Explore Your Roots: The Paleolithic Diet

Nutrition & Exercise

For us with diabetes, medication, diet, and exercise are our weapons against complications. Many of us follow strict treatment protocols and have highly structured workout routines. Typically, we follow these under the direction of doctors and personal trainers.

However, unless we consciously seek out advice from a nutritionist (and even then I'd argue the help might actually hinder), we often we fail to consider essential nutrition. If we took the same time to address nutrition with as much care as we do our other disciplines, our success could be exponentially greater.

There are many popular diet programs we could follow like Atkins, Mediterranean, or the Zone. However, I suggest that we look no further than our back yard in our search for balanced, essential nutrition.

For some time now I have restricted my diet to one guiding maxim: Eat only what grows naturally and what you could hunt. This is a simplistic explanation of the Paleolithic diet, also known as the "Caveman" diet. A more detailed explanation follows.

Eat none of the following:

• Grains including bread, pasta, and noodles
• Beans including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas, and peas
• Potatoes
• Dairy products
• Sugar
• Salt
• Peanuts (a bean) or cashews (a family of their own)

Eat the following:

• Meat, chicken, and fish
• Eggs
• Fruit
• Vegetables (especially root vegetables, but not potatoes or sweet potatoes)
• Nuts, like walnuts, Brazil nuts, macadamias, and almonds. · Berries- strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc.

Try to increase your intake of:

• Root vegetables like carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, and Swedish turnips

I have found great success with this plan. The reduction of high glycemic foods (all processed and high fructose corn syrup based products) eliminates the spikes and plummets of energy so common for many throughout the day. I am left with a very level base of energy, feel completely satiated, and know that I am fueling my body with true quality ingredients.

A recent study comparing the benefits of the Paleolithic diet to the Mediterranean diet, which allows grains and processed foods, concluded that, "If you want to prevent or treat diabetes type 2, it may be more efficient to avoid some of our modern foods than to count calories or carbohydrates."

Even the diabetes writer David Mendosa has chimed in on the Paleolithic diet, discussing its nature and ability to stave off the weakness associated with low-carbohydrate diets.

"On a very low-carb diet people may also be restricting their carbohydrates more than on the Paleo Diet,” said Loren Cordain, Ph.D., and the Paleolithic diet’s foremost champion. “Even if they are getting enough calories, they can still initially feel weak if they restrict their carbs to less than 100 grams a day."

The medical and diabetes community at large are beginning to tap into the idea. However, you may have trepidation. If you need more prodding, try this: Before you eat the next processed product, read the ingredients. How many are there, and how many can you pronounce? Now, grab a tomato, turn it over, and read the label. It doesn’t have one. You know it instinctively that it is good food. Maybe our ancestors were onto something.

Eric Devine, 30, has lived with type 1 diabetes since he was 12. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and two daughters where he works as a high school English teacher. Devine is an avid writer and is currently seeking publication of two Young Adult novel manuscripts.