Rules of Paleo - #1

In order of my thinking of them, as opposed to any importance, I present the first rule in what will be my Rules of Paleo series.


Rule #1:

If it's difficult you're doing something wrong

There it is, short and sweet.  If it feels like a chore, if you're hungry all the time, if you find cooking to be a pain, or if you don't enjoy your food then you're doing something wrong.

I must mention here my eight word description of my diet:  "I eat real food that satisfies my hunger."

That should be easy.  Protein and fat satisfy, so those better be in there.  And real means that the most processed thing you'll eat is ground meat.

If instead you are scouring the internet looking for the latest Paleo Banana Nut Bread recipe then spending hours combining coconut flour, almond meal, banana chips and eggs into some weird production so you "have something to eat" then you're doing it wrong.

Am I saying you can never try those things?  Of course not!  I'm saying that those types of meals shouldn't form the foundation of your diet, and I'm saying it for two reasons:  First, recreating a crappy diet with "Paleo" ingredients is a waste of time and will result in less than optimal nutrition and thus less than optimal results.  Second, it's too much work to do that for every meal and if you are trying to do it that way you'll probably fail.

Work to create a foundation for your diet that is:

1. Simple
2. Enjoyable
3. Duplicable

Simple
It should be easy to make, requiring a minimum of time.  A few simple examples:

• Pour a can of coconut milk into a large pan and turn on the heat.  Throw in some seasonings, such as curry, salt, oregano, basil, fennel seed, etc.  Dump in some veggies and once it's boiling turn it down and dump in some meat.  Cook it for a while, stirring occasionally.
• Throw some cubed sweet potato in a pan with about 1/4" of  water.  Bring it to a boil while adding salt and fennel seed.  Turn it to simmer, throw in a pound of ground beef and let it cook until the potato is soft and meat is done.  Turn off the heat and let it sit for a bit.
• Chop up some bacon and put it in a pan on medium heat.  Add a chopped onion on top of that.  Let it cook until the bacon has rendered out a good amount of grease, then stir it all together and keep cooking until the onions are soft.  Add 3 to 7 whisked eggs and move to the oven set for 400 until eggs are solid.

You get the idea.  These are some of my go-to meals.  They're simple.  In a pinch, I'll just grab a tin of oysters and tin or two of sardines.  That's not ideal, since it's all canned and there are no veggies, but if I am short on time for some reason I can get 50-60 grams of protein and a big chunck of fat in about 3 minutes.

Enjoyable
The meals I described above are enjoyable to me.  They're very satisfying and they taste great.  They also are enjoyable to create.  It's very little work to cube a sweet potato, chop an onion, etc., and they need a minimum amount of supervision while cooking.  It is also enjoyable to experiment with different tastes.  I had never used fennel seed until I just bought a handful of spices I recognized and played with them.  Now I use fennel seed in many dishes.

Duplicable
These meals are easily duplicated.  If I need a post workout meal a pound of sweet potato and pound of ground beef is something I can cook in my sleep.  I have about a dozen meals I can create on auto-pilot.  It's still fun to experiment, but if the experiment is a bust or if you just need something you can count on then you need some meals you can cook without much thought.

One other thing that emerges if you create this type of foundation for your diet is you'll have less reason to eat out.  If you dread cooking because you've complicated it and feel you don't have time, you'll rationalize just grabbing something.  And once the compromise starts it's just a question of how far it goes.  Sure, tell yourself you'll just eat some beef fajita meat, but then you get to the restaurant and ENCHILADAS SOUND SO GOOD!!! 

Cooking isn't a pain once you get the hang of it.  It's quick to make an omelette or some beef and veggies, so no need to run out for something.  And if you are cooking and eating the right things you're not going to be hungry.

Every once in a while, if you enjoy it, find some strange paleofied version of an old food you enjoyed and whip up your own version.  For me, it's a hamburger, and I make a mean hamburger bun by modifying the recipe for paleo pancakes to create a thicker batter.  It's a nice change of pace, but it's tedious compared to everything else I cook and eat.  Check it out at the bottom of this page.

