Welcome Back-Paleo Schmaleo

Hello All,

I am bringing this blog back to life mostly to communicate with my "team" and possibly provide them with some quality information. After that, maybe I will get off my lazy ass and continue to post entries here. We shall see.

So welcome team.

I know you have been talked to about nutrition and most of you are buying into the paleo bit, but as you have probably heard me say, I am not paleo. There are many reasons for this and I will not bore you with all of them. True paleo heads who don't eat things like tubers, are incredibly misinformed. Crossfit paleo heads who eat sweet potatoes, but not regular potatoes or rice, are in my mind, somewhat misinformed.

Forget the argument about us living on a diet for millions of years and that this diet is the perfect one. Hogwash. It's called adaptation. Agriculture has been around for 10,000 years or so and you are telling me that in that time, human genes cannot adapt to certain types of grains or develop favorable adaptations like lactose tolerance? Bull.

Adaptation is amazing. I have had clients who came into me and couldn't do a bodyweight squat without falling down and then, in a few months, are back squatting 200 pounds to full depth. How? Adaptation. Your body is adapting every day.

Does that mean I love grains? Not really. There are some grains, like wheat, that our bodies have still not quite figured out and are linked to all sorts of nasty autoimmune disorders. There are other grains, fermented buckwheat anyone?, that can be good for you but are pointless because they taste like ass and don't deliver any nutrients that aren't in vegetables. However, if I'm in need of some energy for a 2 hour workout, I might wolf down some milled white rice (see my post on rice) for extra energy.

I like to look at this way. Chances are your ancestors spent tons of time getting sick so you don't have to. Some people are lactose tolerant because their ancestors were forced into eating dairy. Others are not tolerant. There is no one answer to anything. There is good dairy and bad dairy. There are edible grains and dirty grains. And chances are something that might royally screw up my system, won't screw up yours.

So the bottom line is eat real food. Eat quality food. Get to know your local farmers. Buy their stuff! Stop eating processed junk. And listen to your body. If you are in the bathroom 5 minutes after eating sweet potatoes, maybe you should cut that food out.

This is one of the better posts I have seen on what to eat. I will obviously preface this by saying, YES, we are in a paleo challenge and if you want to "win", then don't eat rice or oatmeal. If you want to win, you will also skip the giant cheat meal. If you read this, please ignore his comment about a peri-workout protocol...unfortunately t-nation requires that their authors plug one of their supplements at one time during their post. So you can pass on the ANACONDA drink. The rest of the information is good.
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_simple_diet

We'll start there. SO much more information we can cover, but let's stop for now.