Your Personal Paleo Code: The 3-Step Plan to Lose Weight, Reverse Disease, and Stay Fit and Healthy for Life

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To all who struggle with chronic illness: may this book be a catalyst for healing and self-discovery

We live in extraordinary times. Human ingenuity has given us flight, space travel, lasers, the Internet, and amazing medical technologies that can help the deaf hear and the blind see. Biohackers and tech folks talk of uploading the consciousness before death, allowing the mind a second (and presumably very lengthy) existence as a program. So much is possible. Yet the highly modern
Homo sapiens
is struggling with debilitating and chronic health conditions: obesity, depression, diabetes, autoimmune disease, and cancer, among others.

A number of doctors, laypeople, and scientists have come to accept the mismatch hypothesis to explain much of modern chronic disease. Our species, having had only a few hundred generations to adapt to agriculture—and only decades to adjust to the lightbulb and the digital age—is simply not equipped to handle industrial processed food, endless artificial light, and a sedentary modern life. As a psychiatrist, a medical doctor specializing in mental illness, I deal with the emotional and neurological consequences of this mismatch all the time in my clinical practice. We might call the low mood, crying spells, anxiety, and insomnia depressive disorder, but in truth, it is a breakdown of resiliency. Members of our hardy species can take only so much stress before we begin to experience anxiety, depression, and other consequences of our frenetic lives. To go forward into the future, we have to come to terms with our biology and its limitations. We must rebuild our resiliency to recover our health.

The prescription seems simple enough: Eat wholesome, real foods. Get plenty of sleep along with appropriate play and activity. But as a physician and working mother, I know far too well how difficult it can be to
handle the pace of modern life, meet the needs of your family, and find the time and patience to keep yourself truly healthy and functioning at your best. In addition, despite the fact that we are all members of the same species, we each have very individual needs based on current health conditions and activity.

Chris Kresser struggled with serious, disabling health problems that modern medicine seemed to have no solution for. He used science, wisdom, and trial and error to heal himself, and due to that experience, he decided to pursue integrative medicine. He chose a master’s program in California that combined Western and Chinese medicine, because he felt the holistic model it offered gave him a better way to understand and help the ill than the fragmented, specialty model of conventional medicine. His clinical experience, curiosity, and scientific savvy helped him to become enormously successful. His private practice has thrived, and his website and podcasts reach hundreds of thousands of eager readers and listeners around the world.

With
Your Personal Paleo Code,
Chris sets out the basic prescription for health and resiliency and then offers techniques so you can tailor the program for
your
needs and make it work on a personal level. His three-step program steers you to diet and lifestyle changes that will have you feeling better than you have in years—perhaps better than you’ve ever felt. Chris gives you everything you need—not just recipes but a recipe for living—to achieve that improvement in health and functioning, but then he takes that a step further and addresses the complexities of your personal situation. Everything is spelled out in this book, and in addition, his website offers bonus chapters, more details on the science behind the Paleo movement, and copious online tools to ease your transition to good health.

By uncovering your own Personal Paleo Code, you can benefit from Chris’s experience, clinical acumen, wisdom, and common sense to find that state of lasting health that can be so elusive in the modern world. Recover your natural human resiliency and thrive.

Emily Deans, MD

Board-Certified Psychiatrist

Clinical Instructor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

You may have picked up this book for several reasons.

You may want to lose weight, boost your energy, or improve your overall health. You may be looking for ways to naturally treat a particular health problem, such as irritable bowel syndrome, hypothyroidism, or high blood pressure. You may feel well already but want to optimize your athletic performance, feel sharper at work, or increase your longevity.

What if you could create your own personalized approach to nutrition, one that is designed exactly for your body? An approach that respects the wisdom of your genetic template but also acknowledges your own unique circumstances and needs? This is exactly what I’m going to teach you how to do in this book. I call it your Personal Paleo Code—your unique prescription for optimal health.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Paleo movement. Millions of people around the planet are joining this health revolution based on the latest cutting-edge science, seeking to eat and live in closer harmony with human genetics and biology. This development has come just in time. Throughout the industrialized world, humans are in a health crisis, getting sicker and fatter every year, dying from chronic diseases our ancestors never faced. We thrive when we eat and live a certain way, and our profound sickness stems directly from contemporary choices far different from that
ideal way of living. We were never meant to eat the sugar, refined flour, and industrial seed oils that are the mainstay of the standard American diet (and what an apt acronym that makes!). We were never meant to work around the clock under the glare of artificial lights. Or spend half our lives sitting and staring at computer screens. Or live in relative isolation, with Facebook and Twitter standing in for genuine human contact.

Both the fossil record and studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures suggest that our Paleolithic forebears enjoyed excellent health: they were lean, fit, and apparently free of chronic disease. The benefits of copying their lifestyle are undeniable. Those who walk the Paleo road report near-effortless weight loss, newfound vitality, and, often, miraculous resolution of the most dire health issues. However, even the most dedicated Paleo purists hit a wall. Weight loss stalls. Symptoms persist. Energy flags. People tire of restricted eating.

