A new type of dietary challenge: eat less meat
It started after my last post about the Paleo diet being a plant-based diet. After writing that post, I challenged myself to put those words into action a little more seriously. When I reflected on my own diet, I realize that I was eating meat not just every day, but with every meal. Think back to our prehistoric ancestors: no doubt they ate meat, but certainly didn’t have access to it every day. Perhaps even weeks or months would pass between successful hunts. Striving for a more consistent approach to ancestral health, I decided to reduce my meat intake. To begin, I just decided to cut down to eat meat once a day, and I’ve been doing it that way for the past month. When I do eat meat, I still try to only consume high-quality Paleo approved meats such as pasture raised pork, cage free chicken, grass fed beef, as well as wild caught fish. What does that look like? Typically for breakfast I would have a cup of coffee with cream or some eggs, or skip it altogether as I often do. For lunch I would have a large salad with mixed veggies topped with avocado, macadamia nuts, sweet potatoes, or roasted butternut squash. Then at dinner time I would try to eat a modest portion of high quality protein with veggie–the typical Paleo diet meal.
What are the positives?
- Great energy level: First and foremost, I just feel good. Not that I felt bad before this new challenge, but sometimes after a heavy meal containing significant protein I found myself feeling full and tired. That certainly has not been a problem in the past month. My energy level has been great, but I have found that I feel less satiated without protein.
- No loss in muscle mass/strength: Another concern I had was whether reducing protein intake would diminish muscle mass. Now I haven’t done any sophisticated testing such as a DEXA scan, but haven’t noticed a difference in my strength or in measurements.
- Cost/ease. There’s no doubt that packing a lunch consisting of lettuce with a couple of chopped veggies, nuts, and maybe some avocado is a lot easier and cheaper to pack that one involving well sourced animal protein. This is especially true because unless I pack my own lunch, the quality of animal protein I get in the hospital cafeteria or at a local restaurant is not optimal.
What are the negatives
- Reduced satiety: Reducing meat isn’t really that hard, even for a devotee such as myself, but i have found myself feeling hungrier than usual. I also have fallen into the trap of replacing the calories and satiety that I would get from protein sources with less favorable carbohydrate sources. For instance, I have been feeling hungry after lunch at like 3pm and grabbing things like hummus or even a bag of potato chips, which I never used to do. Clearly I think there is some type of calorie equilibrium affect going on here. I can see how vegans and vegetarians still struggle with their weight, as you feel more compelled to eat more often without the satiating effect of protein.
- No weight loss (yet): Not that I’ve been trying to lose weight, but I am frankly a little bit surprised that I haven’t lost any by cutting out quite a significant amount of protein. This is proof that I am just simply replacing calories of one type with calories of another. But then again, its only been a month!
Conclusions?
I found that reducing animal protein to once per day is not particularly challenging in and of itself, the challenging part can be finding appropriate food options to eat instead and still maintain satiety. As far as dietary interventions go, a one-month experiment is actually pretty short. Based on my experience and after considering the pros and cons I think I will continue this for at least another month or two. Will be interesting to see if any biomarkers, particularly LDL cholesterol are impacted. I may even consider going meat free for days at a time (a weekend carnivore?) and see how that goes. In the end, I think most of us paleo folks consume too much animal protein and could stand to cut down a bit. The optimal amount is still up for debate. The most important thing remains to eat quality animal products and not replace protein with junky carb-heavy snacks.
~Brendan