Originally Posted by Heather Hayllar
Hate to show my ignorance ................ but just what IS the Paleo diet please?
It's a diet that resembles the types of foods and carb-to-protein ratio that humans evolved with--the types of things we can digest and metabolize most efficiently. It excludes a lot of things that came about with the invention of agriculture which are a regular part of a modern diet. The idea is that agriculture has only been around for about 10,000 years, but humans have been around for millions--so we haven't had enough time in an evolutionary sense to really optimize the use of those foods.
In a nutshell, that means no grain, no dairy, no added sugars, and no legumes. There are other guidelines, but that's the basic idea. There's also a huge emphasis on natural and organic foods--grass-raised meat, for example, is vastly preferred over grain-raised feedlot meat. Not everyone follows it strictly--even just following it 85% will provide health benefits. In our house, we follow it about 90%-95% (we will allow the occasional bit of cheese and we cook with butter pretty frequently, and Boyfriend is a long-distance runner so he can afford a bit of wiggle room in the sugar department).
It's not for everyone, and it can be difficult to follow at times, but I can't argue with the fact that when I started it, I lost ten pounds in just a couple weeks even though I was eating as much as I felt like. It kind of redefines what conventional wisdom has been telling us about food, what we need, how much we need, and how it affects us.