As a licensed clinician who practices functional medicine (different than conventional medicine; see
here
), I specialize in helping seriously ill patients figure out natural solutions to their health challenges. Through in-depth research, personal experience, and clinical investigation, I developed a three-step process to help them. The first step is the Thirty-Day Reset Diet, which follows the typical Paleo approach very closely. The results from Step 1 are amazing. “I’m medication-free after just thirty days,” one patient told me. “I feel like a new man!” Another said, “I’ve never felt or looked better in my life.” “Energy levels more even, tennis elbow inflammation disappeared, asthma improved, waistline shrunk,” reported another. The testimonials speak for themselves. Paleo works.

However, as I tracked the experiences of people, including some of my patients, who adhered to the typical Paleo approach, I began to notice certain drawbacks. Sometimes the benefits don’t go far enough—or they’re not sustainable.

I don’t stop after Step 1 with my patients for exactly this reason. I’ve discovered that Paleo functions best as a general template, not a rigid prescription. Think of it as a starting point, not a destination. Even though we all share much of the same DNA, we each have unique
circumstances and needs. We need a program that addresses our specific health issues. A more flexible, dynamic approach that recognizes the joys of eating yet goes far beyond food and takes into account how each of us likes to move, live, love. My goal is to help people, individual by individual, discover what works for them and keep them from adhering to a dogmatic regimen just because it sounds authentic.

We don’t live in the Paleolithic era anymore. We’re not cavemen, so why should we follow a strict caveman diet? Why should we cut out foods we love and might thrive on simply because our ancestors didn’t eat them? We’ve evolved, and we need a plan that’s evolved to meet our individual needs and preferences. (Some of my patients are even vegetarians—anathema to hard-core meat-eating Paleo purists.) Why not combine the best of ancient wisdom and the best of modern nutrition?

That’s why I created the three-step Personal Paleo Code: an approach custom-made for your individual genetic blueprint, one that enables you to enjoy lifelong health and vitality.

If you’re like most of my patients, you’ve tried a lot of diets over the years. Some did nothing at all, some made you worse, and some worked—for a little while. Or maybe they solved some problems (like being overweight), but caused others (you were exhausted all the time, your hair fell out, and your hands and feet felt like ice cubes).

Perhaps you’ve already tried a Paleo-style diet, eating the same kinds of natural foods our ancestors enjoyed. At first, you were ecstatic. You lost weight and felt so much better. But after a while, you noticed some of your old problems creeping back in. Or maybe you hit a plateau and just couldn’t lose those last ten pounds no matter what you did. Or maybe you just got tired of special diets in general and wanted to find a better approach to nutrition that would be more sustainable over the long term.

So you set out to find some help. You search some of the popular health websites, post a few messages in discussion forums, and e-mail your friends who are trying the same thing.

Everyone is happy to help—you get a ton of advice. The problem is, it’s all different!

A new study just proclaimed the Mediterranean diet as the best. “Very low-carb is the way to go,” you hear on that morning talk show; didn’t another expert on that same show say the exact same thing about vegan diets last week? “No, you’ve got to eliminate nightshades and eggs,” a friend says. “Dr. Google” says that if you’ve got a thyroid problem, you need to eat a lot more starchy vegetables and fruit. One website says yogurt helps with digestion; another says you should avoid dairy entirely.

It’s enough to make you crazy.

You want to feel better, lose weight, and fix your health problems—but how do you know you’re making the right choices? And how do you ensure that the next diet you try doesn’t end up being yet another failed experiment?

Here’s the truth: There is no single formula to follow that will guarantee you perfect health in three weeks—or seven days, or any other arbitrary number you find on the bestseller list. As seductive as that sounds, it just doesn’t work that way. The only formula I want to give you is the formula for figuring out how not to follow a formula! If my clinical experience treating patients has taught me one thing, it’s this: there’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to diet and lifestyle. After all, the fossil record indicates that not all Paleolithic people ate the same way. So why should we expect a single program to be the perfect fit for everybody?

Personalization is the missing ingredient. I’ve found that even two people who come to my office with the exact same health condition might need different solutions. For example, I recently saw two patients with ulcerative colitis. Eating even a small amount of dairy sent one running to the bathroom in three seconds flat. For the other, fermented dairy (e.g., yogurt or kefir) was a crucial component of the healing process. This is why so many typical diets—even very good ones, like the Paleo diet—often fail in the long run, and it’s why I teach all my clients how to discover their own unique Personal Paleo Code. Because no two patients are alike, no two walk out of my office with the same plan.

For example, when Tina, age fifty-four, visited my office, she was almost forty-five pounds overweight and had high blood pressure and early-stage type 2 diabetes. She was fed up with feeling so sluggish and hated the way her clothes fit. “I tried every low-fat diet out there, but nothing works,” she told me. I put her on a lower-carbohydrate version of my Step 1 Reset Diet, with a few additional tweaks because of her blood-sugar problems. She began to lose weight immediately while enjoying foods her doctors had forbidden, like red meat and butter. “I can’t get over it,” she said. “I’m never hungry, and I don’t feel deprived!” After three months, Tina had lost thirty-five pounds; her skin glowed, her digestive system ran smoothly, and there was no sign of diabetes. “I’ve never felt better,” she told me, “and my doctor is amazed by my test results.”

