I first came across Greg and Nikki a few years back on the CrossFit and Performance Menu forums. They were two of the people from whom I originally learned about the Paleo Diet. Here is an excerpt from a recent interview Nikki conducted of Greg:

Q.
The paleo diet has been shown to consist of foods which promote good health, while eliminating foods which do the opposite. However, is there a way someone could go 'wrong' when following the paleo diet to an extent that it would play negative effects on their health?

A.
Yes, and I'm glad you brought this up because I think it is an important issue to touch on. One of the things that I commonly see with people who think they're eating paleo is that they tend to assume that just because a food could have been attained in nature that it can and should be consumed in unlimited amounts. For example, when I first started eating paleo I ate nuts as my staple source of calories. I loved the taste of them and they filled me up quickly.

At first I felt great, probably because I eliminated all bad foods from my diet, but eventually I started getting some serious digestive disturbances. I eventually started to feel sick and lethargic after eating nuts. The reality is that it is hard to obtain large amounts of nuts in nature because it is very labor intensive and the nut intake of our paleo ancestors was probably not very high because of this. Nuts also contain protease inhibitors, which can interfere with digestion. A good way to reduce this effect is to soak the nuts in water over night and then dehydrate them (if they stay wet they'll grow mold).

You could also run into problems with a very high fruit intake. I have nothing against fruit and I eat quite a bit of it myself, especially during the summer months. However, modern varieties of fruit have been selectively bred over the years to contain much more sugar than wild varieties, and can cause some problems with insulin resistance when consumed in large amounts.

I would also advise people to keep their consumption of paleo deserts to a minimum. Some assume that just because a food has more natural ingredients that they can consume it in unlimited amounts with no consequences just because it's "paleo".

A good example is almond cookies. They contain butter, almond meal, and honey all in one snack.

Sure, they lack the anti-nutrients found in regular cookies and have a greater nutrient density, but when you combine large amounts of fat (from butter and almonds) with sugar (from honey) you're setting yourself up for fat gain. Not to mention that paleo deserts tend to also be quite high in calories. That said, I would save paleo treats for special occasions, which is completely acceptable and is obviously better than snacking on regular sugar/trans fat laden cookies.

About Nikki and Greg

Nikki Young is the founder of Feed the Fitness and the author of The Paleo Cookbook.
Greg Battaglia is a certified Level I CrossFit trainer and a dietetics student at Immaculata University.