November 30, 2023

I started a self experiment and conducted an ancient experiment for 30 days. In this blog, you can learn about my experience in stone age diet, whether this form of nutrition is suitable for daily use, and whether you can lose weight through ancient diet!

Paleosmoothie mit Beeren, Nüssen und Granatapfelkernen

I like challenges. It is mainly sports challenges that push me to the limit, such as tough mudder, and help me grow in terms of personal and performance through new experiences.
However, I am also a loyal fan of food self experiment and trying different forms of nutrition. From ketogenic diet to raw diet, I have tried almost all methods.
Some time ago, I decided that it was time for a new self experiment: 30 day ancient diet – the dietary challenge of the stone age.
You can learn what ancient is and what foods you can eat in my last blog “30 days ancient nutrition”.
After searching a lot about “stone age diet” on the Internet and storing various recipes, I can finally start my own experiment.
First thing: I often use the word “diet” in my blog. This word sometimes leads to misunderstanding. Because I don’t mean a calorie restricted diet designed to lose weight or fat. The English word “diet” basically refers to “nutritional form” or “diet”. So when I say ancient diet, I just mean the diet of the stone age.
Buy ancient diet
I have to admit that it is relatively easy for me to buy my ancient diet. Even before the ancient diet, I ate healthily, bought a lot of vegetables, and bought less white flour products and convenience foods.
Because I usually skip the candy aisle in the supermarket, the only difficulty for me is the frozen dairy products.
I like dairy products. According to the saying “you are what you eat”, I may be a mozzarella cheese ball, or at least a fruit yogurt. Because cheese and cooperation with me. On the plate every day. Morning coffee with milk, lunch salad with goat cheese, afternoon yogurt with fresh fruit.
In the nutrition of the stone age, all products from cattle, sheep and goats were absolutely taboo. Are dairy products harmful?
I don’t want to answer this question. However, I do believe that any food, when eaten in excess, will be harmful. If you only eat coarse grains, you won’t do any good to digestion.
However, I realized long ago that my consumption of dairy products is very rampant, and ancient diet is the ideal way to solve this problem.

My experience of stone age diet

古蔬菜炒不同类型的蔬菜

Like any dietary change, I keep all “unqualified” foods to a minimum before starting the ancient diet. As a precaution, I put cornflakes in the last corner of the storage room, frozen the bread, and gave chocolate ice cream cones to others.
Prepare your own ancient food
Paleo works very well – at least on your own four walls. Because as long as I can plan my meals, choose and prepare the ingredients myself, the nutrition of the stone age will be possible without difficulty.
Some Paleolithic recipes, you can use them to come up with simple stone age recipes, these recipes taste good, but they are not completely innocent.
The following applies to the ancient diet: “well prepared is half dead”.
As long as you only put ancient food in the shopping cart of the supermarket, choose some good (especially delicious) recipes, and convince yourself that you really want to take this challenge seriously, there is little chance of success left in the way of ancient food.
Ancient in the restaurant
Although it is not difficult to live in the Paleolithic age at home, stone age diet is a real problem when dining out.
On my first day, during the company dinner, several colleagues and I sat at a long table, where we could choose between spaghetti with shrimp, Corn Chicken with rice and Asian vegetables.
Then I decided to choose the latter and put the rice on my neighbor’s plate. However, my food is not 100% suitable for the stone age. Asian vegetables are served in sauces (definitely not Paleolithic). I don’t know what kind of oil chefs use to fry Corn Chicken.
Anyone who goes to a restaurant should relax their stone age diet on this day, or go to those restaurants whose dishes correspond to the ancient diet. On the paleo 360 page, you can find an overview of German restaurants and cafes that offer such services. Click here to get the ancient restaurant guide!
Ancient in the journey
Just like restaurants, travel may pose a medium to high challenge to the nutrition of the stone age.
Although I am usually an absolute fan of buffet breakfast, I try to shorten the hotel breakfast during the ancient diet.
There used to be bread rolls with jam, fruit yogurt and milk mixed breakfast. Because I can’t make fresh spinach and banana smoothie for myself in the hotel, I can only eat the most primitive ancient food in the first meal of the day. Raw vegetables and boiled eggs. Definitely not a delicious breakfast!
On the third morning, I just looked at the eggs and felt sick. Since then, I only ate raw vegetables for breakfast.
In fact, food, cooking and meals are very important to me, but soon, I found that breakfast in this hotel has nothing to do with enjoyment, but more to do with eating.
When I can drink my morning green smoothie at home again, I am happier.

