I may have mentioned this before but not in great detail.

I’m going to recommend a diet approach.

The Paleo Diet

What’s this? Jamie’s recommending a diet after slagging them off in all of his posts?

I guess to a degree I am.

The paleo diet is more of an approach, it’s not a 21 day quickfix diet. It is something you can stick to for good.

It is based around the diet of our hunter gatherer ancestors, it’s how they would have eaten prior to farming and processed foods. (Don’t worry you don’t have to catch anything).

So that means a high protein and high fat diet with limited amount of dairy and grains.

These are the foods that the human race have been eating the longest and as far as I’m aware it’s only since the influx of processed convenience foods have we had an obesity epidemic.

I’m recommending this diet not only from a weight loss perspective but also from a health perspective. Many of the main diseases these days (cancer, diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol, heart disease) are lifestyle related.

So what can you eat?

Plenty of meat, eggs, fish and vegetables.

Some fruit (1-2 pieces a day if trying to lose weight), nuts and seeds.

Along with fermented foods, butter, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, lard plus herbs and spices.

What can’t you eat?

Grains, dairy, legumes, processed foods (chocolate, biscuits, ice cream, pizza… you know all the tasty stuff!), preservatives and additives and vegetable oils.

I would recommend getting used to eating this way for a few weeks and then if you wanted to you could add a small amount of potatoes, rice, sweet potatoes, yoghurt and hard cheese to your diet. If you aren’t trying to lose weight then you can have more of these anyway. From a weight loss perspective cut them out to begin and then slowly reintroduce them as and when you need.

Example Paleo day:

Breakfast – Almonds and berries with coconut milk

Lunch – Avocado tuna salad. (mash half an avocado with a tin of tuna and eat with spinach leaves and tomatoes)

Dinner – Steak, asparagus, mushrooms, peas and broccoli. (you can add sweet potato mash if you like)

Snacks – Blueberry, spinach and coconut milk smoothie

Apple and spoonful of almond butter

Doesn’t sound too bad or boring right?

You can have omelettes, casseroles, stews, lettuce fajitas (instead of bread) and loads more you just need to use a bit of imagination or type in paleo recipes on the internet.

Maybe one of the biggest changes for some people with this approach is you may have to cook more. The more you plan and prepare your meals the faster you’ll get. Cook extra for meals and freeze/refrigerate the left overs to have again.

Another challenge would be the reduction of carbohydrates especially at the start. It’s so easy to use pasta, rice, bread as the fillers and add food around it. BUT it can be done and you’ll get used to it. Type in cauliflower rice, squash spaghetti and courgette chips recipes into the internet for a few extra ideas.

So if you’re looking to shift a few pounds and improve your health then give this nutritional approach a shot. As you can see it’s nothing complicated and just based around cutting out the crap foods.

Enjoy,

Jamie ‘Caveman’ Stedman

PS For vegetarians obviously you wouldn’t be able to follow this properly. But the message of limiting carbs and dairy and aiming for high protein and high fat would still apply. You would just need to find some high protein foods to eat, there are plenty about.

PPS How much can I eat? Within reason eat as much as you want. Have more if you’re hungry. You’re eating good quality foods so counting calories isn’t as important.