welcome to mega wellness on it i'm your host Nikki Jensen I'm truly elated that I get to interview a woman who really is rocking it in the Paleo world her name is now Stevenson and she knows her stuff when it comes to paleo and getting fit now just opened her first paleo lifestyle studio in los angeles california where she offers paleo nutritional counseling worldwide she is the author of the book paleo East and a popular blog writer she has been featured on the dr. Oz Show twice along with her mentor dr. Loren Cordain welcome Nell Stephenson how are you thanks for having me on Nicki I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you yeah I'm really excited because you're the expert on paleo I wanted to just get to know what paleo really is yeah absolutely it's actually really simple it's a very common-sense way of eating it is based on the way our Paleolithic ancestors ate but it's executed with foods we can easily get in our farmers markets our grocery stores and even in our own backyard it's nothing more complicated than the idea that we should be eating locally seasonally lots of vegetables some fruit moderations healthy wild proteins like wild salmon and grass-fed meats and bounce that with some good fat sources like avocado olive oil nuts and seeds in moderation it's actually really just a common-sense way of eating not like one of these radical fad diets is often portrayed to be yeah and you know a lot of people have said that paleo can be a hard diet to follow I know that you make it so simple what do you say to people especially your clients on how to really simplify this well the first thing to do is to cut out all the misconceptions and focus on what it really is and when we look at it in terms of it's just simple clean food nothing packaged nothing boxes going back to roots if you could have picked it as needed or kills it or eaten it or hunted and gathered it it's probably more likely to be part of a healthy eating approach so if we cut away all the we need to go into all the misconceptions because there are so many but the bottom line is every meal should consist of real fresh whole food so every meal should be a template of lots of vegetables protein call it roughly the size of the palm of your hand and a nice Dolph of healthy fat you don't have to go crazy whether you're measuring and weighing or worried worrying about too many calories just keeping it all in balance and moderation is the key that's what I love about paleo I hated all the counting calories I mean that's just silliness just getting back to the roots is what's key now I really want to get it no dude yes the one thing I do want to point out is when I say that you don't need to count calories that doesn't mean that you can just eat a whole bag of nuts or you know go crazy eating ridiculous amounts of steak in one sitting that's not the idea I mean obviously that sort of it's not common sense but some people will say eat unlimited amount of fat or eat unlimited amount of protein that's not actually the case you do want to kind of keep it balanced so again if it makes if it doesn't make sense it's probably not something you want to be doing and people do tent it that nut example is one really common one where people tend to eat way too many nuts just because they're not really paying attention to the fact if they're really high and fat and often they're getting the not the best quality nuts you know roasted salted toasted and peanut oil that type of thing so ideally again keep that macronutrient ratio in mind every time we reading I'm an athlete I'm a paleo chef I'm somebody who's always really loved being healthy being active exercising racing healthy food I've always did food as seeing my art I went to culinary school after I did my studies and exercise phys and I I feel like I try to share a lot about how my own journey to being from being very sick as a child with stomach issues and finding paleo through trying lots of different ways of eating including named vegan including the zone including blood type while it was a painful journey at times I'm glad that I went through that because now I've got so much information that I can share with people and I find that being able to identify with other people that have gone through similar situations and also far worse situations where they stand you know fighting debilitating illnesses and my takeaway message that i really want everybody to understand is no matter how sick somebody is or unwell varying degrees not lack of health can all be so so helped by focusing on what we're eating it's not to say that if you're very sick and you go paleo tomorrow you're going to be back to 100% it is a slow process it's certainly more so for some people than others but to empower people with knowing that they can so greatly affect their health simply by choosing to eat real food and to avoid processed refined things that aren't really food anymore is just it's pretty cool now you just opened your first paleo lifestyle studio what is what is this all about the lifestyle studio is the brick and mortar version of something I've been doing online for quite a while my earlier part of my career was focused primarily on personal fitness training and then about a decade ago I started adding the nutritional component because as a personal trainer you're often asked by your clients for tips on how to eat properly what should i eat before a workout I'm going out to dinner what can I eat that's healthy but feels a little bit like a treat so on and so forth so I do have that's where my roots of