The Paleo Diet Interests Me

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What do you guys and girls think about it? Anyone here have questions, or experience with it, any kind good, neutral, or bad would be nice to hear.

The Paleo Diet seems like a good fit for me. I love eating meats, vegetables *especially cooked in oil/fat, herbs, spices, and some fruit. To me these things seem like the best fuel and nutrition for the body.

I do like dairy and grains too, they can taste good, but often times fail at making me feel great. I don't know why, but most of dairy/grains makes me feel lazy.

I ate a kind of similar diet to the Paleo Diet when I lost around 60lbs and I felt awesome. When I began eating dairy and grains more often after hearing they are good for energy/bulking, I did gain weight, some of it was bad weight, and I did not feel as vibrant as before.

Last edited by Pondering on 27 Jul 2012, 2:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Definitely into paleo when I can stick to it, which is much easier in summer. Definitely does wonders for my general health and fitness and energy levels, and my mood when I do it right. ... But I do like to include a bit of yoghurt on and off/in bursts for the probiotics/friendly bacteria.

I often rely on statistics. This page; http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best ... ets?page=3 , lists this diet as #24 overall.

24 000 people says it didn't work for them.
7 000 says it did work.

~22% successrate.

From my recent experience, I’d say any diet that cuts out refined sugars and cereal grains is on the right track.

Personally, I’m doing very well on low carbs… I think the paleo diet might good if you don’t eat too much fruit and starch.

I'm currently trying out a version of the egg diet. First day I lost 1 kg (2.2 lbs), second day I lost 0.7kg (1.5lbs) .
http://www.rapidweightlosshealthytips.com/egg-diet/
Apparently 6-7kg (14lbs) the first week is the average weightloss on this type of diet without any exercise.

This is obviously designed to lose weight fast, and if not careful, you will gain it quickly when you start eating normal again. I will use it for a few weeks to get that jump start.

^^^ I could see that diet working.


For me, boiled eggs act as an appetite suppressant.

I have been doing it since late 2011. I have lost 25 pounds and brought my joint pain under control (was having trouble moving my hands).

Pros: when done right (i.e. sticking to avoiding trans fats and eating only pastured meat and no processed foods) it is very healthy. Plus the food tastes good.

Cons: expensive. Pastured meat costs about double(in the U.S.)* what factory farmed meat costs. I justify this to myself as saving on future medical costs.


*I am jealous of people who don't have to differentiate between factory farmed and pastured meat. The U.S. food system is far more industrialized than in most if not all other countries.

The Paleo diet is a complete scam.

Look at the people who eat the most starches in the world. China, Kenya, Thailand, Singapore etc. Slim and healthy. They thrive on a diet based on rice and fruit.

Then look at the people who eat the most meat: America, Australia, the UK etc. Fat and high disease rates.

http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/jun/paleo2.htm

A complete scam? Well, I don't think so. You can see tons of proof that the diet/lifestyle works by looking at various blogs by long term *paleo-heads* who are high functioning healthy people.

You don't need to eat a lot of meat from what I've read of the paleo diet. The quality of meat and the cuts are also something to consider. Another thing is amount of exercise and intensity a person does.

Certain people are also more fine tuned to eat certain foods.

Anyway, I wouldn't be a complete paleo head if I were to try this out. I don't think I would go low carb, maybe medium carbs from veggies and fruits.

I recall reading yesterday an interesting study about paleo eating. Thought to share.

"Hunter-gatherers most likely to be leaner than us due to differences in diet, not activity"

http://www.drbriffa.com/2012/07/27/hunt ... -activity/

As for me, I've had a positive experience eating a paleo diet. I'm not the most strict with it when it comes to dairy. I'll still eat cheese from time to time. Overall though I feel healthier eating this way, and my weight and body fat is where I want it to be, 190lbs at around 11% body fat.

[quote="Zexion"]The Paleo diet is a complete scam.

Look at the people who eat the most starches in the world. China, Kenya, Thailand, Singapore etc. Slim and healthy. They thrive on a diet based on rice and fruit.

Then look at the people who eat the most meat: America, Australia, the UK etc. Fat and high disease rates.

http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/jun/paleo2.htm[/quote]

The problem isn't the meat. The problem is the chemicals that are injected into the meat (such as antibiotics, hormones, etc). Unfortunately, eating vegetables alone doesn't save you from chemicals. Most agricultural practices include using large amounts of poisons.

Also, no matter what kind of food you eat, if you are sedentary, you will get sick.

There's a growing body of scientific research that points to highly refined carbs like table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and wheat flour as the main villains in the western diet. Traditional Asian diets don't include these things either.


I used to think like you do...

I gained about 10lbs from stress eating during a particularly hellish school term. I decided to try the Mediterranean diet to lose the weight and get myself back on track.

After a year of eating mostly grains, veggies, beans, and meat only twice a week at most, I GAINED AN ADDITIONAL 10-20 LBS!

After about a month on a low-carb Atkins style diet, I have lost about 15 lbs without experiencing any hunger.

Also, on this diet my mood is much better and many of my less desirable AS symptoms have diminished.

By the way, I still eat plenty of fruit, veggies, and leafy greens along with meat, eggs and cheese every day. What I do not eat is refined carbs and starches.

The USDA recommended high carb/low fat diet causes many people to have chronically high levels of insulin in their blood.

Insulin causes the body store fat.

If you happen to be insulin resistant, you will become obese eating the USDA's recommended diet and nothing short of dangerous starvation like reductions in calories will let you lose the weight.

I see the paleo diet like a religion/cult, not in an entirely negative way, but I see the ideology as being like, weird. It reminds me of the opposite extreme of, say, raw food vegans. There's a lot you can learn from both groups, but I'd be damned to take on either diet long term to their extremes.

But, paleo will certainly help you lose weight. But, after going towards extremes in diets, trying to out paleo, raw food, ketogenic type diets for usually a week or two each (admittedly splotchy attempts, raw food ended prematurely with constipation oddly enough) I've pretty much just come to the conclusion, just eat a reasonably balanced diet with unprocessed food. I'd say as a generality, if you're not active or wanna cut weight, carb cutting works, but yeah. And as far as paleo, you know, I learned some stuff, animal fat isn't the devil, drink whole milk, don't use, say, soybean oil, stuff like that. I learned from raw food, it's good to keep raw food in the diet too, just not everything should be raw, I learned the hard way we started cooking stuff for a reason, we don't have multiple stomachs like cows.

But I see paleo as an extreme answer to modern processed diets, and extremes are needed to fight extremes I guess. Just the premise of the paleo philosophy is kinda odd, what about the 6000ish years of recent human history where people weren't on the paleo diet? The opposite extreme, raw vegans, imagine raw food as bringing back the era of like, the Garden of Eden.

But, that's just me. If paleo works for you, cool, just no diet is a panacea for everyone's problems, and everyone has different dietary genetics.

Just curious, but what do you find to be so extreme about the paleo diet?

The food lists I’ve seen are pretty inclusive.

From the little I’ve read, this diet seems to be less extreme than a lot of diets, including the low carb induction diet I’m doing right now.

Agreed.

Agreed- whenever I indulge in carbs- like a cup of cereal, or something, it's amazing how quickly the addiction cycle sets back in. The longer I can hold off, the less I want that stuff.