One more point to cover.  Just like I recommend you have a dozen or so meals that you know you can prepare quickly, define at least a handful of options that are okay if you need to eat out.  Typical eat-out meals for me:

• Chiptole - 3 sides of steak in a bowl and a side of guacamole
• Saltgrass - 12 ounce top sirloin with double asparagus (and don't let them leave bread on the table!)
• Rockfish - Grilled tuna (rare) with sides of asparagus

Again, you get the idea.  By having a foundation for your diet that is either an easy to prepare food or a readily available food from a local restaurant you make it all much easier.

And it should be easy, or at least no more difficult than you decide to make it.

An Anonymous Objection

Here's an interesting comment I received on my post about the conclusion of a 45 day paleo challenge.

Anonymous said...


What does the toilet smell like after you have a dump man! What about all the cholesterol/saturated fat/uric acid/animal metabolic waste products/heterocyclic amines/benzopyrenes etc?


Look what is happening to Robb Wolf. His health is falling apart judging by his latest blood pathology. :(

Well, that's an interesting way to raise an objection.  Start with a meaningless question, follow that up with a "what about" a bunch of stuff, then say something with no reference and no substantiation.  Quite the technique.

But, being an analytical person, I'll take the time to respond.  Point by point.

What does the toilet smell like after I have a dump?

It's smells like a toilet.  What else can a toilet smell like?  Perhaps you meant the contents of the toilet, in which case the odor is that of human fecal matter.  I don't notice any difference between that odor now versus when I was vegan, vegetarian, or low-fat high carb.  I do notice a difference when I eat asparagus, but I'm straying off topic.  Is there an embedded claim in your question that would indicate a proper diet results in crap with no odor?

What about all the cholesterol/saturated fat/uric acid/animal metabolic waste products/heterocyclic amines/benzopyrenes etc?

What about them? 

Cholesterol - fine.  I enjoy my precursor hormones to testosterone and enjoy the testosterone even more.

Saturated fat - Great!  Just like the fat stores my body uses to buffer transfer of energy between food and output, my body loves to run on saturated fat. 

If you're curious about the impact from these two evils, consider my blood pressure was 100/53 and my pulse was 46 this morning.  These are probably more meaningful measurements than the smell of my poop.

Uric acid - fine.  That's why I pee.  It's also why it's called urine.  My kidneys are healthy, and I don't eat large amounts of sucrose or fructose, which are known to elevate serum levels of uric acid beyond healthy levels.

Animal metabolic waste products - Well, that's why I poop.  :)  My body will have some waste products from anything it uses for fuel and building blocks.  To show concern in this area is the equivalent of showing concern that a gas-burning car has exhaust.  And I don't mean some silly environmental concern, I mean the fundamental concept that to use anything for fuel will result in byproducts of the chemical reactions necessary to extract that energy.

Heterocyclic amines - Which ones?  That term covers compounds that range from vitamins to carcinogens.  I assume from the negative tone of your inquiry that you mean the carcinogenic compounds most people refer to that may be produced by cooking meat at high temps.  Simple, I don't cook at high temps.  I don't grill meat.  Most of the meat I eat is cooked at temps very close to boiling.  I slow cook the meat along with the veggies, and it only requires a temp above about 170f to get the job done.  So, no concerns.  Oh, that reminds me, the data that shows these are carcinogenic is based on human models.  There has not been any population study or otherwise to demonstrate it actually is a risk.

Benzopyrenes - Uhhh.  Well, I don't smear coal tar on myself, live near an active volcano, smoke cigarettes.  Oh, you must mean the little tiny bits from charring/grilling meat.  I don't do that either, mainly because I don't like the taste.  I occasionally sear it in clarified butter, but never on a flame.  So, no concerns there.

