Cave Man

[jlamp08]

In plain language, base your diet on garden vegetables, especially greens, lean meats, nuts and seeds, little starch, and no sugar. That's about as simple as we can get. Many have observed that keeping your grocery cart to the perimeter of the grocery store while avoiding the aisles is a great way to protect your health. Food is perishable. The stuff with long shelf life is all circumspect. If you follow these simple guidelines you will benefit from nearly all that can be achieved through nutrition.


The Caveman or Paleolithic Model for Nutrition
Modern diets are ill suited for our genetic composition. Evolution has not kept pace with advances in agriculture and food processing resulting in a plague of health problems for modern man. Coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, obesity and psychological dysfunction have all been scientifically linked to a diet too high in refined or processed carbohydrate. Search "Google" for Paleolithic nutrition, or diet. The return is extensive, compelling, and fascinating.

The Caveman model is perfectly consistent with the CrossFit prescription.

What Foods Should I Avoid?
Excessive consumption of high-glycemic carbohydrates is the primary culprit in nutritionally caused health problems. High glycemic carbohydrates are those that raise blood sugar too rapidly. They include rice, bread, candy, potato, sweets, sodas, and most processed carbohydrates. Processing can include bleaching, baking, grinding, and refining. Processing of carbohydrates greatly increases their glycemic index, a measure of their propensity to elevate blood sugar.

[bigv123]

Good post. I wanted to add a little bit of detail so we don't get any mis-information out there. High-glycemic carbs have their place. If, for some reason, you need to spike insulin levels, eating or drinking a bunch of high-glycemic carbs is the way to go. For most normal people this is just about never the case. However, body builders who are in the middle of a muscle building cycle and hard gainers who are very, very thin and trying to add muscle, this becomes their bread-and-butter. Manipulation of the insulin release in response to high-glycemic carbs becomes their best friend. However, like I said, this isn't the norm....by far.

Second, you need to be very careful when rattling off a list of "high" glycemic carbs. Your list is VERY misleading. For example, all rice is most certainly NOT high-glycemic. White rice, yes mostly. But, whole brown rice is an EXCELLENT, low-glycemic carb. I eat it almost every day. Also, potatoes. Yes, most potatoes are in the danger area (the 'yellow' zone i like to call it) but many are not. New potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams are all excellent and all low-glycemic. Bread too are very hit or miss. Yes, most are crappy. But, a little work and searching will reveal a wealth of healthy, whole-grain, low-glycemic index breads that you can use. I have 3 that I rotate through my diet...the change helps keep me interested :)

This wasn't to "slam" you or in any way say that your post was incorrect. To the contrary, most of the information you gave was spot on. It's just that a little more detail was needed in a couple areas so that possible mis-information could be avoided imho.

V

[MeatHead08]

BigV is once again right on. High GI carbs arent used only by BB'ers though. Runners and other athletes can use them to replenish glycogen stores and carb load before and after exercise. But like said before, they should be avoided at other times throughout the day to keep blood sugar levels constant.

[bigv123]

Very true Meat. Carb loading can be beneficial to many different kinds of athletes.

V

[thrillseeka]

So easy a cave man can do it.

[YoungerPope]

Great posts, guys.

BigV - I'm pretty sure what jlamp posted was straight off of Crossfit.com, and only gives their broadest dietary guidelines. I'm pretty sure that Dr. Sears (and by extension, Crossfit) actually does include the types of potatoes you mentioned in his list of low-GI carbs. I think he just uses the broad term "potatoes" because most people associate that word with typical brow-skinned, white on the inside potatoes (don't know what they're called).

Just hoping to clear some things up.

[wnbfpro24]

It should also be noted that even though a particular food may yield high on the glycemic index, if it were to be coupled with any sort of combination involving protein/fats, that this would in fact lower the index of that individual food thus causing a lowered spike in insulin.

[emhoffman]

Good post. I wanted to add a little bit of detail so we don't get any mis-information out there. High-glycemic carbs have their place. If, for some reason, you need to spike insulin levels, eating or drinking a bunch of high-glycemic carbs is the way to go. For most normal people this is just about never the case. However, body builders who are in the middle of a muscle building cycle and hard gainers who are very, very thin and trying to add muscle, this becomes their bread-and-butter. Manipulation of the insulin release in response to high-glycemic carbs becomes their best friend. However, like I said, this isn't the norm....by far.

Second, you need to be very careful when rattling off a list of "high" glycemic carbs. Your list is VERY misleading. For example, all rice is most certainly NOT high-glycemic. White rice, yes mostly. But, whole brown rice is an EXCELLENT, low-glycemic carb. I eat it almost every day. Also, potatoes. Yes, most potatoes are in the danger area (the 'yellow' zone i like to call it) but many are not. New potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams are all excellent and all low-glycemic. Bread too are very hit or miss. Yes, most are crappy. But, a little work and searching will reveal a wealth of healthy, whole-grain, low-glycemic index breads that you can use. I have 3 that I rotate through my diet...the change helps keep me interested :)

This wasn't to "slam" you or in any way say that your post was incorrect. To the contrary, most of the information you gave was spot on. It's just that a little more detail was needed in a couple areas so that possible mis-information could be avoided imho.

V

Bigv, thanks for the post. I had read about the diet and it scared me away when I read it wasn't adviced to eat rice, bread and potatoes. They are like meal "foundations" for me and I found it hard to replace them.
It's good to hear about the GOOD variants of these foods. So what breads do you eat? Everytime I do by bread, it is always like a 15 minute investigation for me to find the one I think is most healthy. I avoid the honey-breads like the plague.
Also, does the same go for pasta's? If i get the dark brown, whole wheat pasta's are they good as well?