my business started with personal fitness training and then they evolved into more of the nutritional component and I've had the opportunity over the past seven to ten years of working with people globally to help them implement paleo living into their lifestyle and so this studio is basically the the physical place where I can meet with clients both who are based in LA as well as traveler people who are not based in LA but who are traveling through la that I have the opportunity to meet with in person after maybe only knowing online for quite a period of time they can come in sit down talk about that nutrition and really focus on how I can help them and when you have that point of point contact in person it's really helpful so they can come in doing their weekly check-in talk about what's working what's not usually going off one of the download plans that I create and then for the custom clients so it's more focused on what I can do to help their specific day to day living with travel was racing with kids with anything that might contribute to effectively eating in any way shape or form so it's a really cool little studio and hoping that people can check it out when they're in LA fantastic now you have a paleo food delivery that I'm seeing and so do you also deliver paleo food yes I've actually it's not my company it's the company that I've partnered with called that's so paleo and they offer it's pretty cool nationwide fresh food delivery which I kind of had to do a double take and I thought how can it be fresh isn't it frozen and I've tasted it it's actually it's tasty it's quality it's organic its locally sourced and it does go nationwide fresh not frozen they use this really cool machine that I was able to view in person when I saw their facility which removes ninety-nine point nine percent of the oxygen allowing the food to be transported obviously with dry ice and so it's fresh not frozen and it's a really quality product and they're using only grass-fed organic meats yes the sourcing is hugely important to me exactly and their coupling it with fresh organic farm raised chicken and vegetables and all of that that are locally grown yeah they're the quality and the attention to detail is really important and that was one of the factors that I wanted to make sure was in place before I even considered recommending it very cool and so you just wrote your third both pocket paleo can you tell everybody about pocket paleo yeah pasta paleo is a series of three books came out first in ebook format so you can read it on your tablet and it will be coming out in print basically I focused on what team for breakfast with the trip snacks and what to eat for work out because those are the three areas that I found clients had the most particularly difficult time the dressing most people get their head around the idea that we should be having something like a salmon salad for lunch and maybe some filet with broccoli for dinner but when we take away the grain and the dairy people are wondering what to eat for breakfast because there you see eating bagels or oatmeal or yogurt and then person s there you see eating needs a highly processed 100 calories items in packages and that kind of thing and certainly was in the sports arena it goes even sand beyond it's just sports nutrition with powders and gels and this the mountain though really wanted to highlight that we can go paleo for all the time and give people ideas of how to simply prepare food to go no matter what the situation is and so let's just talk food for a minute because I'm I'm a foodie and I love to talk about food so can you give us a day in the life of somebody who is you know truly paleo yeah it's actually quite simple I like to remove the headings of breakfast lunch snack dinner and just call it food and once you do that and you reassign foods into categories of the macronutrients so in other words you have your proteins your fashion your vegetables it doesn't matter what time of day it is the only exception to this is when you're getting ready for we're recovering from certain workouts obviously the example would be if you're a runner and you're about to do a track workout I wouldn't advise you have a big bowl of broccoli a mistake right before you're going to the track but aside from when you're getting ready for or recovering from a workout all meals should have vegetables all meals should have protein all meals should have healthy fat and that's really the long and short of it so it sometimes takes a little bit of getting used to especially the meals I was talking about before like breakfast and snacks and so one way that to make a little bit easier is to choose for breakfast it already feel familiar to you for that time of day so if I were to suggest you should have a couple of poached eggs on some veggies for or even a veggie omelet that would feel like that makes sense it doesn't seem strange at all and then gradually transition to the idea that you know what there's nothing wrong with having leftover dinner for breakfast in fact that's what I had today I have a workout but not until later in the day so the breakfast I had a piece of bison steak some steamed kale some blueberries and some avocado so to me that's just food it's gotten normal it's not strange at all and I feel great compared to if I had gotten up and had even something that's natural but something like or bowls berries is that's a lot of sugar to have by itself there's if you were to have just fruit by itself there's no protein there's no fat so just to have that to get up and go