Beyond "paleo"

For me, the paleo lifestyle was a wake-up call. It was what finally caused me to think critically about how I was eating. Unfortunately for the gurus who are busy pushing their paleo cookbooks and how-to manuals I did not stop thinking critically. And that critical thinking caused me to finally move beyond paleo.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I became truly paleo whereas the "paleo" lifestyle stops short of its claimed goal. I say this because the "paleo" diet does not duplicate the eating habits of paleolithic humans as closely as the gurus would have you believe. The gurus overlook one crucial detail that kept troubling me.

This detail is the simple fact that agriculture is only 10,000 years old. Yes, I know paleo folks talk about that all the time. But for some reason they only talk about it in the context of grains. They fail to acknowledge the fact that the lack of agriculture in paleolithic times  meant that for most of the year humans would not have had access to very many fruits and vegetables at all. They didn't have greenhouses to grow things in the winter or refrigerators to keep foods fresh for weeks after the harvest. Except for the autumn months when fruits and vegetables commonly come available for harvest humans would have been almost entirely carnivorous. And there is plenty of evidence to support this hypothesis. We know that neanderthals ate vegetables. But the overwhelming majority of their diet was meat.

Now it's been something like two years since I "went paleo". No, I haven't been perfect at it. But I've followed the guidelines well enough that I should have some success to report. Yet I don't. My weight has stayed between 320 and 340 since I first cut bread from my diet. Even after I cut dairy from my diet my weight remained the same. This has been utterly aggravating. I did feel better. It was clear I had taken a step in the right direction. It was equally clear that I had not taken enough steps.

Nearly a month ago I decided to take the only step left. And it was a big step. I decided to emulate my neanderthal kin and go full carnivore with my diet. Now I have the success I never saw with the "paleo" diet. It's been less than a month and I've lost more than twenty-five pounds. On the Third of this month I weighed 307. This is the Fifth and I'm down to 304. Can you name another diet that causes you to drop three pounds in two days?

The funny part is that according to the diet industry I am doing everything wrong. They say to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, I eat none. They say to eat several small meals throughout the day, I normally eat only one meal per day. They say to watch your fat intake, I eat a lot of fat. The list goes on.

And I am far from starvation. My meal tonight was half a pound of bacon, five eggs fried in bacon grease, and one-and-a-quarter pounds of fried ground beef. I did cheat a little and eat some chicken tenders early in the afternoon. According to some random online meal calculator I've eaten 2,561 calories today. That's 277 grams of protein, 160 grams of fat, and only two grams of carbohydrates. I've been eating like this every day for almost a month now. Every night I have a pound or more of beef along with a couple other protein sources. Typically I grill some chicken and fry some fish. But I occasionally substitute pork or bacon & eggs depending on what I have available.

By the end of next week I'll be under 300 pounds for the first time in a decade. Within three months I'll be back in top shape. Maybe even sooner if I get back into the gym. Which reminds me, did I mention I've lost all this weight without doing any exercise at all? That's right, none. I eat like a lion, don't do any exercise at all, and drop roughly a pound a day.

Seeing the numbers drop on the scale keeps me motivated. Seeing the muscular definition return keeps me motivated. This is probably the easiest thing I've ever done. And I'm motivated enough to keep reporting on it. I may not add much more to this blog. But I think I need to at least post a monthly progress report.