Paleo Diet: Healthy Or A Hoax? page 3

[primal me]

I have noticed that the people CW has claws in the deepest are the ones most opposed to the paleo lifestyle. I mentioned the change in our eating habits to our school principal and she was all "everything in moderation" and couldn't seem to get away fast enough. I wanted to shake her but that wouldn't have been very good. I am really looking forward to parent teacher interviews next month when I can find out if my kids attention spans have really increased as much as I believe they have.

Paleo's a hoax! That's fine, more bacon for me!

[Ouaouaron]

I know what you mean Iron Fireling. Back when I ate grains I was hungry ALL THE TIME. I'd eat a huge meal and a half hour later was eating again. For now, I'm going to keep depriving myself by eliminating an entire food group and instead have a steak wrapped in bacon with a pad of butter and a fried egg on top. And then I'm going to sleep like a baby for 8 solid hours and wake up refreshed. Deprived. Please.

I used to come home after work and be cranky, shaky and starving at 4:00 but now I can have lunch (today lamb, brussels sprouts, salt and sweet potato) at 12:00 and I can have dinner at 7:00 without starving or having mood changes.

[magnolia1973]

Yeah... because I know I used to binge on quinoa ALL THE TIME. Boxes of it.

Seriously, I prefer zucchini noodles to pasta and ice cream is an occasional treat.... and in what universe is there a diet that allows for real full fat ice cream? Really? I must have missed the part about ice cream being on the various diets I did.... that chapter must have been excluded from my copy of South Beach Diet.

I don't miss fat free, sugar free yogurt as I dig into bacon and eggs. And who the hell would prefer quinoa salad over a steak?

So funny that they claim this diet is lacking in pleasurable foods. The reason we all stay on it is because it's BASED on satisfying foods. Every other diet in the "world of weightloss" is based on horrifyingly unsatisfying foods that drive you eat crap! Because Slimfast is so pleasurable. You know that swill ain't like a Dairy Queen shake.

[Unicorn]

Well, that's a headesk article if I ever read one.

" A breakfast of plain lowfat yogurt and berries wouldn't be allowed." Says who? Yes, lowfat is not great, but if it is PLAIN and not full of artificial thickeners, sweeteners, sugar, food coloring, pectin......" Then go ahead! Personally, a full fat PLAIN yogurt simply tastes better with berries. No one is clubbing you over the head, dragging you back to their cave and forcing you to consume a huge portion of woolly mammoth meat for breakfast.

[BestBetter]

“There's another, wholly unrelated problem: pleasure. "It eliminates quinoa, ice cream, pasta -- these things we love to eat, that make us social creatures…”

I do agree that ANY way of eating does have some social difficulties, but humans being social creatures is not thanks to quinoa, ice cream or pasta. That's just sloppy writing.

The thing is, as time goes by, I'm actually seeing that paleo/primal eating is actually having some negative health effects on me, and while I want to believe in it full-heartedly, the results I'm seeing are pretty disappointing, and I've actually had some success in moving towards a more SAD-type diet (still no gluten, soy, dairy, but way more sugar and carbs, less vegetables, lower fat). I could easily write an article explaining what I see as being some of the problems with this way of eating, but not a single thing in that article would be on my list, because it's all nonsense.

[jenn26point2]

That's cool... more bacon and steak for me!! YAY!

[waterjen]

...I have never found any way of eating as easy as primal, and I think it's because I AM satisfied and I DON'T crave anymore. I mean, I may feel like I want to eat something in particular, but I'm not driven to shove something in my mouth despite already having eaten more than enough.

Errm... and I'm not lacking for "pleasure" either on this diet. When I was struggling to lose weight following CW I was depriving myself of pleasure ALL THE FREAKING TIME and I was NOT successfully losing weight. (In fact, the only time I managed to lose any weight in the old days was when I took diet pills... Phentermine worked nicely...except I could hardly sleep...). And the point is when I was trying to eat this way, as soon as I "went off the rails" I found it EXTREMELY hard to get back on the diet. When I've gone off primal (eating a treat or something) I've been able to resume where I went off without any hardship at all. To me that is the indicator of an eating plan that TRULY works. It's one you can stick with and get back to with ease!

Well said!

[waterjen]

Back when I ate grains I was hungry ALL THE TIME. I'd eat a huge meal and a half hour later was eating again.

Exactly, and it was even worse when I was a veg head. It's something I noticed when I was having Sunday brunch at my then boyfriend's house years ago. They'd have a huge spread, ranging from scrambled eggs and bacon/sausage/etc to bagels and an entire varied breadbasket to oatmeal to fruit plate to I don't remember what else. Then they didn't eat again until dinner. Whenever I ate there and had eggs and bacon and fruit and toast or bread of any sort, I was starved again within hours. Not the case if I stopped with just the eggs and bacon and a little fruit. It took a while for the connection to come clear.
If they were equations, they would look like this:

Real food = satisfaction for hours

Real food + crap food = short-term satisfaction followed by increasingly urgent hunger and moodiness

That realization, years ago, made me willing to consider Atkins and then the paleo/primal diets.

Why don't we ever see articles like this: "Standard American Diet: Healthy or a Road to a Host of Health Woes"?

[tfarny]

One of these articles comes out about every month like clockwork these days. The hallmarks are a total lack of evidence, failure to speak with anyone who's tried it out for a period of time, and very sloppy logic / simple failure to look stuff up, like the whole "don't eliminate food groups" thing as well as repeat of the artery-clogging sat fat boogieman.
Meanwhile, average life expectancy in the US is starting to fall - NY Times article today.

[sbhikes]

The thing is, as time goes by, I'm actually seeing that paleo/primal eating is actually having some negative health effects on me, and while I want to believe in it full-heartedly, the results I'm seeing are pretty disappointing, and I've actually had some success in moving towards a more SAD-type diet (still no gluten, soy, dairy, but way more sugar and carbs, less vegetables, lower fat). I could easily write an article explaining what I see as being some of the problems with this way of eating, but not a single thing in that article would be on my list, because it's all nonsense.

I'd be interested in hearing about this if you decide to write about it.