Okay, I addressed the totally open-ended "what about" questions.  That was tedious.  On to the last one:


Look what is happening to Robb Wolf. His health is falling apart judging by his latest blood pathology. :(


Have you ever been around Robb Wolf?  I have.  So having actually seen him in person I can say he's a pretty healthy-looking dude.  I'm envious of his performance numbers in many areas.  But you can't really tell too much from just looking at someone, so can you share the information about his latest blood pathology?

See, there was no substantiation, no explanation, just a stab at Robb Wolf.

So, I don't know what your objective was with that comment, but throwing out a bunch of open ended "what about" style questions combined with random and unsubstantiated stabs at well known people doesn't achieve much.

The Best Supplement for Vegetarians

I have a few vegetarian friends, so imagine how happy I am to have finally found a good supplement for them to round out their diet.  I take this supplement almost daily and actually recommend it for everyone, but vegetarians in particular stand to benefit.

While I won't endorse the grains, legumes, and some other stuff most Vegetarians eat, I heartily support their consumption of actual vegetables.  Spinach, broccoli, sweet potato, squash, the list goes on and on.  All yummy stuff.  All certainly beneficial.  But there are certain nutrients that are just not provided by the veggies and fruit and those nutrients are critical to health.

Luckily there is a manufacturing process most people are unaware of that harvests large amounts of green leafy plants (mostly grass) and concentrates their nutrients into an easy to take supplement.  There's no way for a human to eat and digest this much plant material, so the concentration process is not just important, it's required.

But the best part is this supplement, unlike so many others, tastes great!  I know, it's hard to imagine that the end product of processing that much grass into a supplement could taste good, but it does!  And it tastes good in spite of the fact that the concentration ratios are approximately 1 to 1.5 pounds of leafy plant material for just a 10 gram supply of the supplement!

Unfortunately, this particular supplement is more difficult to find than most.  I've never seen it in my supermarket or grocery store, nor is it stocked at GNC.  You will either have to order it online, or find a local supplier who deals directly with the consumer.  In some rare cases it is stocked in stores that specialize in higher-end foods, like Whole Foods, Sprouts, Sunflower, etc. 

It comes in two primary forms, large solid pieces, and a ground-up version.  If you receive your supplement in solid pieces, I recommend cutting it into portions of 6 to 10 ounces each, marinating in some simple spices and cooking it until the outside has browned but the inside remains pink.  This can be done over a grill, or in a skillet with some butter.

If you receive a ground-up version then I suggest you slice a couple of onions and sweet potatos, cook those in a skillet with some coconut oil and add the supplement once the veggies are cooked.  Cook the entire mixture until there is no pink left.

Recommended dosage is .5 to 1.5 pounds/day.  If you are vegetarian you may notice renewed energy, better muscle tone, and a host of other improvements to your health. 

If you decide to give it a shot, realize that you must verify that the supplement is produced from 100% grass processing. Some manufacturers produce a completely different product with a nearly identical name by processing grains as opposed to leafy greens. When searching for it online use a search term such as "Grass fed and finished beef" or ask your health food store if they have "100% grass fed and finished beef" to ensure you get the real deal.  It's as easy as that!

Let me know how this supplement works out for you!

Vegetarian? Really?

One might conclude that a person who labels himself a vegetarian will actually eat vegetables.  It doesn't seem like a silly conclusion to draw, does it?

But I've noticed over many years that the vegetarians I've met don't eat many vegetables.  Teenage girls are the worst in this regard, and I've observed many of them who claim to be vegetarian while living on bread, rice, french fries...you get the idea.  And they're skinny-fat.

So by what right do they call themselves vegetarian?  When did "I don't eat meat" become nearly synonymous with "I'm a vegetarian"?

I'm willing to wager that I eat more non-grains than 95% of all vegetarians.  I looked at what I ate in the last week.  5+ pounds of sweet potato.  Just over 2 pounds of spinach.  2+ pounds of onion.  A little more than a pound of zucchini.  I ate at least 10 pounds of non-grain plant food last week, and that's a typical week.  I'm averaging close to 1.5 pounds per day.