and you know go to your offices not the best scenario so you want to always really remember that macronutrient ratio so for example breakfast could be you know call it a veggie omelet and some berries on the side and then a few hours later you might be hungry for a snack so it could be maybe an apple handful of raw walnuts as long as you're not following the autoimmune protocol you can have nuts and seeds in moderation and then lunch might be that salmon salad piece of wild salmon mixed greens and avocado ternoon snack might be an or a rap i really am a fan of getting people to eat seaweed because we tend to eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli cauliflower kale so we had a lot of supper and the problem is if we don't balance out so far out with a good source of iodine like seaweed we can compromise their thyroid function so it's really important to get some sea veggies in there and nori is Christine weed that we're all familiar with from when we would eat sushi you can use that as a wrap so you can throw some whatever approaching you have leftover throw some spinach in there may be some sliced turkey maybe some avocado and make these nice little handy wraps to go and then for dinner maybe it's that piece of grass fed filet and some grilled asparagus and that's pretty much it it's just vegetables all the time protein all the time and balancing it out with some healthy side oh my gosh now i'm hungry that sounds amazing well i wouldn't even have thought to put the nori wrap in there that's awesome that you just hit that right on the head it's really just opening up that opening up your mindset to realize food is food or it's not food so as little as possible stay away from things that are boxed packaged items there are foods that I refer to as in a pinch so say for example you're a businessman and you're traveling and you're going to be in meetings back to back there's no way you're going to have access to fresh vegetables and protein and that kind of thing where I same strategy that I use when I'm working with clients or doctors or nurses who can't exactly say okay I'm going to stop the surgery in and take a lunch break sometimes there's there's choices that you have to make it aren't the best case scenario and so for those situations you still take being a little bit creative I'll often have those clients for example take the doctor or the nurse sometimes ahead of time they'll make a smoothie and it doesn't have to be savory it might be a puree of last night's dinner roast chicken broccoli some broth and some olive oil thrown into the Vitamix making it into a smoothie stick that in a coffee cup and stick it in the fridge when you get to the office or to the hospital and when you've got that three minutes between patients there's your quick balanced meal on the go so it takes a little bit of preparation but it's still doable and it's worth spending maybe one hour a week doing some steaming some baking of proteins getting up stuff ready to go so that you have a readily available for you during the week and you don't end up in a situation where you're starving and there's no other option but whatever is in your offices break room or whatever who you might find them you know at a roadside truck stops I've been in that spot before where I have been overly hungry and then I start to crave sugar and so then I start to go for something more sugary when I should be going for something more protein that's an important thing to notice is even I feel like you said ideal you don't want to get to that place where your blood sugar is dropping so low that you're you're falling into into that category of feeling like you need sugar the brain does need some sugar to function but that's the key some so even if you find yourself in that situation you can still stop that awful blood sugar insulin roller coaster by still going to get some protein and fat love it and so when we buy this really good quality you know meet it has to be grass fed in order for it to be considered paleo lore primal correct yes definitely okay and again but i do want to i do want to highlight this gray area too if you're in that situation say for example you're traveling in a new place you're not familiar with what the different restaurant offerings are you don't have any you run out of the food that you brought with you and you go to a restaurant and the choices are steak or pasta just just a very simple example i still think the steak is a better option than the pasta it's not to say that I think grain-fed meat is a good option but there are the bottom line is unless you are really living in a bubble there are going to be times where you have to make a choice and choose the better option of to less than great options and I still so that's kind of something you need to to keep in mind with the whole paleo approach because I I do recognize that when I was first starting to teach paleo is a little bit too dogmatic and I don't want ever people to take away the message that it's one hundred percent or nothing and I mean like I said we're all going to sometimes be in a situation where there are two choices or three choices and none of them are great but we've got to pick the one that's the least offensive to the potty gotcha and you want a ton of recipes on your website pay luis com how did you come up with that the name pay louise stuff i love I feel like Pam I will thank you well I came with the name about gosh probably in 2010 or 2011 and by that point I have been following the paleo reading for about five years and I feel like