My ancient diet plan
Ancient breakfast

古早餐用香蕉、菠菜和其他蔬菜

Since the morning usually has to be fast for me, I usually only eat breakfast at work. Before eating in the stone age, I often made myself a quark or fruit cereal. In my ancient diet, I always drink green smoothie for breakfast.
Green smoothie contains all important vitamins, minerals and antioxidants in natural form. It has a filling effect and can reduce appetite. With the right ingredients, they won’t become real healthy drinks, but they taste very good!
Although coffee was not completely popular among the ancients, when I first started my stone age diet, I decided to turn a blind eye to this. Maybe you are shaking your head now or don’t take my ancient challenge seriously – that’s not what I mean.
At this point, I want to show that I’m just a human being. I need to drink coffee in the morning to get up reasonably.
If you don’t want to make green smoothie in the morning and can’t live without your cereal bowl, I recommend paleo muesli.
Ingredients of my green smoothie:
1 carrot
1.5 cucumber
1 and a half avocados
1 ripe banana
2 hand spinach
1 small piece of ginger

Ancient lunch

古午餐,包括煎蛋、尖卷心菜和西红柿

Because spaghetti and other foods were taboo in the ancient diet, vegetables have always been the basis of my hot meal. Because I also eat a lot of vegetables and salads, I can easily implement this ancient rule. Most of the time, there are vegetable pots, oven vegetables or raw food at lunch time.
Since sauces and other processed foods were not allowed in the diet of the stone age, there was usually only a small amount of olive oil or coconut oil. From time to time, I also fry a fish, an egg or a chicken breast.
In the afternoon downturn, I often have a desire for sweets. Fortunately, there are enough candy bar substitutes that meet the paleo standard to meet my desire for sweets.

Ancient dinner
Like lunch time, I mainly eat vegetables for dinner. Because I usually don’t eat hot things in the evening, but eat some small things, so I sometimes eat salad, half avocado with salt and pepper, and a little raw vegetables.
For those who like to eat bread at night, this is the perfect solution: Ancient baking mixture.
Of course, there are a few days when I can imagine something better than eating cucumbers at night. I admit I fainted once. But who can resist when the other half waves cornflakes in front of their noses?
The importance of this “slip” is that the next day, don’t punish yourself by eating less or exercising more, but try to find a balance.

My conclusion about self experiment

古 - 桌子上的西瓜片

Although I was skeptical about the ancient self experiment at the beginning, I actually ate it for a month according to the nutritional rules of the stone age. After 30 days of Paleolithic age, I not only lost nearly 3 pounds, I have to admit that I feel much better and my energy is much better.
Before the stone age experiment, it was hard for me to imagine not eating something like cheese. The effect of not drinking a glass of milk every day is relatively fast.
Day after day, I can see my skin improve and redness disappear. My water retention also decreased significantly.
Of course, breaking certain preferences or food habits is not always easy, but I believe that radical changes in the form of deliberate dietary changes always provide an opportunity to start over.
Therefore, if you want to try to eat less sweets, I think the fruit juice detergent that does not allow sweets is better than trying to eat less sweets. Because if we don’t change the basic rules, we will soon fall into old habits.
Even though my ancient experiment was over, I decided to continue not to drink milk. I also want to try to eat less processed food and pay more attention to the ingredients of sauce.
My stone age challenge helped me eat more consciously and deal more intensively with what was on my plate. Even if it’s not always that easy, I’ll do it again at any time.
Maybe you can do something challenging this week. This challenge may be related to diet, exercise goals, or the simple fact that you are not bothered by commuting today.

I wish you a happy Monday and a smooth start to the new week!