Is paleo low-carb?

Is paleo low-carb?

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Whenever the paleo diet is mentioned in the media it always seems to be lumped in the category of low-carb diets and particularly always seems to be mentioned alongside the Atkins diet.

 

So is paleo really a low-carb diet?

 

Well firstly we have to point out that paleo is quite different to Atkins in the following ways:

 

-Atkins allows unlimited amounts of dairy such as cream, butter and cheese whereas the majority of paleo eaters avoid dairy

 

-Atkins severely limits fruit consumption, paleo doesn’t

 

-Atkins removes starchy vegetables like sweet potato, parsnips and squash, paleo doesn’t

 

-Atkins even limits other types of vegetables in the early stages of the diet whereas on a paleo diet you are encouraged to eat a wide variety of all types of vegetables

 

-Atkins promote their own branded processed products like energy bars which have the most horrible list of ingredients. Paleo is all about avoiding processed food.

 

The point of the Atkins diet in the early stages is to put the body into ketosis by limiting carbohydrates to less than 50g a day.

 

Whilst eating paleo will mean you eat less carbs than the government would have us eat (with the awful ‘Eat Well’ plate), you will not be eating less than 50g a day and you will not be in ketosis.

 

The amount of carbohydrates we should eat depends on our lifestyles and whether or not we are overweight, underweight, exercise a lot, don’t exercise so much etc. A good target to aim for is less than 100g a day if you are trying to lose weight, and 100-150g a day for weight maintenance. I personally include higher sugar fruits such as bananas and starchy vegetables like sweet potato on a daily basis and have no problem with my weight (I am 5ft 4in and weigh 8 stone putting my bmi at around 20). If you need to lose a lot of weight you could try eating 50-75g of carbs a day and see how you feel. We’re all different and some people feel better with more carbs in their diets, some with less. Experiment to see what works for you.

 

How many carbs do foods contain? (These are rough amounts as we can only be accurate based on weight)

*1 medium banana – 27g

*1 medium pear – 27g

*1/2 mango – 25g

*1 medium apple – 25g

*1 avocado – 13g

*100g strawberries – 8g

*1 large sweet potato – 37g

*1 large white potato – 64g

*200g butternut squash – 22g

 

So you can see that even eating two higher sugar fruits plus some starchy veg (combined with the carbs in the other fruit and veg you consume in a day) would put you around the 100g per day mark without having to think too carefully about it.

 

And you can see that paleo is not super low-carb, and is definitely not the same thing as the Atkins diet!