Brian, I agree with you on that (provided it wasn’t a sarcastic comment), but my point is that this is just another study showing that one particular diet (or thought process) works. My perspective is that it works for some people – and not all.

Instead of paying attention to my evolutionary chimpanzee genes, I read things, try things, make decisions from hand to mouth, and see what happens. This works, that doesn’t, and I try something else. Unfortunately for all the arguments here, the caveman thing doesn’t work for my mind and emotions which are a real part of my being; it’s part of being human as opposed to simply a primate. The other unfortunate part of thinking meat-eating is necessary rather than simply a choice is that I don’t eat meat and I am perfectly healthy and experience all of the same benefits that you folks claim.

Please, would some ‘expert’ here explain how I am able to achieve these results without doing things your way?

The best diet for either health or weight loss consists of eating the Pleistocene kinds of food our ancestors ate, which are natural for us to eat. It is a low carbohydrate (but not no carbohydrate) diet).

They ate, possibly, several pounds of vegetables and fruits daily and, when it was available, perhaps a pound flesh foods (including internal organs and marrow from long bones).

It was a diet that consisted of fats, proteins, and natural (unrefined, unprocessed) carbohydrates. Our Pleistocene ancestors ate very little or no salt.

Instead of products full of sugar and flour, they ate no processed carbohydrates. They had no chocolate and no beer, wine, or spirits. They ate no cereal grains. They consumed no dairy products.

Our ancestors ate this type of diet from about two-and-one-half million years ago until the Agricultural Revolution about ten thousand years ago.

It was a very successful way of eating; had it been otherwise we would not have survived as a species.

Though it’s a much greater span of time than most of us think about in our daily lives, it’s important to think about our ancestors as they lived over 10,000 years ago.

Why?

In terms of the evolution of our genes, it’s not that long ago. In fact, less than 1/10th of 1% of our genes have changed in the last 10,000 years! In other words, your body is extremely similar to the bodies of your ancestors.

Our ancestors evolved to get most of their calories from fats, not from carbohydrates.
They had a wholly natural diet.

As a result, our bodies are: well equipped to consume fats and proteins but poorly equipped to consume carbohydrates.

Moreover, they certainly had the best weight loss diet in the sense that being overweight or obese was never a problem.

I had an aha moment reading Gary Taubes’ article in the NYT magazine 5 1/2 years ago, in which I recognized myself and my symptoms. I don’t completely dismiss cognition. I just mean that my body, with its shakes and cold sweats and severe hunger pangs, was telling me something. If I’d listened to it, instead of to what my brain had been reading all those years, I wouldn’t have been in the position I was in in July 2002 – on the fast track to diabetes. Ironically, though, if I had ignored most of what I’d read in the papers for the prior decade, I would’ve been much better off.

Even though it is claimed that humans must be meat-eaters, I have not eaten meat in 18-months and have apparently violated all evolutionary pangs by never having a biological craving for it. I have lost much fat, gained muscle mass, and overall feel much better than I did before. I have changed nothing else about what I eat because I always ate a lot of fruits and vegetables and whole food sources of carbs. I simply replaced some of those vegies with higher protein sources. I also go through about a liter of EVOO every couple weeks, paying no attention to how much fat, protein, or carbs make up my diet; eating more if I’ve lost muscle mass; eating less when I want to lose fat. None of this is ‘naturally’ known by my body, but learned through years of reading and experimenting with myself.

Basically, what I mean to say is that there are many paths to follow and when you find one that works for you, go for it. But don’t sit around claiming that every other human should follow your path or they are wrong, even if it’s working for them.