When Mark, age thirty-three, came to see me, he was virtually crippled by Crohn’s disease, spending much of his day in the bathroom. He was on a cocktail of medications, including steroids and mesalamine. “I’m scared,” he told me. “My gastroenterologist wants to remove part of my colon.” Mark was desperate to avoid surgery. I decided that his Personal Paleo Code would include an intensive gut-healing diet, along with some stress-reducing measures. Mark felt dramatically better in just a week. Within a month, he felt like a new person. Six months later, Mark was in complete clinical remission, no surgery necessary!

At thirty-eight, Sam couldn’t control his blood pressure. His doctor wanted him to go on medication to lower it. During my intake examination, I asked Sam about his diet. “It’s funny,” he told me, “but I went on one of those very low-carb diets to lose weight, and my blood pressure shot up.” I suspected that Sam might be potassium deficient, which can worsen high blood pressure. His Personal Paleo Code included potassium-rich foods like potatoes, plantains, and cold-water fish, along with two cups a day of hibiscus tea, which has been shown to decrease blood pressure. Three months later, Sam’s blood pressure was normal—without medication.

In all these cases, and hundreds of others like them, I worked closely with these people to determine each one’s unique formula for vibrant good health. Now I’m going to teach you how to do it for yourself. First,
though, I’d like to give you some background on why I’m such an ardent believer in this lifestyle. My personal experience is what motivates me to share my knowledge with others, because finding my own Personal Paleo Code changed—even saved—my life.

My own journey into the Personal Paleo Code lifestyle began with a devastating illness—one that dogged me for more than a decade.

In 1998, not long after I graduated from college, I quit my job, sold off my possessions, and took off to see the world. Thailand was the first stop on my trip. I studied traditional Thai massage, Kriya yoga, and Vipassana meditation, deepening the practice I’d begun as an eighteen-year-old.

The next stop on my trip was Indonesia. I’m a lifelong surfer, so I was drawn to this mecca for its perfect waves and warm water. Then one day I woke up delirious, with a high temperature, chills, vomiting, and severe diarrhea. (I later found out that I, along with several other surfers, had been sickened when some locals dug a trench that allowed stagnant water polluted with cow feces to drain into the surf break.) An Australian friend gradually nursed me back to health with some antibiotics in his medical kit.

After recuperating, I tried to continue my world tour, but my recurring illness forced me to head back to the States. The first doctor I saw, suspecting parasites, gave me powerful antibiotics that initially worked, but eventually I felt worse again: exhausted, listless, with nearly continuous digestive distress. Unfortunately, my illness lingered, and over the next few years I saw at least fifteen doctors; nobody could tell me what was wrong, and nothing they told me to do worked.

I decided to attend graduate school to study traditional Chinese medicine. Perhaps herbal medicine and dietary changes might help where conventional doctors and antibiotics had failed. I tried vegetarian and macrobiotic vegan diets and I consulted with several different professors at my school who had expertise in treating digestive problems. Nothing helped. After two years, determined to find a cure, I dropped out of school
and moved to the Esalen Institute, a residential community and retreat center in Big Sur, California, that offers holistic educational and personal development programs. I’d begun to wonder whether there might be an emotional, a psychological, or even a spiritual element to my illness.

My time at Esalen was transformative, mind-and heart-opening, and healing at the deepest levels. My experiences there helped me to accept my illness and find peace in the midst of the intense struggles I was going through. But unfortunately, they didn’t heal my body. I was still suffering from severe digestive distress and fatigue and developing new symptoms like muscle and joint pain, difficulty concentrating and memory issues, and insomnia.

The next few years were the most challenging of my life. With my savings exhausted, I moved back to Los Angeles and found myself working long hours in a stressful position at a start-up company. Within two years, I had a complete breakdown; I was utterly exhausted and demoralized after years of illness, pain, and unsuccessful searches for answers. I had seen world-renowned doctors, specialists in every field of alternative medicine, shamans, energy workers, psychotherapists, and spiritual teachers. I’d taken multiple courses of antibiotics, steroids, and anti-inflammatories. I’d tried every special diet under the sun; my “supplement graveyard” had more than a hundred bottles of herbs, potions, and pills I’d taken over the years. I was beginning to lose hope.

Then one day I walked into a bookstore and saw a book called
Nourishing Traditions
on display. It advocated a real-food, nutrient-dense approach to illness based on traditional diets. Something about this resonated deeply with me. Hey, I’d tried every other diet; why not give this one a shot? I started eating the foods the book recommended: bone-broth soups, sauerkraut, fermented dairy products, slow-cooked meats, eggs, and cold-water, fatty fish. I felt better almost immediately. However, even though I used the extensive preparation methods suggested in the book (including soaking and fermentation), the whole grains and legumes recommended irritated my gut—so I eliminated them, along with industrial seed oils (corn, soybean, cotton, sunflower, and safflower), sugar, and
all processed and refined foods. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was on a Paleo diet.