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| The Paleo Diet for Athletes: A Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performance | 
 enlarge | Authors: Loren Cordain, Joe Friel
Publisher: Rodale Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $7.25
You Save: $8.70 (55%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 7181
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1594860890
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.282
EAN: 9781594860898
ASIN: 1594860890
Publication Date: September 23, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Loren Cordain, Ph.D., follows his success of The Paleo Diet with the first book ever to detail the exercise-enhancing effects of a diet similar to that of our Stone Age ancestors.
When The Paleo Diet was published, advocating a return to the diet of our ancestors (high protein, plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables), the book received brilliant reviews from the medical and nutritional communities. Jennie Brand-Miller, coauthor of the bestselling Glucose Revolution, called it "without a doubt the most nutritious diet on the planet." Doctors Michael and Mary Dan Eades, authors of Protein Power, said, "We can't recommend The Paleo Diet highly enough."
Now Dr. Cordain joins with USA triathlon and cycling elite coach Joe Friel to adapt the Paleo Diet to the needs of athletes. The authors show:
o Why the typical athletic diet (top-heavy with grains, starches, and refined sugars) is detrimental to recovery, performance, and health
o How the glycemic load and acid-base balance impact performance
o Why consumption of starches and simple sugars is only beneficial in the immediate post-exercise period
At every level of competition, The Paleo Diet for Athletes can maximize performance in a range of endurance sports.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
Strong--gets you thinking differently November 23, 2005
37 out of 45 found this review helpful
What books like the The Paleo Diet and The Evolution Diet (by JSB Morse) are saying is that our modern culture and lifestyles have veered from the path that our human bodies were evolved on. It is a very common-sense premise since one can see how unnatural our diets and exercise routines have become, but it is something that escapes us when we get bogged down with our everyday lives. Simply, we must revert our diets (and exercise routines) to fit prehistoric man's or we are bound to be unhealthy.
To do this, as the book explains, is to coordinate not only what one eats, but how and when to eat it. One good principle on how to appropriate one's diet that goes something like this: sugary foods during exercise, high protein after, and high fiber foods the rest of the time. Of course, what is meant by sugary foods is not Skittles or M&Ms. Apples and bananas suffice to give one the boost before and during a workout.
While the PaleoDiet is a great read and very insightful, it is missing a few points here and there. The science behind our diets is great--it's actually more thorough than any other of the diet books I've read--but the connection to how it applies to your day-to-day is a little tricky. I had previously thought that the book didn't stress when you eat the foods, but now I realize that it covers this aspect clearly. Overall, though, the book is quite helpful and entertaining enough to keep you interested in learning more.
 Flimsy Evidence, but It Sells Books December 29, 2006
25 out of 50 found this review helpful
I'm not one to promote one diet over another, but by way of disclosure I am a vegan (which means I don't consume any animal products) and a competive (though amateur) cyclist. I am also an anthropologist. My main problem with the Paleo Diet books is that they are based in part on flimsy ethnographic and physical anthropological data. Studies of the diets of contemporary foragers (who used to be called "hunters and gatherers") are flawed in their methodologies and result in widely disparate data. They also do not take into consideration the history of most foragers as colonized subjects whose lifeways (including subsistence strategies) have been substantially altered by their domination by neighboring peoples or by the state-level societies in which they have lived for sometimes hundreds of years. In some cases carnivory may be a recent strategy as a result of resource scarcity, and not a time-honored practive dating to our hominid ancestors. We can't assume much about early hominid diet from contemporary forager diets. Moreover, contemporary human populations have occupied specific ecological niches that are distinct from our paleolithic ancestors; no one would expect the Inuit, for example, to have developed a vegan diet since their environment would make that a huge challenge. Likewise, other populations in different environments will have developed distinct strategies for meeting basic nutritional needs. In addition, evidence of carnivory exists in the hominid record; but this does not tell us the degree to which it was important in the diet. Plant-based diets don't leave a lot of physical traces (dentition patterns are one indication of diet). Meat eating may have been the result of scarcity and not preference; it may have aided population genetic fitness (via selection) but not overall health. So behind the "data" there are a lot of contradictions. How this in the end translates into increased athletic performance is another story. If you want to justify your diet on pseudo-science, fine. I would rather justify it on based on results. If this sort of diet (mislabelled "paleo") works, great. If not, try something else. But don't be fooled by the labels.
 Paleo diet, with special attention on the "For Athletes" part December 16, 2006
23 out of 27 found this review helpful
Paleo Diet for Athletes
A lot of what Dr. Cordain says (The Paleo Diet) makes sense -- basically, from the time of humanity's existence, 10,000 years is a short time to make adaptations in the way our bodies have evolved. Agriculture and dairy products, for instance, just happened in the past 10,000 years.
I won't go into the details of the hunter-gatherer diet that Cordain mentions. I believe that there are also other diets out there are similar (in fact, probably identical) in both reasoning and implementation (i.e., Evolution Diet, and other hunter-gatherer diets out there).
The Paleo Diet part gets 4 stars, and the additional star goes for the "for Athletes" part.
What makes this book different is the "... for Athletes" part. (On a separate note, the title would have been more apt if they said "ENDURANCE Athletes" instead, as other non-endurance athletes could probably be recommended the regular Paleo Diet by Dr. Cordain, or the other similar ones by other authors.)
