The Wild Diet - Abel James

GrayRider61

Anyone have experience with this diet?

StealthHealth

It's basically the same as the Primal Blueprint (Mark Sisson's) diet, which is an off shoot of the Paleo diet (Wild Diet and Primal contain diary whereas Paleo doesn't tend to).

I'm generally sympathetic to the Primal blueprint (although I don't adhere to it, I'm interested in it) even though I think the concept of ancestral health is, when represented like these diets, flawed.

But, despite my misgivings I'd say that any diet which focuses on basic ingredients, pulls in lots of fibrous vegetables and encourages people to think about their food choices and prepare most meal from scratch is a step in the right direction for a lot of people.

My experience from when I did follow Primal Blueprint was that I could both gain and lose weight whist following the rules. I felt good on that diet (although I still feel good and I no longer restrict myself anywhere near what I used to). I could have continued for a long time on that diet - possibly indefinitely, it's not that hard if you prepare most of your food at home, but I just didn't want to.

Paleo and Primal are seen as faddish diets and I think that there is a backlash against them which means that you're likely to find the most sympathetic replies to this type of question in one of the Primal/Paleo groups.

lemurcat12

StealthHealth wrote: »

I'm generally sympathetic to the Primal blueprint (although I don't adhere to it, I'm interested in it) even though I think the concept of ancestral health is, when represented like these diets, flawed.

But, despite my misgivings I'd say that any diet which focuses on basic ingredients, pulls in lots of fibrous vegetables and encourages people to think about their food choices and prepare most meal from scratch is a step in the right direction for a lot of people.

My experience from when I did follow Primal Blueprint was that I could both gain and lose weight whist following the rules. I felt good on that diet (although I still feel good and I no longer restrict myself anywhere near what I used to). I could have continued for a long time on that diet - possibly indefinitely, it's not that hard if you prepare most of your food at home, but I just didn't want to.

Paleo and Primal are seen as faddish diets and I think that there is a backlash against them which means that you're likely to find the most sympathetic replies to this type of question in one of the Primal/Paleo groups.

Agreed with all of this.

I dislike the idea that one must or should follow such a diet when the benefits are generally from things that people can (and often do) do independent of such fad diets and the flawed rationales, like mostly cooking from whole foods, eating a nutrition conscious diet, eating lots of vegetables and adequate protein, not eating a ton of so called junk food. For some with poor diets, I think it presents a fun rationale for changing that for some reason just basic nutrition advice does not. But obviously a lot of people not doing a named diet also eat good diets, and for them changing to "wild" or "paleo" or whatever is unlikely to matter. (I did paleo for a while to experiment with giving up grains, etc., and since I already ate lots of veg, cooked from whole foods, knew about nutrition some, it wasn't a big deal. I did think it was a perfectly pleasant way to eat, although I decided I didn't care to continue all of the restrictions.)

I also got bothered by paleo because I think the claims that dairy, legumes, and grains (esp whole grains) are inherently bad for you are unsupported and unscientific, and the idea that they are because we didn't eat them long enough ago I think is a bad argument for a lot of reasons. I DO think that some people overdo some less nutritious foods that they end up cutting out if they go on these diets, but there's a flaw in the logic as to how the diet works. I also think any diet that says that legumes are bad for you is messed up.

Can it be an enjoyable and healthy way to eat, despite this? Sure.

GrayRider61

Thanks, everyone, for the input. I'm not sold on the grains are bad, either. And no magic bullet. Seems like energy level is a little better but could just be placebo effect.