Authors: Chris Kresser
Tags: #Health & Fitness / Diet & Nutrition / Diets, #Health & Fitness / Diet & Nutrition / Weight Loss
I couldn’t get over the dramatic change in my energy level and gut health. I felt like a different person: vibrant, excited about my future, and ready for a fresh start. I continued my meditation practice and added techniques for stress management to reduce the physical and psychological symptoms associated with chronic pain and illness, and eventually I formulated a supplement regime that further improved my health. I didn’t have the name for it yet, but I’d discovered my own Personal Paleo Code, the individual prescription for my optimal health.
I felt a strong calling to use all of the knowledge and experience I had acquired in my own healing journey to help others with theirs, so I applied to the Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley, California, to finish the degree in traditional Chinese medicine that I had started years before.
While there, I started a blog called
The Healthy Skeptic
(now it’s at ChrisKresser.com), mainly as a journal to keep track of my research and study. My grandfather had died following complications after bypass surgery; I suspected he hadn’t gotten the best treatment. The more I delved into the research about diet and cardiovascular disease, the more fascinated I became—why were Bapa’s doctors following a medical model that was half a century old? What other research was being overlooked?
I became deeply interested in the scientific evidence for various medical approaches to illness and began to blog about my findings. I was quite surprised the first time someone left a comment on one of my posts. I hadn’t told anyone about the blog, and to this day, I still don’t know how people found it. Within a relatively short time, though, I had thousands of readers from all over the world. By the time I graduated and became licensed, I was fortunate to have a full and thriving private practice. Shortly thereafter, I was introduced to some members of the vibrant Paleo community. Now I had a name for the lifestyle I’d stumbled upon independently. I realized that I had found my tribe—a group of revolutionary individuals committed to helping people obtain optimal health.
Today, I’m blessed with excellent health, a loving family, and a flourishing practice. It’s incredibly rewarding to help patients discover their own Personal Paleo Code and recapture their health and vitality.
The Personal Paleo Code is a way of life, a process for helping you discover your own ideal way of eating and living. The food we eat is perhaps the single most important influence on health. But the ways we sleep, exercise, spend time outdoors, have fun, manage our stress, and connect with others really matter; I’d argue that they separate a life merely lived from a life worth living. Just as I’ll help you customize the diet that works optimally for you, I’ll help you find the unique Personal Paleo Code that embraces every other part of your life so you can live healthfully and joyfully. Diet and lifestyle, taken together, form 360-degree wellness.
Everyone’s path to health is unique. I can tell you from working with hundreds of patients in my practice and guiding thousands of others through my blog that it will take about thirty days of following the Reset Diet for you to experience dramatic relief from aggravating symptoms, lose your cravings for the foods that aren’t good for you, see a pleasing weight loss, and probably feel better than you ever have! After that, you’ll be powerfully motivated to follow the rest of my three-step plan to arrive at a recipe for living that works best for you. For some readers, it’ll be a few more weeks. For others, I refuse to make an empty promise about what that timetable should be; that’s for you to discover, with my guidance. That’s what makes this program work—you!
You’ll find some significant differences between the code you develop and traditional Paleo/primal diets, because my plan will be customized to your needs. What’s forbidden on those other diets may be a welcome addition to your table. Based on time-tested ancestral wisdom combined with the best of modern science, your Personal Paleo Code is firmly grounded in your personal experience, which means you’ll find it easy to follow, its benefits will be sustainable, and you’ll thoroughly enjoy it.
I’m going to challenge a lot of conventional wisdom in this book—not because I’m a contrarian or want to generate attention, but because I’ve spent years poring over original research and major studies. I don’t believe a health claim simply because I’ve seen it repeated multiple times. I look at the evidence—the size of the original study samples, the length of the studies, the quality of the research design, and other factors. I look for the difference between causation and correlation. If conventional wisdom holds that taking a certain medication will help people live longer or prevent a certain illness, I want to see the research that proves that. So that’s what I do; I carefully investigate the evidence behind health claims.
And what I’ve found, based solely on the scientific evidence, is often very different from popular health claims. For example, I’ve found that saturated fat is not the evil nutrient we’ve been led to believe it is and that whole grains aren’t nearly as healthy as we’ve been told they are. These ideas—and many similar ones—are so deeply ingrained in our collective psyche that few of us stop to question them. But the fact that a belief is widely accepted doesn’t make it true.
When research, even gold-standard research, produces new information, there’s often a significant amount of time before that information is accepted by the wider medical community, and sometimes even longer before the information is communicated to the public. I’m no conspiracy theorist; I dislike those screaming headlines that shout “Doctors Are Withholding Secrets That Could Save Your Life!” The way I see it, part of the problem is that once something is widely reported and becomes accepted as medical dogma, few people invest the work needed to study alternative theories, and those few researchers who do get minimal attention and funding.
Perhaps one of the best examples of dogma in medicine is the idea that eating foods that contain cholesterol raises cholesterol levels in the blood. Early studies suggested this was true, but more recent and
better-designed trials have shown that dietary cholesterol doesn’t increase blood cholesterol in the majority of people. Today, few researchers working in the field believe that eating eggs has a significant effect on cholesterol levels in the blood. Yet the public and much of the conventional medical establishment still think there’s a connection. And millions of Americans continue to avoid nutrient-rich foods like eggs and red meat on the basis of this outdated science.
Admitting we don’t have all the answers is the key to progress in science and medicine. I would invite you to keep an open mind as you read this book, especially when you encounter sections that challenge your beliefs. If you have scientific training or you’re just the curious type, you can also scour the detailed chapter notes and references for this book (listed on the website) and read the original studies I cite.