For my daughter's teenage friends, I estimate they don't consume 1.5 pounds of non-grains in an entire week if you discount the french fries.

So, for those people, I think I'll refer to my diet as "Vegetarian Plus!" just for grins.  I like it.  It's like all the good stuff from a true vegetarian diet with the extra added kick of a pound and half a day of meat supplementation.

It's like playing diet poker.  You open with a vegetarian wager?  I'll see your vegetable consumption...and raise it by a pound of grassfed beef, 6 eggs, and 4 ounces of salmon. 

Now would be a good time for you to fold.  :)

Willpower and Diet

Willpower can't be the basis for controlling how you eat.  Don't belive me?  Try this simple experiment:

Hold your breath until you pass out.  Don't worry, once you do you will start breathing again and wake up in a bit.  Go ahead, try it for yourself right now.  I'll wait.

I bet most of you didn't bother with the experiment.  And I also bet most of you doubt that you would be capable of doing it.

It's hard to imagine overriding a fundamental biological need.  Why is the need for nutrients any different from the need for air?  It's not.  Which is why it's critical to follow a diet that doesn't require you to force yourself to eat a certain way.

I said in my post on describing my diet that I ate real food that satisfies my hunger.  Because my hunger is satisfied, I don't need to employ willpower to deal with it.

Do I have occasional cravings?  Sure.  Are those more often triggered by emotional as opposed to physical factores?  Yes, in my experience.

So I will employ willpower occasionally to keep myself from giving in to the random impulse.  I might be driving down the street and see a frozen yogurt store and have an impulse to stop and indulge, and willpower is required to handle that random impulse.

Where willpower is not required (and thus not being exhausted since willpower is limited in supply) is in a constant driving desire for more or different food.  I've followed vegetarian and vegan diets briefly and the one thing I noticed was having to force myself to stick to the diet.  I truly was wearing out my willpower in sticking to the diet.  It was exhausting. 

Which tells me that they can't be that good for me.  Likewise the standard American diet.  Try eating like most Americans do, drinking soft drinks, eating burgers and fries, etc.  Then try to just cut back on the calories and you'll find your willpower being exhausted as well.

Now try a sensible "paleo-realistic" approach.  I don't like the term "paleolithic diet" so much any more, so I target what I call paleo-realistic.  The difference being that the "paleo" part is a guideline, and the "realistic" part is how that ends up being expressed in today's world.

So the guideline part means avoiding neolithic foods that cause disease.  Hydrogenated oils, seed oils, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, grains, legumes.  That about covers what to avoid.  You might add dairy to that list but you'll need to experiment.

So avoid that.  Eat this:  Quality meats, fish, eggs, vegetables, roots, tubers, some fruit, few seeds and nuts.  Focus on getting your fats from animal sources, preferably fish and grass fed beef. 

Unless you do something really strange you'll find your hunger satisfied.  Try eating that way for 30 days and you'll probably find it very easy to stay on the diet.  And knowing how good you feel when on the diet makes it easy to get right back on if you have a few meals that are in the "avoid" category.

You can use the willpower to do something else, which is one more reason to follow a good diet.  That willpower can now be applied to push you through intense workouts, learn something new, pursue a new hobby, whatever else it is you value. 

When your diet is more or less on auto-pilot you have more energy, both physical and mental, to devote to living a life you love.  What more can you ask of a diet?

What I Measure and Why

Having just posted What I Track and Why I decided I'd mention what I measure, since that's the flipside of what I track.

In this context I mean what I measure when it comes to food.  I once followed the Zone Diet very strictly, and performed more than my fair share of weighing and measuring.  That was a pain, especially since I was trying hard to eat 5 to 6 times per day.

In fact, it all seems pretty crazy looking back on it.  I would prepare food for the day, carefully weighing and measure proteins, carbs and fats.  I remember packing a cooler so I would never be without food.  I was once so proud of how I could get a days worth of food in the cooler and be assured I would not have to resort to eating anything else. 

