A Calorie is a unit of heat. If you spell it with a big “C”, then it means food energy, if you don’t it gets a little weird. And even though it is so radically hard to believe, you can have to much energy, even if you call it “Paleo”.

Long long ago, back in the before time, in the time of our ancient Paleo ancestors, back before Paleo cookies, cakes and sauces, we used to eat to live not the other way around. Today, Paleo is popular because it works. Today, popularity brings profit and money spawns confusion.

Back in the day, when we walked to school fifteen miles in the snow, shoeless, we didn’t have seventeen cookbooks, or coconut flavored treats we called “Paleo”, we had meat vegetables and nuts. We didn’t have a Paleo expert at every corner with “his” version, we had “the” version, and the one and only version of Paleo that is acceptable is the one that heals, not the one that hurts or makes excuses.

Among the most forgotten of the Paleo lore; Calories are still Calories and too many of them, no matter how “good for you”, brings progress to a halt.

Vegetables

You hear this one all the time,”Get a chunk of meat the size of your palm, and fill the rest of the plate with vegetables until your heart is content.”

It’s called a loss leader when people will say anything in the beginning to get you to by what their selling. Hopefully, when they have to change their story to the truth, you keep buying.

But just like all food, vegetables have Calories and those Calories are primarily carbohydrates. If your anything like me, you could kill a damn garden of fresh vegetables if there truly was no limit.

To ensure we keep vegetable carbohydrates to a minimum, simply avoid them. Not all of the time mind you, but daily vegetable intake is rarely necessary. A simple respite from greens every other day is an easy way to make sure Calories stay within the range they are suppose to be, not the unlimited range they were never meant to be.

Meats

Thankfully it’s hard to over eat meat for many of us as we usually have a natural shut off for protein. Unless we mess with it.

When you jack with the natural state of meat you mess with our reaction to it. Meaning, grain fed as opposed to grass fed, or various animal combos like venison combined with pork to enhance flavor. Meat combo’s usually enable us to eat more than we normally would.

Too much protein can be toxic but that’s rare unless you have Melanoma or something of the like. It’s more likely that the extra protein we ingest will be broken down to it’s glycogenic amino acids and stored. After they are converted to sugar, the are stored as fat.

No matter what the newsstand rags say, too much protein, like everything else, causes problems. Focus on eating no more than 30% of your daily Calories from all protein sources. Most likely, assuming your eating enough fat, you could even consume much less than that and still reap the muscle building rewards.

Fats

The largest supply of our daily food energy can also be the most tricky. Fat is your best friend, but even the best of friends can do stuff that pisses you off.

When I ask most disheartened dieters to snapshot me their diet, it often says something like, ” I eat five ounces of meat, a cup of vegetables and a handful of nuts”. Since when did a handful become a unit of measure?

Nuts in particular have carbohydrates as well as those veggies. If your main fat source contains the very thing we try to minimize, then eating them in an unlimited, unmeasured amount will at the very least stall your progress.

Other fat sources such as avocado, and oils are also necessary great additions, but habitually hard to measure, or stop eating once you start for that matter. True, eating fat will satisfy leptin which shuts off hunger, however, that shut off valve most likely is not working properly if you have been immersed in a life of carbohydrates. Simply put, it may take some time to learn what full really is, especially if you have never really felt what “satisfied” feels like.

Don’t let fat become your “Paleo potato chip”, no matter how good it is for you, there is still a limit and it is somewhere in the area of 60-70% of your daily Caloric intake.

Even Paleo has it’s drawbacks and the biggest drawback is quickly becoming its popularity. Don’t listen to the hype, even the Paleo elixir has it’s limits, even good food can become bad food if you eat too much of it.

Strength:

Front Squat
1×5@60%/1×5@70%/1×5@75%/1×5@75%

Back Squat
1×5@65%/1×5@70%/1×5@75%

Hang Squat Clean
1,1,1,1,1

For Time:

“Partner up”

500m-Row
*Get on the rower next to your partner and race to 500m.

Race Cleans
3×5
*Load your bar with a very manageable load (not stupid light) and stand back to back with your partner. See who can get through five reps the fastest of the Hang squat clean.

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