On a side note: I read about the Caveman diet before and it said to avoid things like potatoes, peanuts, wheats, etc, because they are poisonous when uncooked. And when you do cook them there are still trace amounts left of the poison, which aren't good for your body. What do you think about that theory of the Caveman diet?

[jlamp08]

BASICALLY HERES WHAT IT IS
====
FRUITS
NUTS BERRIES
VEGTABLES
LEAN MEATS

MOM where the Dam n Protein?!@@
protein is GOOD


no candy, no cake, no soda, no fast food < sorry no big macs

[scskowron]

The Caveman diet is really extreme ... I'm sure it's really good for training but I simply don't have the money or time to do it. I may have the discipline to do it, but it's pointless when I'm nearly broke on money for food as it is and I can't spend more than 10 minutes to prepare a meal. Not to mention the fact that I love sugar...

[bigv123]

emhoffman,
I don't eat bread much at all. I use 100% whole wheat tortillas. I like the taste and they fit into my diet really well.

Pasta is tough. I've called it the "bane of my existence" on more than one occasion. Being 1/2 Italian, i love some good pasta, but, there's two problems. First, it's VERY caloricaly dense and thus you can overload the calories very easily. Second, regular pasta is a bit higher on the GI than I like. An excellent alternative is whole wheat pasta. It has a bit more protein and the carbs are much lower GI...a win-win situation. But, you still have to look out for overloading on calories.

I've not looked at the diet specifically, but, I've never heard of those foods being "poisonous" when uncooked. That's not to say it isn't true, I've just never heard that. I think they may be using the word "poisonous" somewhat liberally. It might be worth some investigation...

V

[scskowron]

On a side note: I read about the Caveman diet before and it said to avoid things like potatoes, peanuts, wheats, etc, because they are poisonous when uncooked. And when you do cook them there are still trace amounts left of the poison, which aren't good for your body. What do you think about that theory of the Caveman diet?

No, that's not why they are forbidden by the Caveman diet. The reason is because these foods did not exist when cavemen were around! Peanuts and other nuts belong to the legume family, and legumes along with starches and grains are all cultivated foods. Cultivated foods only emerged after the first agricultural revolution when humans first learned how to domesticate plants. In order to eat peanuts and potatoes and grains, you need to grow them, whereas with berries and meat - they are easily obtainable in the wild.

The theory behind the Caveman diet is that you should only eat what cavemen were able to find in the wild. There are some known benefits as evidenced by the fact that some gypsy tribes in the Middle East have followed this diet for thousands of years and they have virtually no cases of heart disease or similar ailments - compare that to the risk of heart disease in the USA.

[infantry_scout]

I did this diet for awhile a few years back and I leaned out FAST! I'm talking crazy fast. I was all lean muscle and thats it. The only reason I stopped was because it got expensive buying meat and fish all the time and I started working wierd hours and found it hard to find time to prepare meals.

I worked with a guy at the time that turned me on to this diet. He had been on it for almost 2 years at the time (almost 7-8 years now.) The guy is almost 50 years old, he works out every day, does mostly hiking around his property and climbs rope. He is in better shape than most 20 year olds that I know. He is 180 of solid, bone crushing muscle and he attributes it all to his diet,(he doesn't work out that much, just a little every day)

He is pretty extreme though, he cooks his meat just enough to sanitize it, so its a little disturbing to eat meat with him, as he looks like a T-rex eating a poor helpless animal. One time I watched him eat Liver, that was just cooked for about 3 minutes, just to kill bacteria, the center was pretty much raw. Anybody who has ever had liver knows its pretty.....juicy.

However, I think he is a good example of the long term benefits of such a diet.

The only thing I would consider is this: If you have plans to go to BUD/S, it may be wise to occasionally eat carbs and things that are "forbidden" under this diet, because when you get to BUD/S, especially in HELL week, I'm guessing you will have to eat pretty much whatever they give you (plus you'll want to.)

This may not be a problem, but I know a female body builder who went super high protein, 0 carbs for several months while training for a competition. After the competition, she started phasing some carbs back into her diet and her body basically had reactions to the carbs because it had been so longs since she had any. I remember she got sores around her mouth and had digestive problems, etc. Of course, I'm not a doctor, nutritionist, personal trainer, etc. I'm just going off of what I've seen/heard.

[bigv123]

The body building world has known about what we call the "high-low carb" diet for over 60 years now. The general public has really just in the past 10 years gotten a little taste of it. Atkins was probably most people's first experience with the idea...and what a horrible experience to have. I'm not going to get on my soapbox and lecture about the proper use of the Kreb Cycle for dieting. That's way beyond the scope of this board. BUT, nutritional and exercise science has come a LONG way in the past few decades. Trying to completely cut out carbs from your diet is beyond stupid...especially with the rise of excellent supplements we have today.

The "conditions" of this diet seem very borderline in my estimation. Bottom line, just because we were hunter-gatherers at one point in our social evolution doesn't mean for a second that we haven't improved significantly on nutrition and the science behind athletic performance in the past 2 million years guys. There's lots and LOTS of diets out there with only one purpose in mind...getting you to buy their book and make the author money. The physiology behind losing fat and gaining muscle is pretty well understood...especially at the macro-nutrient level. Most of these new diets you keep seeing are just marketing to get you to part with your hard-earned money.

V

[montana]

This sounds a lot like the diet I'm going by now- If you can't shoot it, grow it, or pick it then don't eat it.