Trying Tim Ferriss's "no grain" diet for 30 days...

I doubt there's anything terribly wrong with cutting out dietary grains, but the basis for a "paleo" diet appears to rest on two principal assumptions:

1. Pre-agricultural humans didn't eat grains

2. The human digestive system has evolved little since the introduction of agriculture

The problem is that both of these assumptions are dubious at best. If paleolithic humans didn't eat grains, then how were grains ever domesticated in the first place? Obviously, someone was eating grains in the wild, and evidently over time people learned how to cultivate them. I have no trouble believing that the paleo diet contained far fewer grains than the typical post-agricultural diet, but that suggests eating select whole grains in moderation, not eliminating them entirely.

In addition, the idea that ten thousand years isn't enough time for substantial evolution is clearly wrong. The reason the New World was ravaged by smallpox, plague, influenza, etc., upon contact with Europeans was because Americans (in the generalized sense) lacked the resistance that Eurasians had evolved in the time since the invention of agriculture. Meanwhile, some people (especially northern Europeans) have no trouble digesting milk because they evolved the ability to metabolize lactose—presumably a recent innovation, since dairy animals were domesticated around the same time as grains. (Yet many "paleo" advocates also recommend eschewing dairy.) Indeed, "lactose intolerance" is a misnomer; what's remarkable is that anyone is lactose-tolerant—lactose-tolerant humans are the only mammals to produce the necessary lactase enzyme as adults. There is every reason to expect that a similar evolutionary process has led to an enhanced ability to digest grains; it may not be true, but it should be the null hypothesis.

In short, the basic idea of eating nutrient-dense foods is based on sound science, but the complete elimination of perfectly healthy foods such as whole grains and dairy doesn't have any basis in reality.

I did a similar experiment last year. For 3 months I stuck to a low carb diet, influenced by the Atkin's diet, but not following it strictly. I was a very healthy weight and decided to try it after a number of arguments with friends and family where I defended the science behind it. I wanted to see whether it was genuinely a healthy diet, and not just the weight loss tool that it was getting all the buzz about.

I'm pleased to say the results where overwhelmingly positive. After the first unpleasant week as my body adjusted, I started to feel more energetic, less hungry and I needed less sleep. The biggest quantitative improvement though was the quality of my skin. I've always had problems with acne, even now I'm past my troubled teen years but on a low carb diet my skin almost completely cleared up. I'm sure it was more nutritious too because when you're not bulking your meals out with pasta, rice or potatoes, you don't have much choice other than to eat more veg.

After about 3 months, enough carbohydrate had crept back into my diet that I wasn't really doing anything special anymore, but I'm very tempted to go back and try to stick to it properly.

Good luck with your own experiment!

I’ve vacillated from a near-all vegetarian diet (with fish 1x a week, mostly kidney beans for protein and eggs) back to this more "primal diet" of non-grains / breads.

Starting a few years ago, and overweight, I started feeling healthier after a few weeks. Over the next year dropped 55 lbs, then an addition 15 lbs of fat in another 3-5 months. This was without much exercise (due to a lower-back injury), though I would walk a few times a week. Which is not enough :)

I am still in a similar eating pattern (this is not a diet, it’s a way of healthy eating); lots of vegetables, meat and eggs daily. I may have grains / bread (pizza or other junk) on the weekend if I am inclined. I gradually turned into this eating lifestyle by making small eating changes 1x per week.

Such as, getting rid of soda. Then getting rid of any deserts. Getting rid of bread at night. Getting rid of all pasta’s, etc. Slow progression to healthier eating. After a time, junk food will literally make you sick and not be as tasty..though if I’m missing something (like good fats or protein), I sometimes go nuts and eat 2 burritos or 3 burgers.

I go through these groceries weekly, cooking 2-4x meals per day.

12-24 eggs

2-3 steaks (frozen), or pork, or ground beef (Bison is tasty)

2-4 servings of fish (frozen, tilapia, halibut etc)

~1 can of kidney beans (against Tim Ferris’ article)

Number of handfuls of nuts; almonds, cashews, etc.

½ frozen bag of green beans

½ frozen bag of broccoli

1 bag of Chinese broccoli

3-4 peppers (green, red)

2-3 avocado’s

2-4 tomato’s

2 bags of spinach

I also used to eat more than 5 meals a day, now down to 2-4 (mostly a lot of snacks). Eating healthier = less fuel needed to function.

Edit: It took a number of MONTHS to get over feeling lethargic from not having any grains / bread. For those months I still had some grain / bread for lunch.

Cutting out grains isn't just about the gluten, but about the starch and sugar too. Replacing grains with fruit and potatoes is likely not optimal.

I've been eating paleo/primal/low-carb (whatever) for half a year now. The need/craving for sweets and carby stuff disappears in a week (for me, YMMV). I eat about the same as I used to (which means I'm eating more meat and veggies to compensate) and don't recognize the hunger aspect of it at all. What I like most is the complete lack of insulin surge after a meal. I can eat a meal and immediatelly go sporting, because there is no insulin spike and thus no energy dip.

However, each body reacts differently, and it might now work for you. I know some people stay hungry without noticing anything.

I wouldn't be surprised if this works, because I've done something similarly drastic that worked for me. Here's my story:

Last year I read something by Giles Bowkett about how he lost weight and got healthy. I've read about many fad diets and they all seem crazy or impractical. What he described sounded just boring enough to work. If you think about what a silver-bullet diet would look like, this is it. Here's his touched up version of what I originally read: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-i-lost-75-pound...

It's Dr. Fuhrmann's Eat To Live diet: Eat more vegetables. Lots more. Eat mostly vegetables. I didn't follow the diet exactly. I just tried to eat lots more vegetables. I was a young, fairly healthy guy but maybe 15 lbs overweight. I ate more vegetables, lost 10 lbs in a month, and felt fantastic doing it. I didn't eat any less or more. I didn't workout more. I simply lost weight and felt great.

I don't know if the no-grain thing will work for anybody, but the more vegetables thing sure worked for me.

What strikes me as odd about this is that grains are a perfectly natural food source and a staple of plenty of really healthy people, from all around the world, and for as far back in history as you care to delve. Why not eat grains?

And also, since this appears to be about gluten: it cracks me up that one health food movement (the macrobiotic movement) get away with promoting seitan (which is just fried/steamed/baked wheat gluten) as a health food, while another movement says that gluten kills you.

Good for you for trying the no-grain diet! Just one question, however: you seem to eat food that is likely to include corn syrup. For example: the smoothie at McDonald's. Don't you think corn syrup should also be eliminated?

It probably shouldn't be referred to as Tim Ferris' "no grain" diet. The original post was Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution. The goal isn't to eat no grain. The goal is to eat no gluten. Grain just happens to contain gluten.

It should probably be called No Gluten diet or refer to Robb Wolf instead since he wrote the book and did all of the research.

"The second worst part of this diet is that I'm always hungry." I think that's the basis of this whole diet. I think it's reasonable to assume that the average American diet is far from ideal for the mostly sedentary lifestyles we lead (once again, talking only about the average case). So any change is an improvement. What I want to see is a study that pits the paleo diet against, say the low carb diet, against just a balanced carb/protein/fat diet against a control group. My wife was telling me about a study that did a low carb vs balanced vs control experiment and the balanced diet won by an appreciable margin, but I don't have any links handy.

Without grains and agriculture... the earth could not sustain billions of people.

Ferriss' article discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1707305

Good luck. You may be interested in the paleo hacks site. It's one of them stack overflow sites for questions about stuff related to the paleo diet and lifestyle: http://paleohacks.com/

Eggs seem conspicuously absent.