Show and tell: My lipid profile

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while now, so for the sake of satisfaction and actually getting this post live, it’ll be short and sweet.

So I’ve been eating a paleo / primal diet since maybe June or July of 2008.  The idea is to eat the high quality, nutrient-dense food we evolved to eat, rather than the highly processed and refined stuff (most often grains and sugars) that make up so much of the modern diet (and has arguably led to the “(degenerative) diseases of civilization”:  diabetes, cancer,  heart disease, autoimmune diseases, etc.).  I am not “dieting” in the sense of weight-loss:  I am thin, weighting 165 pounds at 6′1″.  I am eating this way for the health of it.

How has eating a paleo diet affected my health?

For one, I am hungry a lot less.  I used to eat what “conventional wisdom” told me was healthy:  whole grains, little saturated fats, little red meat, smoothies, etc.  I would often snack throughout the day on such a diet, and this isn’t surprising as carbs/sugar cause an insulin spike, which make you even hungrier (not to mention that sugar is more addicting than cocaine!.  Now, I am rarely hungry, even when I fast (do this: it’s good for you!).

I feel higher energy, and a clearer head.

Enough subjective talk; let’s look at some numbers! Below find my lipid profile:




What to note: After eating a paleo diet for a year, my triglycerides were down 21.15%, VLDL was down 20%, and HDL was up 23.81%. Total cholesterol and LDL were both up, but I am not at all concerned about that as both are within a healthy range, even by conventional standards.

If you are curious about the science behind eating this way, check out Gary Taubes’ “Good Calories, Bad Calories“, or if you are lazy, watch this video:



I plan to update my lipid panel spreadsheet every 6 months, so stay tuned for updates.

2 Responses to this post.

  1. Will Johnson's Gravatar

    Posted by Will Johnson on 26.09.09 at 10:57 am

    Hey Chris - very interesting, and great to see the changes in your results. Question for you though - isn’t it possible that our “diet” can evolve as does our intelligence, physiology, etc? I am certainly no expert in this field, and am not suggesting any of the “bad” foods are “good” in any sense….but I also wonder if the true “paleo” diet “dated”.

  2. chris's Gravatar

    Posted by chris on 26.09.09 at 10:57 am

    @Will - Great point and something I’ve considered heavily. From what I’ve read, evolution takes a long time to happen. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of years to occur, and that is for subtle mutations. Humans have have been consuming refined grains and sugars for a blink of eye in the span of our evolution. How long has sugar been available worldwide (via trade routes)? Maybe 500 years, maybe 1,000 years in Eurasia. How about highly-refined, white sugar? Much shorter. So I’d guess that although humans are pretty tolerant of dietary input, and we can be assured the some sort of natural selection is taking place, I am guessing (based on the obesity epidemic) that we haven’t evolved the ability to thrive on highly-processed, nutrient-deficient staple crops.

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