Science is constantly evolving. We look back on the beliefs people held one hundred years ago and think them ignorant. What do you imagine people living one hundred years from now will think about our ideas?
There are three steps to discovering your own Personal Paleo Code: Reset, Rebuild, and Revive.
In
Step 1: Reset,
you’ll begin the Thirty-Day Reset Diet. This quick-start eating plan presses the reset button on your diet, targeting and eliminating the modern foods that humans aren’t genetically designed to eat—the foods that are the leading culprits in weight gain and health problems. I formulated this program so you’d feel better right away, and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover how many of the foods you thought were off-limits you can enjoy. You’ll experience improved digestion, reduced inflammation, fewer allergic reactions, more energy, and an evening out of your blood sugar and mood. You’ll also burn fat and shed pounds. If you’re like my patients, you’ll feel better than you have in years!
In
Step 2: Rebuild,
you’ll begin to customize your Personal Paleo Code by reintroducing some foods you eliminated during the Thirty-Day Reset to see how they work for your body. A lot of Paleo purists believe humans shouldn’t eat anything that wasn’t around at the time of our Paleolithic ancestors. Therefore, they’d keep tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and other nightshade vegetables off your table forever. They’d have you bid a permanent farewell to dairy products and all grains and legumes. But the science doesn’t support this stance, so neither do I. Why rule out dairy, for example, if you thrive on it? I’ll show you my proven method for testing gray-area foods so you can rebuild the repertoire of foods you love.
In
Step 3: Revive,
you’ll take the final steps in creating your unique prescription for optimal health, tweaking your Personal Paleo Code until it’s a perfect fit. What’s the ideal balance of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats for your unique needs? What makes you feel your best? Three meals a day? Six? Intermittent fasting? We’ll figure out all this and more—including how to be flexible when you need to be (see “The 80/20 Rule,” below)—so that you can follow your Personal Paleo Code for life.
I’ll help you get started on this exciting new way of eating with seven days of meal plans that include delicious fan-favorite recipes developed by a foodie/chef couple whose creations are big hits on my website and some brand-new culinary delights created by a French chef trained at Paris’s renowned École de Cuisine La Varenne. On the website, you’ll also find an additional three weeks of meal plans and recipes.
But life is about so much more than what we eat. You’ll also learn other techniques to make your life more joyful; I’ll show you how to manage your stress, find fun ways to move, sleep more deeply, emphasize pleasure and play, and reconnect with nature.
Do you have a particular health problem? I’ve got you covered. You’ll learn specific diet and lifestyle tweaks to address conditions like weight gain; heart disease; high blood pressure; digestive problems; high or low blood sugar; anxiety and depression; thyroid disorders; difficulty concentrating and memory issues; and acne, psoriasis, and other skin problems. These natural approaches are sometimes all it takes to halt or even reverse symptoms that have plagued you for years.
Once you have worked through the Thirty-Day Reset in Step 1 and have fully customized your Personal Paleo Code, I recommend you follow it closely 80 percent of the time but loosen up the other 20 percent of the time and eat what you like. A truly healthy body is a resilient body, one that doesn’t get sick if you have foods outside your Personal Paleo Code.
In time, most people end up very happily eating more like 90/10 or 95/5 because they’ve lost the physical and psychological cravings for the Chips Ahoy! cookies or the can of soda. Why? Because after doing Step 1, they feel so much better
without
those foods, and they’ve filled out their diets with an array of new and delicious foods, as you will. They save their full-out 80/20 times for that Caribbean vacation or Super Bowl weekend.
I want you to nourish yourself at every level, including having the joy of eating foods outside your Personal Paleo Code. Your mother’s cherished Sunday dinners. The incredible buffet at the wedding. The chef’s special at that fantastic new restaurant you and your friends are heading to on Saturday. Enjoy yourself! (For more on how to follow the 80/20 rule for life, see
here
to
here
.)
•
Feel better right away.
If you’re new to the Paleo approach and eager to get started because you’re feeling lousy or you want to lose weight,
start with Step 1.
Once you’re on the Thirty-Day Reset Diet, you’ll experience the benefits of the Personal Paleo Code right away, and that will give you the motivation to continue with Steps 2 and 3. While you’re going through your Thirty-Day Reset, read up on topics like nutrient density, minimizing toxins in your diet, and choosing the best possible foods; you’ll realize why you feel so good. Continue with Step 2 (Rebuild Your Life) to find out how to improve your sleep, manage your stress, exercise more effectively, and more. Then move on to Step 3 (Revive Your Health) to help you customize your program further for any particular health conditions or goals you might have and for tips on following your Personal Paleo Code for life.
•
Improve your results.
If you’re already following a Paleo-style diet, but you’re not getting the results you’d hoped for, you might want to
start with Step 2,
Rebuild, to focus on some of the important lifestyle factors you might have neglected until now. Then move on to Step 3, Revive, to learn how to personalize your diet and lifestyle according to your unique needs so they are even more effective. (I do suggest you take a look at Step 1, Reset, to make sure that the diet you’re currently following tracks with my recommendations.)
Doing the Thirty-Day Reset Diet is the essential first step in discovering your Personal Paleo Code, but in the same way that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to diet, there’s no right or wrong way to read this book. Just choose what works best for you depending on your background, needs, and goals.
Throughout this book, I’m going to remind you to trust yourself. Of course, you should always partner with your health professional and learn all you can about health options from trusted resources, but no one is more motivated than you to create your optimal health.
I’m not doctrinaire. I don’t think that all medications and surgery are evil or even avoidable. I refer my patients to physicians when I think a drug or surgery may be necessary. We live in amazing times, when we can pick and choose from many quarters to find the best options available to us. Stay curious, motivated, and involved. Learn all you can. Let this book be one of many powerful tools at your disposal.