Carbs for cave dwellers

I just received a question about carbohydrates and I think that it's a good topic to address. So here it is;

"Where do we get our carbs from now? I was getting all of my carbs from whole
wheat pasta, grains, and beans. Where do I get them now?"

So a quick question to you would be, what do you think vegetables and fruits are made of?

I think we have all been misled to believe that we will all shrivel and die if we do not consume the 6-11 servings of grains a day that the Food Pyramid recommends. Just for curiosity's sake I search-engined various grains and pastas to get an idea, on average, of how many carbs were in one serving of a generic grain product. I looked up beans, pastas, corn, rice and so on. It seems that a rough average is about 35 grams per standard recognized serving. If you eat all 6-11 servings of grains that are recommended, then you are getting 210 to 385 grams of carbohydrates per day. This translates into 840 to 1540 calories per day, EEP! I'm no scientist, but this sounds a might bit...okay, outrageously high!! Supporters of the Paleo diet seem to dwell happily in a carbohydrate range between 100 and 200 grams of carbohydrate per day (some go below 100 grams but this is particularly for fat loss, not for body weight maintenance or for optimal physical performance). It is not the amount of calories alone that concerns me, but the amount of calories that are left (of the 2,000) to spend on lean proteins and antioxidant-rich vitamin and mineral sources!

Quick story: I lived with a group of Australian Aborigines for two months after I graduated college as part of an Anthropology research trip. We were there to study the hunting and gathering techniques that the people used. I, of course, followed along with the women. One morning (and only once) we started with black tea and a piece of seed "cake" that we had prepared the day before. Five hours of gathering thousands of seeds (similar in size and color to poppy seeds) followed by 4 1/2 hours of grinding and pounding on a real stone mortar to create a seed paste which, when poured onto hot clean sand and buried with coals, baked into a "cake". Not really an effective use of time; ten hours of processing for one "cake" about 8" across to feed 6 people? Put your hands 8" apart and you can see that isn't much for 6 people for breakfast.

Then we would head out into the desert to hunt lizards. Along the way we would nibble on wild tomatoes we found. Sometimes we found larvae of various sizes and we would eat those also. We did not eat the lizards until we got back into camp at the end of the day and everything got roasted together and evenly distributed. Most often there was left over wild tomatoes and such and those were eaten for breakfast when there was no seed "cake", which was often. The vast majority of our carb intake for the day was from wild fruits (in this case tomatoes), seeds and berries. As you can see, there was no pasta or italian bread to fuel us along as we walked for miles hunting and gathering. Please note that homo sapiens had been living this particular way for thousands of years before the advent of fettucine!

I think that if you approach the Paleo diet trying to make sure you get the same amount of carbohydrates you get eating grains, then this will goof you up, even if you have the best of intentions. I feel the Paleo diet is much more about nutrition. This diet is about FEEDING your body with nutrients, not drowning your body with mere substance. I have read many blogs trying to get a feel for people's physical reactions to starting this diet. Some feel a little weak for about a week, and that seems to be normal as your body is adjusting to being fed properly (or more efficiently anyway). All your hormones are adjusting, blood sugar is balancing out and your muscles too are getting adjusted. Personally when I first started I felt good for one week and then a little weaker for a few days during the second week. That weakness, however, was only apparent when I tried to lift heavy weights. A weight I had pressed overhead 10+ times the week prior now felt almost impossible to lift. The rest of the time I felt really good! The next week however I was back to lifting that weight and more. Now my sweet tooth has diminished, my desire for coffee has waned (in part thanks to the teeccino distraction), I sleep more soundly and I can still run!

It is true that the need for carbohydrates is going to vary from person to person and that will also change for whether or not you are active. For instance, I feel better eating a banana after an 8 mile run than I do eating one on a rest day. Please do not sabotage yourself by thinking that there is some sort of grain-carb to veggie/fruit-carb equivalance tabulature. If you have been following the Paleo guidelines for awhile and you feel good then you are likely doing it well! If you feel tired then you may indeed need to increase either the amount of carbohydrate you consume each day OR you may need to just the amount of fat you are eating instead!

Yeah, fat is an energy source! This is especially true if you are following the Paleo style of eating. Some folks still hold onto the '90s notion that dietary fat is the devil and they have a hard time adding it into their diet when they go Paleo. Nuts, fish oil and coconut oil are your friends my friend! [They make your body happy and energetic and they make your hair, skin and nails pretty too!]

Americans typically have a skewed sense of how much vegetable matter is adequate, especially in the absence of bread. And you may be suprised to find out how much fat you can eat! If you need some help determining how much you should be eating I would recommend going to the Zone Diet website (http://www.zonediet.com/) and using their block calculations to help get you going. First use their block calculator to get an idea of how many blocks you would need to eat in a day. Then write down what you typically eat each day, or write down what you just ate for the last meal. Include rough estimates of how much of each component there was. For instance, how many cups of lettuce in your salad? How much meat did you eat? Was there a dressing or oil on your meal? Then compare this to the Zone block method and you should see if you are short on veggies or fats.

Start strictly and then do not be afraid to tweak your diet to see what works! You may find out what works straight out of the gate, you may not. If you decide to add or subtract something, give your body a week or two to adjust before you rule it in or out. Be flexible and listen to what your body tells you. Make sure you drink plenty of clean water (unflavored) so that you do not misinterpret thirst for hunger. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're done. That's probably the hardest part!! There are days when I feel I have grossly over eaten but when I look back on it I realize, "I ate what, too many apples? Too many walnuts? Too much spinach?" Please. Just imagine your cave-dwelling tribe just found an apple orchard and happily gorged; eat fewer tomorrow!