Wow, how frail we humans must be if that is required for optimal health.  I sure don't see anything similar in the rest of the animal kingdom.  Perhaps the dinosaurs died off because they ran out of coolers...who knows?

In most ways I'm now at the opposite end of the spectrum.  I eat once or twice or very occasionally three times per day.  And my weighing and measuring occurs very rarely and is mainly there to support certain minimums I want to achieve in protein and carbs versus an obsessive need to achieve some exact ratio.

As an example, I try to get about 80% of my daily carbs in a post workout meal.  A pound of sweet potato fits the bill nicely.  So when I cook my post workout  meal, I weigh the sweet potato to make sure I get at least that.  I'm not anal about it, I just shoot for between 16 and 20 ounces of raw sweet potato, and then start cooking that amount. 

As far as protein, I like to get a big chunk of protein in my post workout meal as well so a pound of grass fed beef works perfectly.  Most times I don't even need to measure it, since the packages we get are usually between 16 and 20 ounces.

So for that meal, I weigh the sweet potato to make sure I get enough and throw it in with a package of beef.  If I want some onion in there as well, I'll just slice some up.  It's more carbs, but who cares?  It just doesn't have to be that precise.

It is, however, easy for me to under-eat when it comes to carbs and weighing it is my way of making sure I don't start cutting back unintentionally.  Old habits die hard, and without keeping some checks and balances it would be easy to start eating too little, especially since I'm seldom hungry.

Other than that, I don't weigh or measure much.  On my rest days, I still eat some sweet potato, but just eyeball it to be about 1/3-1/4 of what I eat on workout days.  It's not uncommon to make a fritata with half an onion, some sweet potato and 4-7 eggs.  I might throw in some leftovers as well, since that's an easy way to use up some leftover meat.

Again, the goal in all this is to meet some minimums, not to try to achieve some weird balance of carbs and protein.  Since this mainly applies on days that I cook a post workout meal, that means I'm turning to the scale 4-5 times a week to weigh one thing.  In the past, I'd have done double that on a single day, and it was very strictly applied as well.

It's not neurotic, time consuming, or obsessive. 

I can't say the same thing about weighing lunch meat, measuring berries, and counting out exactly 12 almonds just to make one meal.  And to be clear about the almonds, it was never 11 or 13, it had to be 12!  Any ex-Zoners out there know what I'm talking about?

Simple is good.

What I Track and Why

I measure my weight in the morning after going to the bathroom.  I also measure my blood pressure and pulse, and I write down notes for the previous day's food if it is unusual.

I've heard many people say to throw away the scale, and I can certainly see that point if it is something over which one obsesses or if any upward movement on the scale results in resignation.  Neither is the case for me.  I find my weight fluctuations interesting, and I enjoy it because it provides data that is easily analyzed.

I tend to be analytical.  :)

Since I know I want to be leaner I am seeking a steady decrease in weight. Steady can't be defined as daily though.  In looking at the data I've settled on a 10 day rolling average because it appears that my 10 day average (or even 7 day average) tends to show progress when I'm eating and exercising according to plan.

So what does this process actually look like for me?  It's pretty simple:  I weigh myself and write it down on a legal pad I keep in the bathroom.  Next to that I write down any notes about what I ate the previous day if it was out of the ordinary.  Then I add my blood pressure and pulse to that and I'm done.  A minute or two each morning.

That's my source of raw data.  No stress, no freaking out if I gained weight, it's just a measurement.

Each entry on a single line, and a typical one may look like this:

185.0 112/60 50...Ate half a gallon of ice cream last night.

The half gallon of ice cream is cleary "unusal" so I write that down as my note after writing that my weight was 185.0, blood pressure was 112/60 and my pulse was 50.

