Keto Diet vs Paleo Diet - Which Is Better?

Keto diet versus Paleo diet are they the same thing

are they fads how are they different we're going to talk about all these

principles so that you can decide if it's something that you want to give a

try and you can understand when and if that would be a good idea coming right

up. [Wellness For Life logo] So what is the Paleo diet it is a philosophy of how humans have eaten

through the history of human existence so the earliest humanoids came around

about two million years ago the homo erectus and then homo sapiens the latest

version of human came around a quarter million years ago and most researchers

in paleontology and and human evolution they agree that there is very very

little difference between the DNA of the homo sapiens a quarter million years ago

and your DNA today. so the idea then is that whatever they ate would be the most

appropriate type of food for us to eat today and why might want to make that

argument because if you have the same DNA as they did the DNA codes for

enzymes and enzymes are what you have in your body there is some enzymes in food

and you produce a lot of the rest in your body that break down the food and

different types of food required different types of enzymes you can't eat

the same thing that a cow eats because you don't have those enzymes you don't

have those bacterial cultures. so an enzyme is a catalyst it is something

that fits into specific molecules and help us break down and metabolize that

food so if your ancestors had a certain set of DNA to code for a certain type of

enzymes then it would make a lot of sense

that you would be suitable for the same type of food so that is the idea behind

the Paleo diet. so what would be okay to eat on the Paleo diet then well anything

that they had access to such as meat fish poultry anything that they could

pull out of the ocean anything that they could catch and kill and eat would be

alright they also probably had access to some fruits and some vegetables at least

seasonally they probably could catch pick find some eggs and they could also

pick nuts and seeds that they found they could dig up some roots some things that

are called tubers similar to sweet potato and potato early versions of

those things so all of those things would be available to our ancestors and

that the argument is that that's what we should eat exclusively what they said no

too categorically is grain because your

ancestors before ten thousand years ago they had no grain available to them they

had no legumes they had no beans no corn well corn is actually a grain but beans

and green beans soy beans black beans etc peanuts all of those are legumes and

your ancestors did not have access to them and therefore we shouldn't eat them

they also said that there was no organized form of dairy

we didn't farm animals we didn't domesticate animals until later so even

if you could catch an occasional animal and get little dairy there was nothing

regular about that potatoes are a more modern thing and obviously they had no

processed sugar no processed foods no food additives they had no vegetable

oils no seed oils no nut oils none of that

so this because it wasn't available the principle of the Paleo diet says that

you should cut this out 100% and it also makes a lot of sense when you look at

what people develop the most allergies to the absolute top allergies today are

wheat soy and dairy and it's not just the fact that it's those foods but it's

how they've been processed and how they've changed and how they've been

refined so the Paleo diet also advocates of course that we should eat it in its

most original form so how does that then compared to the keto diet well let's

look at the breakdown of macronutrients so they've done a lot of research on

this and they looked at hundreds of different primitive populations and

where they lived and their ancestors and and what they were likely to eat and so

forth and they came up with the numbers that our ancestors on average probably

ate around 39 40 percent fat 38 40 percent proteins are really really close

and about 23% carbs so basically twice as much calories from fat and protein as

they did from carbs so it's in essence a low-carb diet it's not it doesn't have

to be but because you cut out the grains and legumes and the sugar in the

processed food it sort of becomes a low carb but you could during certain times

if you found a lot of fruit and a lot of roots and things like that then it could

develop into a more moderate carbohydrate diet but then they say it

also depended on where you lived so in the north where it was colder fewer

fruits a shorter growing season then they would rely less on carbohydrate

probably as little as 10% and they would rely more on fishing

so with fishing and hunting hunting seals and fat fish and things like that

they would get probably a full 60 percent of their

from fat on the other hand if you lived in the tropics then you would have more

fruits more vegetables longer seasons and so forth so you might have actually

40% so you'd be a moderate almost a high carbohydrate diet and again of course

there would be no processed sugars or food in that compared to the keto diet

then the keto diet is pretty close to what they would eat in the north so in a

sense some versions of the Paleo diet would actually be a keto diet but the

keto diet as we've talked about before it's not a an idea it's a physiological

principle it's about how do you cut the carbs so low that your body gets into a

state of ketosis so it's an observation it's it's changing your macronutrients

to the point where your body starts burning fat so some advocates of the

keto diet they say well as long as you cut the carbs down and get into ketosis

it doesn't matter what you eat you could eat processed foods you could don't have

to eat vegetables etc etc and I don't share that point of view I think it

still matters if you want to be healthy long term but as far as the strict keto

principle then it doesn't matter because when you're in ketosis you're in ketosis

