat
Fish
Nuts and seeds
Eggs
And avoiding the following:
Grains
Dairy products
Beans/legumes
Starchy carbs (potatoes are a big no no)
Trans fats
Alcohol
I think the allure of this diet for most people is that it combines scientific evidence with a thought provoking amount of detail about the evolution of the human species. But all that aside are they really telling you anything you don't know in terms of nutrition?
Most of us know that eating unprocessed foods and cutting down on sugars and unhealthy fats will benefit our health and that high glycemic index carbohydrates are thought to be responsible for weight gain and low energy levels. Does avoiding the foods on the second list provide any benefits outside the ones typically known and understood by us?
Research
Loren Cordain, PhD and Joe Friel, MS state in this article “A QUICK GUIDE TO THE PALEO DIET FOR ATHLETES” the main benefits of eating a paleo diet are as follows
1) Increases intake of branched chain amino acids (BCAA). Benefits muscle
development and anabolic function. Also counteracts immuno-suppression common
in endurance athletes following extensive exercise.
2)Decreases omega-6: omega-3 ratio. Reduces tissue inflammations common to
athletes while promoting healing. This may include asthmatic conditions common in
athletes. ( This was a big problem for me when I was training 10+ hours a week my joints in my hands always ached and I never completly felt recovered now I'm back in the cold my asthma has been bad)
3)Lowers body acidity. Reduces the catabolic effect of acidosis on bone and muscle
while stimulating muscle protein synthesis. This is increasingly important with
ageing.
4)Is high in trace nutrients. Vitamins and minerals are necessary for optimal health
and long term recovery from exercise. The most nutrient dense foods are
vegetables and seafood. On average, vegetables have nearly twice the nutrient
density of grains.
At first glance it would appear to be a low carbohydrate diet but the reason behind avoiding all these foods is the concept that our body’s have not had enough time to adapt to digesting them as well as the foods on the first list.
You can read more about this theory else where I wont go into too much detail but some of these foods (particularly grains) are thought to contain anti nutrients that are detrimental to our health and this is why such foods are avoided when ever possible.
www.thepaleodiet.com
www.trainingbible.com
Implications for grapplers
After a large amount of reading I have come to the conclusion that a strict Paleo diet is not something that would be recommended to athletes by many sports nutritionists as the traditional approach to diet for athletes relies heavily on a higher than average calorie intake particularly from carbohydrates and protein relative to an athletes body weight.
This provides enough energy for hard training sessions and helps to speed up recovery after and between sessions. The whole idea of behind eating Paleo is to attempt to reduce the occurrence of 21st century diseases like diabetes and heart disease not to deliver the optimum nutritional requirements for athletes, who it can be said may be fit but not necessarily at optimal health and often suffer from symptoms of over-training and related injuries.
Our ancestors would probably have avoided activities that depleted stores of muscle glycogen as this would be hard to recover without the readily available sources of carbohydrate we have today.
In terms of exercise it is thought that short interval bursts of activity and weights are recommended to provide the best health benefits and encourage the body to use fats as a ready source of energy as opposed to carbohydrates.
Clearly the Paleo diet has to be adapted for grapplers as it is acknowledged that most modern day training occurs at a higher intensity, frequency and volume than our bodies are evolutionary adapted for and a strict paleo diet would not give the body what it needs to recover quickly between training sessions.
I talked about the energy requirements of training bjj and other grappling sports before. It is a physically demanding sport and long training sessions can seriously deplete muscle glycogen stores. The body needs carbohydrates before and after for optimal performance this fact is acknowledged by Cordain and Friel who recommend sticking to typical sports nutrition principles to aid performance and recovery in very physically demanding sports and returning to Paleo eating the rest of the time.
This sounds Like a good deal to me. My main concern was that this diet is easy to get wrong especially for athletes who have very different nutrient requirements that the general population.
The main points
Avoid overly processed foods, where ever possible eat foods in their most natural state
Reduce intake of grains, beans and legumes when ever possible.
Ensure you follow principles of sports nutrition when training for long durations or at high intensities
Eat plenty of omega 3 and avoid trans fats
I don't think it is a lifestyle change I could make forever and I would need to see much more long term research carried out on the effects of this diet on athletic performance and physiological outcomes, but it may be well suited as a way of cutting weight and cleaning up poor dietary habits and giving the body a detox from all the modern day additives and nasties by getting back to a simpler way of eating.
A couple of less scientific but still interesting takes on this type of diet
Caveman diet
A fighters Diet
Cavewoman runner
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