Then about once a week I'll sit down on my computer and add those numbers into a spreadsheet I've maintained since November 2010.  From that spreadsheet I can easily see a graph of my 10 day rolling average.  And THAT is interesting to look at, especially in light of the notes I took.

If my average for any 10 days isn't lower than the 10 days one day before that, it's worth looking at my diet and exercise to see why not. And because I make notes on my weight every morning, that's easy to do.   Obviously this pattern will break down as I approach my desired body composition, and then I'll probably just look at my performance as a marker instead.

What patterns have I seen in the data? Here are three points that I've seen evidence of many times:

• Going off diet may show up the next morning, or it may show up two days later in increased weight. It's not always immediate.
• Going off diet immediately after a workout results in less weight increase than the same type of meal on a rest day.
• Just before I start to feel overtrained and exhausted my morning resting pulse increases.

This is pretty useful stuff.  First of all, the weight increase I see the day after going off diet is usually just bloating.  I've seen 5 pound increases the morning after a real food bender.  That weight then drops steadily for a couple of days and I'm back to where I was or lower.  No way that's 5 pounds of fat, it's mostly water.  My theory is that on the days I don't see the largest increase until two days after off diet food I didn't fully hydrate myself the first day and the bloating/water weight lagged behind until I drank enough.  Doesn't matter much one way or the other, but I find it interesting.

The second observation is more useful.  I've seen many times that I return to my original weight faster and I end up having a lower 10 day average from the day I go off diet if that meal immediately follows an intense workout rather than having it on a rest day.  I have theories related to insulin sensitivity, muscle glycogen repletion, etc.  But once again, it doesn't matter much except in planning.  If I plan to have a meal once a week in which I allow myself things like ice cream, sushi, and milk chocolate then it makes sense to plan them to follow a hard workout.  I currently do not allow myself off diet foods unless I have done intense exercise within the previous two hours.

The final observation is the most interesting to me.  I've seen my pulse suddenly go from a range of 50 to 54 for the previous 5 days, then jump to 70.  Then jump to 74 the day after that.  Over time I correlated that with feeling lack of drive for my workouts and noticed myself just crashing during a CrossFit workout.  A couple of days of rest or long casual walks and my pulse would drop back down into the 50-54 range.  And suddenly I felt like working out again!  So I now just look for that change in pulse.  If my pulse is over 60 in the morning I'll take a rest day if I had planned to go to CrossFit.  By noticing the increase in pulse before I feel exhausted, I've avoided any feeling of being overtrained and worn out.

Since I recently posted my 45 day challenge results and pictures, here's my 7 day rolling averages of weight for that same time:

It took a little while to get the movement I wanted, but the last half of the challenge was fantastic.  And if you read any of my food journals you know I wasn't starving myself to do this, I was stuffing myself.  Never hungry, felt great...what a difference 6-7 pounds makes.  I don't think it will be more than another month or two before I no longer desire any further decrease in body fat.

Just Like Eating an Elephant

I recently started a rather large project, and I felt all sorts of emotions swirling around because of it.  I have a history of losing interest in projects and moving on to something else.  I didn't earn the nickname of "Tangent-Man" by focusing on one thing to completion.  :)

And while I'm sure I've been exposed to the idea many hundreds of times, it suddenly became clear that all that is required is to keep moving forward and eventually I'll get there.  It's that simple.

It is the old question about how you eat an elephant.  A bite at a time is the answer.  Just like eating a cricket, rabbit, or cow.  The elephant is no different in process, only in scale.

Ultimately every task I will ever take on is no different in process.  It is simply a series of actions to be taken until the task itself is complete.  As long as I don't die or have some other external time constraint before I complete all the required actions that task will be completed.

So commitment to a larger task isn't necessarily commitment to different sorts of actions, it's simply commitment to more of them until the payoff occurs.  The source of the initial stress, my decision to build another airplane, this time a much larger and much more complex model than my first, is simply commitment to many more actions over what will inevitably be a longer period of time.  Until I framed it that way, I was freaking out a little bit. 

