Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

5

My husband and I have been eating 80/20 Primal for a couple of years. We both have noticed that when we eat "cheat" foods or eat a lot of carbs, we tend to feel sick or jittery in a way that never occurred before. For example, pizza never used to bother me, but now if I have more than a very small amount I get indigestion. From what I have read around the web, this seems fairly common. This doesn't bother me very much; I usually make a conscious choice to eat something bad (usually in a social situation) and realize I may not feel great later. It's usually not worth it, and serves as a reminder that these foods are not good for me. My husband, on the other hand, is really irked by the fact that he can no longer eat certain foods without paying for it later.

On to my question: I am on Day 6 of a Whole30, so will be eating super-clean for a month. By abstaining from foods that I normally eat regularly or occasionally, am I risking developing an intolerance to those foods? I'm especially wondering about dairy; I come from good Scandinavian stock, love dairy, and tolerate it very well.

Please don't tell me I shouldn't be eating non-Paleo foods anyway, so i shouldn't worry about creating an intolerance. I want to be able to off-road now and then, and I believe that (barring celiac or other medical problems) it's healthier emotionally to leave options open and be able to indulge myself once in a while.

edited Oct 29 2011 at 22:01

asked Oct 29 2011 at 21:54

Annika
1,110●4●10

1

From the sound of things, you've successfully created intolerance. My view of paleo is activity and meat eating are a must, but everything else is subjective choice. I don't want to create a scenario where eating a potato with yogurt topping bloats me. I'd recommend slowly reintroducing paleo carbs and dairy and regain your lost tolerances. – thhq Oct 30 2011 at 0:06

Ed · Answer 1 · 2011-10-29 23:05:20Z UTC

Changing your diet can cause temporary food intolerances in at least 2 ways:

Change your diet ==> change your bowel flora. This may make you temporarily less tolerant of some of the old foods.
Some digestive enzymes, especially those related to lactose and other carbohydrates, are inducible. When you stop eating dairy, the lactase enzyme levels in your intestines will decrease. You can regain the ability to digest lactose by gradually re-introducing dairy back into your diet. Here's a study in which the production of lactase enzyme was increased in lactose-intolerant individuals by feeding them lactose. Also, studies in rats have shown that other carbohydrate-digesting enzymes, such as sucrase-isomaltase, trehalase, and maltase-glucoamylase--can be induced by hydrocortisone administration.

If you want to restart dairy products in your diet, the answer is gradual re-introduction, perhaps starting with fermented dairy such as kefir and yogurt. Good luck!

JayJay · Answer 2 · 2011-10-30 01:51:46Z UTC

Hey...ya know some things aren't SUPPOSE to be tolerated. For instance, in college I drank quite a bit. In fact I thought it was pretty cool when I stopped getting hangovers. Sometimes when you continually ignore your bodies mechanisms telling you that what your doing is detrimental it stops sending you those signals. There is a whole lot of science to this, but I'm just skipping to the punch line.

I believe that is the same thing that happens to many on paleo/primal. I bet if you "slowly reintroduce" anything you will start to "tolerate" it better again, but the question is do you want to? Should you try very hard to override the sickening signals your getting? I bet if I started to drink heavily again I could stop getting hangovers!

I like ed's answer too....just giving a flip side on some of the more detrimental items that you may have eliminated.

affine · Answer 3 · 2011-10-30 02:28:07Z UTC

1

Vegans have quite the time eating meat if they have gone without it for at least (I think) two years. I do know that it is totally possible, and there is a complication with vegetarian diets reincorporating meat after an extended period of time.

answered Oct 30 2011 at 2:28

affine
496●1●8

	I wonder how much of this is physiological vs psychological? – Ed♦ Oct 30 2011 at 13:28
	100% Physiological. There is seriously a problem with their digestion of meat. – affine Oct 30 2011 at 17:41

Is it possible to create a food intolerance by abstaining from a food or food group?

3 Answers