there's such a preponderance of the imagery of caveman diet cave Edith cave woman that and then a lot of people who perpetuate it with you know that whole spread Flintstone image or Wilma Flintstone and there's nothing wrong with that as long as the dice being done properly I think that's awesome and everybody's going to respond to a different types of imagery and that sort of thing but I wanted I specifically wanted people to know that if you're not into the caveman aesthetic which I'm not you can still do this healthy way of eating and I hate to call it a day it really is a lifestyle but I just wanted people to get that it can be done you know with style can be gender the modern manner it doesn't have to be Katie and so Kayleigh Alicia came from Pam pairing the word paleo with the word fashionista and well-off there it was yeah you really feminized it and I love that because then I feel like women can really identify it without having to think of like a I don't know Geico commercial or something with the cavemen yeah exactly and I mean and the bottom line is that you know just to be clear there's room for all of us there's room for my approach there's room for a cave men approached there's room for a primal approach it's just different iterations of different approaches that work for different people and you know my sticking point is I really wish that the different iterations of paleo would would classify themselves accordingly so for example one of the reasons I really love what Mark dissin does is his approach is primal he uses dairy that's awesome that's his approach that primal means using Gary the thing that I have more of a difficult time with is when people call something paleo that's really not paleo like paleo but i also have sprouted grains well that's not really paleo that would be kind of like when i was a vegan for two years when i started eating fish I couldn't call myself vegan anymore because you don't eat fish when you're vegan so that's kind of the clarification because to have an iteration of paleo with foods that are not part of the diet I think it's the problem that it causes is people who would benefit from the real paleo don't get to tried real paleo because they've heard their friend try a version which had butter and bacon and too many paleo treats they've heard their friends say that they tried it didn't work and so this person who say maybe has autoimmune conditions who would really really benefit from what paleo really is doesn't ever try it because their friend told them it didn't work so that's kind of where it you know where my my passion comes from it's not to say that you know John or Joe or X or Y is wrong it's just I want people to try what it really is because they can get really healthy from it would you suggest high protein before a workout well it's not i don't think that paleo is high protein or high fat is just high earth than the you know the US RDA recommend as far as fueling for recovering from a workout and how protein clays roll it depends on the type of workout the duration the intensity what time of day the person's doing it and what type of goals the person has so somebody who is a crossfitter doing the workout six o'clock in the morning it's going to have a very different feeling and recovery strategy for somebody like myself who's an endurance athlete just going out for a six-hour bike ride and actually go into a lot of detail not specific topic in pocket area for work out and the cool thing about that is i have the honor of connecting with joe frills who's the world-renowned triathlon coach and also an old friend and colleague of dr. Cordain he and i were invited last april to go to airbus in tambaram to deliver the keynote speech on how paleo eating and activity kids positively affect workplace productivity which is amazing and during that time i had a chance to speak with him a lot more and he's completely on board with paleo so for anybody out there that's listening thinking well i'm an endurance athlete i don't think i'll have the fuel for you know for competing at without having that you know my bagels in my pasta i can assure you that the reason that i was able to perform and go from a very average age group track like to a very competitive athlete and compete seven times that World Championships in Kona was because I found out about the Paleo diet so it's a combination of transitioning yourself away from becoming so dependent on refined carbohydrates becoming more efficient at being a fat burner and feeling your body as much as possible with real food I love it now you are just a book of knowledge thank you so much for being a part of mega wellness summit sure that everyone had aha moment on this call if you want to connect with now visit her at paley we stay calm if you're in la cendre à tweet at Nell Stevenson and if you're on Facebook she's at pay Louise stuff now you are a gem thank you so much thanks for making she ate your time thanks for inviting me to be on no problem thank you .
Video Description:
Nell Stephenson, Paleo expert, she wrote the book Paleoista and popular blog writer.
Here's what you'll learn in this video:
-Clears up any misconceptions of what the Paleo diet is and how it can transform your diet and life
- Simplifies the Paleo diet and lifestyle
- Provides us some insight into Paleo recipes and what to eat while on a Paleo diet
Connect with Nell Stephenson: www.paleoista.com
October 05, 2020
Tags :
Paleo
,
Paleo Diet
,
THE PALEO DIET
,
Video
Subscribe by Email
Follow Updates Articles from This Blog via Email
No Comments