Paleo Guide – Start Here

So, you want to try Paleo? You’re in the right place! Below is the quick-start version of Paleo. It's designed to get you off the ground fast, without getting swamped in all the details. You can do the fine-tuning later, but right now, the most important thing is to just get started and get the momentum going.

What do I eat?

How does it work?

FAQ

What do I Eat?

Yes

Whole, unprocessed foods full of important vitamins and minerals.

Fresh vegetables and fruits (Not corn - corn is a grain, NOT a vegetable)
Unprocessed meat and eggs
- Before you worry about cholesterol, read this.
- Before you worry about saturated fat, read this.
Fish and seafood
Spices and seasonings. Salt is allowed.
Healthy fats (olive oil, coconut oil, animal fat from well-treated animals, avocados...)

No

Foods that are irritating to the gut, cause inflammation (learn why inflammation is bad), or cause blood sugar spikes.

Grains, including corn (Corn is a grain, NOT a vegetable)
Beans and legumes (e.g. soy, lentils)
Industrial oils (e.g. soybean oil, canola oil)

Maybe

Foods that some people tolerate fine, but other people need to eliminate

Dairy
Nuts and seeds
Starchy vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc.)

Protein, Carbs, and Fat

Eat protein, fat, and carbs in a ratio that works for you. Some people do very well on a low-carb diet and others don’t. Paleo doesn’t require any one particular amount of protein, fat, or carbs.

Meal Template

Here's a meal template to start out with. This works for a lot of people, but it’s not perfect for everyone. Adjust it to fit your personal needs and preferences.

On Paleo, calorie-counting is strongly discouraged. Here's why.

How does it Work?

Did you ever wonder how humans went for millions of years without knowing what a calorie was, much less counting them, and in that whole time there wasn't any such thing as the "obesity epidemic"? In their natural environment, human bodies can regulate their own appetite, weight, and hunger.

In the modern world, lab-created processed foods are deliberately designed to overwhelm your body's hunger and fullness signals (a good book on this is Salt, Sugar, Fat, by Michael Moss). Most of these foods are also irritating to the gut and inflammatory, so they cause other chronic diseases as well (for example, liver diseases).

Paleo is about getting rid of those foods, so your body can regulate itself, without you having to white-knuckle through constant hunger while you count up every calorie. In general, this means eating the foods that humans evolved with, and avoiding post-agricultural foods like grains because we just haven't evolved the ability to digest them well. But it's not about imitating cavemen. It's about using scientific evidence and reasoning - including evolutionary evidence - to figure out what works best for people today.

FAQ

Didn’t cavemen die at 25? Why would you eat like that?

No. The average age of death in the Paleolithic was young because so many babies died of infectious diseases that had nothing to do with diet. But if you survived to adulthood, you had a decent shot of living to middle age. Read more.

Is Paleo a low-carb diet?

It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. You can adapt Paleo principles to any combination of protein, carbs, and fat.

Isn’t all that saturated fat and cholesterol bad for you?

The short answer: no. Even the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recently got rid of the cholesterol limit because there’s just no evidence that limiting dietary cholesterol is healthful.

The long answer: read more about why limiting dietary cholesterol doesn’t make sense, the evidence in favor of cholesterol, and why saturated fat won’t kill you.