My experience going 'paleo'

I don't mean to disagree with you but my husband who spent lots of time researching maintains that no you do not need to be worrying about calories, "deficits" and the like. This is part of my frustration/fear of it. Unclear rules and people seeming to be in direct contradiction with one another?

Can you help me understand why one paleo person would say one thing and another would say what seems to be the complete opposite?

So if I eat 10,000 calories per day of clean paleo food I won't gain weight.

Cool.

See what i'm getting at?

I don't know how you could eat 10,000 calories of Paleo food. That would be about 5 gallons of food. I know I can easily eat 10,000 calories of high carb food.

If I eat 2,000 cal / day of Paleo like stuff, I lose weight. If I eat 2,000 cal / day of high carb, processed food. I gain weight. I don't have to explain it, I just know it.

There is not a doubt in my mind that I could gain weight on a paleo diet. Ribs, for one - I could eat a slab at a time. For two, nuts and seeds are very high calorie and I could eat handful after handful if I let myself. While it's true that cutting out grains could cut a bunch of calories, adding in more fats would put me way over.

ETA: Three: homemade hemp milk is paleo, and I could drink a quart of that in one sitting, even if I leave out the honey, it's still over 600 calories per quart.

so what we've established is that you 1) don't understand paleo and 2) could use some more self control...

And we've established that you have no clue regarding the difference between "could" and "would."

The point is that it's possible.

I just finished doing my Whole30 about 2 weeks ago. I was shocked - I lost 17 pounds in 30 days!! It really was surprising especially considering I was already down over 75 pounds at that point.

I was a by the book "kill all things" person on about days 4 -6 but after that I felt pretty good throughout. It seems like a lot of joint pain has subsided and I never have that bloated feeling my stomach.

I really learned a lot during that 30 days and have been continuing to eat paleo-ish since completing. It's not as hard as I thought. I always thought it was too extreme of a change of eating habits but I don't really feel that way anymore. It definitely requires a lot more cooking and planning but it is sustainable for me.

I eat low carb paleo/primal due to allergies and PCOS/insulin resistance. I've been eating this way for around 8 months now.

I think the first thing to clear up is that there is no one way to do paleo or primal. There are countless books, all containing different variations on the theme. We are all our own N=1 experiment, so it's really a matter of finding what works best for us as individuals. Some of us eat a lot more carbs than others. Some eat a lot more fats. Some of us eat dairy, some don't. Some count calories, others don't want or need to. Some of us favour gentle exercise, and others are CrossFit maniacs. Some are eating this way to ease serious health problems, and others are quite healthy. Some are losing weight, others aren't. There's a whole spectrum of different applications of "paleo" or "primal" ways of eating....I think of this as being similar to how there are different sorts of vegetarians and vegans.

I absolutely count ALL my calories, as they do indeed matter for me. I'm still overweight. I also watch my protein intake because if left to my own devices, I don't usually make it to where I need to be. Tracking works for me. I am hormonally challenged, though certainly not anywhere near as bad as I was, so I've got a different situation than someone who is already lean and in great shape hormonally.

I'm not in favour of dietary dogma of any sort--in fact, it creeps me out to no end! Similarly, I'm not a gung-ho paleo cheerleader, nor am I one of those people who calls it my "lifestyle". I eat this way out of necessity, otherwise I find myself kind of unwell. I do feel great these days, by the way! I have been rather successful at managing my blood sugar and clearing up a whole bunch of other issues I was having, which were mostly related to my food sensitivities.

I view paleo/primal ways of eating as a framework for how I choose my food, rather than a strict set of rules I must follow. The bottom line is that I eat what I know nourishes me and makes me feel good, what I can afford, and what I want to eat. I'm the only one who can be the judge of that.

The paleo/primal boom has been good for me in that I don't have to feel like a total freak because I can't eat certain foods. There are tons of great recipes, and lots of really interesting research and discussion about the nutritional aspects involved in eating this way, so I like that about it. However, I could really do without all the "caveman" discussion and the evangelical, judgemental weirdness that is demonstrated by so many of the paleo/primal enthusiasts.

I think Paleo's awesome, but I find the drama associated around it embarrassing.
Yesterday I watched in breathless horror and mild amusement as a thread on "how do you eat butter" became a raging argument on a Paleo forum.

But like I said. It's awesome. It makes being a coeliac (like me) or any gluten intolerance easy - don't have to carefully read the back of every packet, because you don't eat pocketed goods anymore. Except for chocolate, and I think it's just me who goes through a pound of chocolate a week - not sure. It lets me let out my inner creative chef with "Paleoifying" recipes that I used to be able to eat, starting from scratch with whole foods; nachos, ice cream, pizza, brownies, you name it, I've done it, and if not, I probably want to.

I would recommend Paleo - or it's dairy-eating associate Primal, which admittedly I lean towards - to anyone. Depending on the individual and their goals, I would in most cases recommend it over calorie counting. Why? Because calorie counting can be stressful on some people, and I've seen enough here on MFP to see how people can seriously screw with themselves by cutting calories too low to make "progress", and it would honestly kill me to see people I care for deliberately starve themselves to "loose weight" quickly, so I'd always recommend a healthy, fairly balanced diet/lifestyle in that regard and allow the results to come naturally. And they will, unless the person gorges on high-calorie foods on nuts/nut-butters and the like, in which case it's simply a matter of saying "cut back on those a bit".
Hell, I don't even plan on counting calories my whole life - I only do it now because A) I'm trying to gain and I eat one meal a day and have to make sure I'm getting enough calories in. I'm pretty sure I can eye up how much food I can eat to maintain my weight currently, but will continue to count until and when I've hit my goal weight (60-65KG) and then see where things go from there. But yeah.

TL;DR: For someone who doesn't want to count calories and still see some good results, provided they don't gorge on nuts and the like, will find Paleo/Primal an excellent lifestyle, IMO.

i'm almost positive our paleo ancestors drank alcohol. just sayin

Fermenting fruits and grains (making beer out of it) is one of our oldest means of preserving food. Last I knew, archeologists had found beer-making stuff in the middle east 1000's of years before the Egyptians, whose commoners drank beer as the largest calorie source in their diet (built the pyramids on the stuff).