Pop quiz. What’s the first thing you do when you want to lose weight? Sign up for a gym, right? Noooooope. Sure, that’s a vital piece to the puzzle, but takinginventory of your diet should be step one. Why? Your diet serves as the biggest component to gaining muscle, possessing adequate energy levels, and recovering from a tough workout. But what meal regimen should you follow? The answer — and we mean this without snark, we swear — is whichever one you’ll follow strictly and consistently.
We’ve previous covered the 101s of the ketogenic diet and the carb-rotating diet, and both might be decent options for you. However, if neither suits you, how about the Paleolithic diet? In short, if a caveman would eat it, it’s in the Paleo diet (sans the protein-rich bugs, we hope). So if you can hunt, fish, or pull it from the ground, it’s fair game (no pun intended). That leaves you free to lead up on things like meat, veggies, fruits, nuts, tubers, seafood, and oils.
Things like grains, processed foods, sugars, dairy, starches, legumes, and alcohol — many things that don’t necessarily benefit your nutritional goals as-is — are omitted. Of course, we’re cherry pickers. And while our ancestors didn’t take sports supplements for energy, such as P4’s Pre Game Formula or Energy Formula for pre-workout energy (or Recovery Push for post-workout recovery aid), when we need ‘em, we take ‘em. (However, said ancestors would be happy that the supps are NSF Certified for Sport and clean of banned substances.)
In terms of being a sustainable lifestyle nutrition plan, the Paleo diet is a relatively easy thing to follow, and it’s beneficial for people who want to stay lean year-round. You can eat however much you want so long as you follow the guidelines,which doesn’t involves calorie counting or weighing food portions. You’ll also get lots of fats, fiber, antioxidants, and vitamins, and potentially experience less inflammation due to consuming fewer oils.
The downside? Well, do you want to give up dairy, grains, or the occasional cocktail? Again, it goes back to what’s sustainable for you. So if you don’t want to adopt the Paleo diet fully, extracting what’s practical can go a long way, such as eliminating or limiting the intake of processed food and refined sugars.
