Back to Basics: Duford’s Diet

After testing many diets to see what best fit me, it was time to test the effectiveness of the Paleo Diet. I, like many others, tried dieting to gain muscle and to get stronger. The effectiveness wasn’t the only thing I was looking at though, I wanted to look into how enjoyable and diverse the available foods are in the diet.

Starting the diet was a difficult transition. Cutting out cookies and ice cream is hard for probably everyone! Once that was out of the way, not much was really a challenge except for consistency. When I had to start eating more healthy foods, it wasn’t as hard for me because I was already eating healthy foods regularly.

After using the Paleo Diet for over a year, there’s a lot I’ve learned about it. For each meal I focused on minimizing the amount of added sugars in my foods. Secondly, I made sure there was little to no processed foods in my meal. Thirdly, I added adequate protein (at least 1 gram to 1 pound of body weight) to the meal. The more and more I accustomed myself to the diet, the more strictly I made my meals.

For breakfast each day, I ate between 3 – 5 eggs, high in fat and protein, with the added benefit of boosting testosterone. I frequently “snacked” on the diet too, adding mainly yogurt, bananas, almonds, and apples, for extra calories throughout the day. As well as losing weight, some diets are used to gain weight.

For lunch, I typically ate non-processed chicken or tuna, with a protein bar or extra fruit for more healthy calories. Chicken was groundwork in this diet, as it tastes amazing, high in protein, and is easily digestible.

For dinner, I had plain, lean beef hamburgers, steak, or roast beef. Humans have properly evolved to eat meats from cows and bison, making the proteins in the meats a strong building block for the human body. Sometimes if it felt a little greasy I would throw on a piece of cheese, which isn’t terrible because its just fat, however, it is dairy and processed. Once or twice a week, I’ll even have spaghetti. Even though it is not recommended by the diet due to its use of newer grains, some types of spaghetti have been bred to be high in protein and have less of the hard-to-digest parts of the grain, making it easier to consume.

Overall, for the Paleo diet, it’s about consistency. Like me, you can enjoy carbohydrates, as long as you consistently and mainly eat proteins and fats, yet I recommend cutting out processed foods though, as they will persistently ruin your diet results. I went from a skinny, 120lbs, ~8% body fat, to a much healthier and more muscular 150 pounds, 12% body fat, over 7 months. Since, I have used the diet to maintain this weight. It’s important to note that the muscular change was not only due to the diet, but also because of regular exercise and weight lifting.