At some point I think I must have realized this about my physical goals.  I have many times set very specific goals of losing a certain amount of weight, or reaching a certain body composition.  In many cases, I either failed or I rebelled against the process and gained weight!

Then I realized I just needed to make my goal to continue progressing.  My goal became as simple as seeing some form of steady progress.  Since I know I want to be leaner, that meant a steady change in weight.  As I get leaner my definition of progress will change to focus more specifically on strength and conditioning.  For now, I'm happy to maintain in that area while I address my primary goal of progressively lower body fat.

And just like eating an elephant, there's nothing different from how I focus on that now than there was 3 months ago.  I shoot for 150-190 grams of protein per day.  I get the bulk of my carbs in post workout meals.  I try to get most of my fat from animal sources, preferably grassfed beef.  In a nutshell, I eal real foods that satisfy my hunger.  :)

And I focus on doing that every day.  If your goal is to eat that elephant, which bite will make a step in that direction?  The next one.  The bites you already took have gotten you to this point.  It's the next bite that creates progress, and once that bite is taken, it becomes the bite after that.

Likewise, I know my next meal is the meal that can create progress towards my being leaner.  The meals I've already eaten are what have me where I am, but the next one is the one I control.  That makes it simple.  I don't need tremendous willpower, I don't need some incredible level of self control.  I just make the best choice for the next meal and move on.  Then I repeat for the meal after that, and since I usually only eat once or twice a day that means I just have to make good choices once or twice day.  Seems simple enough.

Finally, this focus on the continued progress rather than the ultimate goal creates accountability.  If I have a goal of weighing 175 pounds 3 months from now, just how much does one chocolate bar matter today?  If I have a goal of weighing a little tiny bit less pretty much every day, the chocolate bar today will probably prevent a good outcome tomorrow morning when I step on the scale.  But if I look at it that way, and avoid those bad choices for the entire 3 months my chances of actually reaching the eventual goal are significantly greater.

This is how it all works for me.  My psychology may be quite different from yours.  Some would say you're quite lucky if it is.  But if you struggle with making the choices you know you need to make to get the results you want, I hope you'll play with these concepts and find what works for you.

Describing My Diet

I've tried and failed in so many ways to describe my diet to people that I finally sat down and determined how to handle the question.  I tend to be intentionally abrasive at times, so planning my response makes that less likely.

First, the 50,000' view:

I eat real food that satisfies my hunger.

That's pretty simple, right?  In fact, it only leaves two points to discuss with my questioner: 

• What constitutes real food?
• What foods satisfy hunger?

I like this opening response because it's hard to disagree with.  No matter your definition of real food and your understanding of hunger, a diet that consists of real foods and doesn't leave you hungry will seem agreeable to most people.

If they probe deeper, again it's just an expansion of those two points.

Real food is meat, vegetables, some fruit, and a little nuts, spices, and added fats.

Real food does not include beans and grains.  I don't believe I'm designed to eat that stuff, and I can tell I feel better when I don't consume them.

That's where I might get some pushback, and it can spin off into conversations as bizarre as being told I'd end up with deficiencies because I didn't eat grains.  Yeah, I wonder how we made it until we developed agriculture.  It's about then that I give in and embrace my abrasive side.  :)

The other point is simple as well:

Real foods that satisfy hunger are those which don't cause rapid changes in my blood sugar.  Protein and fat in every meal, and slowly absorbed carbs keep my blood sugar stable.  That in turn, minimizes hunger and cravings.

Most people can identify with having sugary stuff and being hungry again an hour later.  Many have experienced having cereal or pop tarts for breakfast and being ravenous long before noon.

If they're interested to know more at that point, I recommend some websites and books.  If not, then at least I addressed their questions quickly and to the point.

Some will be fine with those first 8 words and never ask another question.

Fewer still will be intrigued, dig in to the information freely available on the web, and make a change for the better.  And it's for those few that I think it's worth my time to develop an answer that makes that change more likely.