I have always watched endurance athletes take down gobs of pasta and carbohydrates. And with that, assumed that Joe Friel, a premier coach of endurance athletes (just check out his "Bible" series books and his website), I assumed that Joe Friel was another carb junkie. Apparently, he WAS. Note, "WAS" is the past tense.
Dr. Cordain introduced him to the Paleo diet, and though Joe was hooked, he did some modifications on the diet for endurance athletes. And that's where this book stands out from other hunter-gatherer diets out there. (If you want to know more about hunter-gatherer diets, do a search for similar books here in Amazon and read the reviews. And a bit of search 'round the internet wouldn't be a bad idea).
I particularly like Joe's modifications in what he calls various stages: what to eat before exercise (both a few hours before, and immediately before), during exercise (obviously only applicable to endurance athletes in multi-hour events), and after exercise (further broken down into the first half-hour after, the succeeding hours or so, and the long term recovery strategy via nutrition). And that's what makes this book worth it, especially for endurance athletes and those regular blokes who work out or exercise everyday (those who put in maybe an hour or more of exercise a day). By the way, this is good for "regular" endurance athletes as well, not necessarily marathoners and other ultra-distance racers, or ironmen triathletes (i.e., this book is still perfect for "sprint distance" triathletes as well... and also 5k and 10k fun-runners).
Friel is especially keen on making sure the nutrition strategy gives one optimum performance (for either an exercise session or a race), as well as the all-important recovery (so you can go hard again in your next training session -- IF that is what you have scheduled).
I find it amusing that I know what parts Friel wrote, and what parts Cordain wrote, simply by reading. Maybe it's because I have Friel's other books that I already know his writing style, but it was easy to see which parts were written by whom.
I cannot comment if the Paleo Diet is better than The Evolution Diet (but, truth be known, I don't have The Evolution Diet), but I assume they're similar to the point of being nearly identical, as are PROBABLY all other hunter-gatherer diets out there. I cannot comment either on who has written a better book, or a better explanation, or a better implementation of the hunter-gatherer type of diet. But it is only The Paleo Diet for Atheltes that has a collaboration with an "endurance athelete guru" (i.e., Joe Friel) that addresses the needs of athletes. If you fall into that category, you will surely like the part that Friel contributed, especially the various stages of pre- during, and post-exercise nutrition strategy.
More appropriate for strength athletes July 13, 2006
13 out of 21 found this review helpful
The authors play a rather silly game of exclude the middle.
They start from the premise that most endurance athlets overconsume refined grains to the exclusion of dietary protein and veggies. This isn't necessarily incorrect, I've seen endurance athletes do that very thing. I've done it myself.
Therefore, endurance athlete should go to the opposite extreme and eat lots of lean meat and fibrous vegetables and some fruits. Basically, a retread of Cordain's Paleo Dieting thing.
Except that somehow they then shoehorn recent research into pre/during/post workout nutrition on top of that. They argue that this will optimize endurance performance.
Apparently the idea of eating sufficient protein AND vegetables AND digestible carbohydrates was lost on them.
As well, they apparently forgot to look at data on the Kenyan runners who routinely consume 70% carbs and 10% protein and seem to be doing ok performance wise. Or the Tarahumara indians who eat massively high carb intakes and are known for their prodigious running abilities.
Don't get me wrong, I think many endurance athletes get insufficient protein and eating plenty of veggies should be a huge part of any athletic diet (or any healthy diet for that matter). But let's not pretend that you can't eat sufficient lean protein, plenty of vegetables AND get sufficient digestible carbohdyrate (from grains/etc) to support the monstrous training volumes common to high level endurance programs.
IMO, their recommendations would make far far more sense for strength/power athletes who simply don't have the carbohydrate requirements of long-duration endurance athletes.
 Very helpful, but not perfect November 21, 2006
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
I bought this book because my diet was already headed in the Paleo direction without anybody's book telling me to do so, but also because Joe Friel's web site recommended it. That made me curious about the details of why I should eat that way. I have slightly elevated blood pressure (pre-hypertension), and managed to bring it down from an average of about 129/84 to 124/81 or so just by eating low-sodium (I already was riding my bicycle 150-300 miles a week, so clearly more excercise wasn't needed). After having real trouble finding low-salt foods, I discovered that the produce section was my best friend, and the fresh meat/seafood section too; that was pretty close to Paleo already. But I was still eating lots of grains and beans, and this book convinced me to go full Paleo for non-sports reasons. Now I seem to be recovering much quicker and no longer have any of those rides where my legs are dog-tired. I've also gotten a bit leaner, though I was already at just 8% body fat. I then bought his first Paleo Diet book and read that. I now have pretty much gone completely Paleo, with some intentional lapses, and I don't really follow this second book so much. I follow his first book with its non-athlete orientation primarily to maintain my health as I get older, but I find that I can eat a Paleo omelette for breakfast, and ride for three hours with no sports drinks or gels (though I do bring dried fruit for any ride over three hours, and sports drink for long races or very hard training rides). Leaves me wondering if this second book was really needed. I strongly recommend his first book, and this one only if you're in the Ironman Tri, RAAM, or something extreme like that.
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