Followers of the Paleo diet say they are shedding drastic amounts of weight and warding off illness. So what’s the secret? The secret is eating like our Stone Age ancestors – which is exactly what the Paleo Diet is all about.
The Paleo Diet has indeed become a craze. The diet has spawned hundreds of books (nearly all of them best sellers) and thousands of blogs about Paleo diet cooking, Paleo diet tips and progress reports in the form of blogs from devout followers. What’s got everyone so excited? The diet basically promises that you’ll shed all your unwanted weight and that it’s unlikely you will get sick (experts say that people who follow a strict Paleo diet are less likely to develop diabetes, heart disease and even some cancers).
A new study, published in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that the Paleo diet was better for weight loss than normal nutrition recommendations. Not only did the study’s participants lose more weight, but they also had less blood fat and had a slimmer waistline on the Paleolithic-type diet than on a diet that followed the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR).
Dr. Loren Cordain has spent his career studying the diet of our ancestors. Many consider him to be the founder of the Paleo diet movement and he focused on the connection between “living off the land” and longevity and he says your prescription for optimum health.
Cordain says that the biggest misconception about the Paleo diet is that it’s a fad diet. Loren quotes his mentor, Dr. Boyd Eaton, as saying, “If it is a fad diet, it is the world’s oldest fad diet dating back to at least 2.5 million years.” Humans never ate processed grains, refined sugars or dairy products – which have all become very common in the average person’s diet today. The Paleo diet encourages consumers to return to our ancestral dietary patterns by consuming contemporary food groups (fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, seafood, grass produced meats and poultry, and nuts) that “mimic the food groups consumed by our hunter gatherer ancestors for more than 2.5 million years.”
A lot of people initially assume that this means that you need to eat like a cave man (by tearing honks of meat off the bone with your teeth) 100% of the time, but this isn’t what the Paleo diet is all about. While there are many die-hard Paleo dieters, there are different ways to incorporate this type of dieting into your day-to-day eating plans.
If it is a fad diet, it is the world’s oldest fad diet dating back to at least 2.5 million years.
Paleoista by Nell Stephenson is another spin-off of the diet which has been adapted for “modern women” (or basically anyone else that’s concerned about eating too much meat). We’ve included a few more useful resources for anyone else who wants to check out the Paleo diet movement:
- Downloadable Paleo food journals, calendars and diet comparison guides
- A list of Paleo foods that you can eat
- Listen to Robb Wolf’s popular weekly Paleo podcast
- If you’re into all the science behind the Paleo diet, you’ll like Chris Kresser’s books and resources
- Tasty Paleo recipes
