I have had to cut most of the foods avoided on the stone age diet anyway because I can't eat wheat/rye/barley/oats due to my coeliac disease and I definitely found I had a lot more energy (and lost weight) when I cut those out.  But I still eat potatos and I'm thinking that maize/corn is probably a no-no on the stone age diet, I have corn thins for breakfast every morning.

When I read the article yesterday I thought that there's very little change needed for me to follow that diet completely as I eat a lot of fruit and vege and I love meat.  I definitely don't have a high intake of cereals.

Funny that you posted this today though as at lunchtime I was eating pizza and wedges thinking that it's just as well I hadn't started the diet.

I'm trying to find the article now too so I can post a link.

The journalist said that the first 4-5 days after cutting out cereals/carbs he felt hungry and moody but then he came right and since then he's been so full of energy and happy. 

I think as far as carbs go kumara are good (I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure they're low GI) as are oats.  So although you may not be following the diet word for word it sounds like the change has worked for you.  Plus surely our stone age ancestors found and ate root vegetables and probably even other cereals when they could - they just didn't cultivate them so they weren't a staple food as they are now.

Here's the link to the article http://www.stuff.co.nz/4692280a19716.html - http://www.stuff.co.nz/4692280a19716.html

Starch is composed of two polymers of glucose, so it basically sugar. this diet seems to cut out carbs...which actually seems pointless as Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats all end up being hydrolysised to end up with Acetyl CoA which in the end contributes to energy production, so no matter whether you cut down on carbs, and beef up on protein, the same processes are going to happen, you're just replacing one energy source with another. Of course lowering your sugar intake is going to have an affect on your moods. If you have a sweet tooth and then cut sugar out, you're going to have highs and lows..until your sugar levels even out...and in most diets weight loss is fastest in the first few weeks, as you're using up your glycogen stores. Glycogen holds a lot of water, so you're not only using burning glycogen for energy, but you're losing a lot of water as well....once those first couple of weeks are over, you're body turns to fat as it's energy source, fat holds less water then glycogen so thats why weight loss is not as drastic as initially. So though losing 9Kgs in however many weeks is great, long term those losses are not going to be so high.

That's how I read it too Pearls and that's pretty much what I do now.  Occasionally I have a big lunch and at dinner time I'm still full so I don't eat anything.

It's kind of like the "french woman don't get fat" way of listening to internal cues (i.e. whether you're actually hungry) rather than the external cues such as time of day, size of dinner plate etc.

Babies and toddlers do this brilliantly but somewhere along the way we're retrained not just to eat at specified times but to finish everything on our plate.

emz wrote: MrsMojo - what exactly do you eat at a meal? I was brought up in the meat, spuds and vege environment so not having any carbs on my plate at a meal seems strange to me (but doable).

Emz I can (and do) eat carbs but since I had to exclude gluten (wheat/rye/barley/oats) from my diet 4 years ago when I was diagnosed with coeliacs disease I definitely eat a lot less. 

I hardly ever eat 'bread' as it's difficult to get nice gluten free bread and it costs $6 per loaf (and the loaves are about 1/2 size of normal bread).  I don't eat pies/pastries, biscuits, cakes or muffins either although occassionally (maybe 2-3 per year) I buy a gluten free muffin from Muffin Break.

Typically I eat:

Breakfast: 4 corn thins with vegespread (gluten free vegemite alternative) and an apple, a glass of milk and a cup of herbal tea.

Morning tea: fruit and a cup of herbal tea

Lunch: Varies, during autumn and winter I often just have a huge bowl of soup.  I made heaps of pumpkin soups buying a pumpkin a fortnight and also made pea and ham soup (using healthy food guide recipe), chicken and vege soup and bought some yummy soups.  Other days I might have leftovers and a bowl of veges or as the weather here's been warmer I've been buying salad stuff and making up a huge salad.  I also use corn thins in place of bread to make cheese and ham sandwhiches and yesterday I did an open sandwhich on a corn thin with avocado, ham, tomatos and salad greens.

Dinner: Varies as well, depends on the night and what I feel like eating but will often include potato, kumara or gluten free pasta.

T that sounds pretty good to me.  Do you feel like you're lacking?  Listen to your body and if you're feeling full and healthy then don't worry - it's so important to learn to listen to our internal cues rather than paying attention to external cues like what other people think you should eat.

All foods have carbs in them (including fruit and vege) so the only way to cut carbs from your diet entirely is to stop eating.  Some foods have more carbs than others and the important thing to check is where the carbs are from (i.e. if you look at the nurtrition chart of an item underneath the carb content you can also see how much of the carbs are sugars) it's these high sugar carbs that we should all be trying to avoid.  This isn't a solid rule either, the carbs in fruit are very high in sugar but the benefits of the fruit far outweigh the sugary carb content IYKWIM.  It's the sugar carb content of cereal food that are more important.  If you were diabetic though you'd need to be careful with fruit, for eg. over ripe bananas can raise the insulin levels too high. 

Corn thins have 4.1g of carb (per 5.8g slice) and 0.02g of that is sugars.  I love the Uncle Ben's Pilau rice for a quick, easy gluten free meal and that has 38.5g carbs (per 125g serve - i.e. 1/2 the packet) and only 1.6g of that is sugars.