so it's a physiological principle it's about changing your lifestyle until

something happens in your body to where you start burning fat and a byproduct of

fat burning is ketones so when you can measure ketones in your body you have

achieved the objective and you are in ketosis and you are on a ketogenic diet

regardless of what type of food you're eating and again during certain times

the Paleo diet would turn into the keto diet

if we look at it a little bit further and now we think about well we didn't

have refrigerators and worldwide global commerce and distribution of food so

there was a lot of variation from day to day and between the seasons so our

ancestors had certain periods of feasting and certain periods of famine

and during the feasting they were probably low to moderate carbohydrate

and when there wasn't so much food around then they were low carb or

probably Kido for long periods of time and when they didn't have food for a

couple of days well guess what they were fasting intermittently so I have to

laugh anytime someone calls these things a fad

diet because the definition of fad means it's of short duration it's it's an idea

someone gets excited about and a lot of people try it and then it kind of fades

away and nothing could be further from the truth because these things are not

fads this is how humans have eaten for as long as we have existed every animal

on the planet are in a feast or famine situation because the food supply isn't

constant so for certain times there were all in in keto and intermittent fasting

so there's nothing new about it it is the way we're supposed to function

humans do extremely well missing a few meals but we have no defense against six

meals a day your body is not designed to cope with six meals a day and the

results are disastrous for most people so we want to understand the differences

that the Paleo diet is an historical hypothesis it's an idea that let's eat

the way that they did and the keto diet is a physiological principle it says eat

low enough carbs cut the carbs enough back that you get into a

state of ketosis and sometimes they have two different origins the the the roots

of why we do them are completely different but sometimes they end up

being the same thing because of the reasons that we talked about that

because we cut out most of the high carb foods it becomes a low carb diet and

because there was sometimes feast and famine then they sometimes became the

keto diet but then some people they say that oh well because I believe this is

the way it is I'm going to turn it into my religion so some people look at the

Paleo diet and they say that oh absolutely

with no exceptions under no circumstances should you ever have

anything outside of that because it's unnatural and I don't buy that all the

way I think the Paleo idea is a fantastic foundation and I base

everything that I do on that I think our physiology has developed I think we need

to look not only at the foods that we ate but we need to look at the sleep

cycles and our activity levels and a lot of different things how how we respond

to stress that our whole stress response system developed to give us survival

advantage we were supposed to have a fight flight response to run away from a

bear and we had an all-out sympathetic fight flight response and then we found

our safety in a cave or in a tree and then our bodies could settle down so it

was a lot of there was large differences between the fight flight and the

relaxation whereas today we are stress is very different so we're not living

the way that our bodies were designed for we have a lot of low-grade stress

that keeps going hour after hour after hour we sit in front of computers with

deadlines we sit in traffic we have arguments we watch the new

we listen to politics we have all these little things that set off stress

responses and were not designed for those type of things

so I think this is a great foundation the Paleo diet is a great place to start

but I don't think that that is necessarily a hundred percent the law

just because of that I think a lot of people do well on certain grains

I think organic corn in moderation I think organic oats for some people I

think brown rice in moderation if you're not sensitive to it if you're not

insulin resistance I think that can be a reasonably good food for that person but

if you are very insulin resistant then all of these things are also going to

trigger insulin at a much too high level I think also based on testing and based

on clinical results that dairy is okay for most people but we have to look at

the source of the dairy the quality of the dairy is this grass-fed and has it

been pasteurized and the more we can find it in its original form the more

likely that it's good for you something like skimmed pasteurized milk

I wouldn't want for my worst enemy I think that's a horrendous food I based

on our testing in our office we have never found a person that agrees (test well) with

pasteurized skim milk but we have the majority of people doing well on

grass-fed butter and sour cream and raw cheese and things like that and by the

same token some people turn the keto diet into a religion and say that oh

well I when I went into ketosis I felt the best I ever had

it changed my life so that must be the best diet for me I'm gonna stick to that

no matter what I don't care what I eat as long as I'm in ketosis I'll be fine

that's because they were insulin resistant they were toxic with sugar and

when they cut it out they gave their body a chance to recover

and find some sort of balance but it doesn't mean that that is the optimal

diet for them forever we need to understand where our origins are

according to the Paleo principle we need to understand where low-carb and keto

and low to moderate carb diets fit in based on our health goals and our weight

and our insulin resistance so I think everyone should look hard at the Paleo

diet to get a good foundation to understand where our roots are that

those people ate a certain type of food and that that food was always whole and

unprocessed and I think that should be 80 to 90% of the food for almost

everybody then I think you need to understand where you are as far as

insulin resistance blood sugar a 1c etc and where you need to be on the

carbohydrate scale that if you're very insulin resistance then you probably

need to do keto for a while probably an if not keto at least very low carb

combined with intermittent fasting and exercise and stress modification

behavior and so forth so it's what this channel is all about it's learning these

principles so that you can take the best from each area and understand how it

fits to you because there is no one-size-fits-all we have to start

understanding what the modern world has changed what it has done to us so that

we can learn and change and try things that will work for us if you enjoy this

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