Paleo advice

Fruits contains sugar and carbs and dried fruits can have a quite high calorie content. Nuts are high in fat! If you want to lose I suggest eating totally clean and more like 100 % paleo puls cutting out fruits. Maybe try it out for about a month. I promise you will feel great.

Paleo is not a guaranteed weightloss especially if you eat 5 peices of fuit a day + 3 handfulls of nuts!

The whole concept of idealizing some ancestral condition is what makes it look comical. Paleolithic man had a short, miserable, disease ridden, and violent existence. But there is a reason the bible starts with the garden of Eden.


Wen you start with a flawed assumption, and build on it, things get weirder and weirder.

The whole concept of idealizing some ancestral condition is what makes it look comical. Paleolithic man had a short, miserable, disease ridden, and violent existence. But there is a reason the bible starts with the garden of Eden.


Wen you start with a flawed assumption, and build on it, things get weirder and weirder.

the assumption that palaeolithic people had short, miserable, disease ridden and violent existences is a flawed assumption. Shorter lifespan is correct, but only because Homo sapiens has evolved a longer childhood and longer lifespan generally to be able to learn and transmit far more cultural/survival knowledge from one generation to the next. Neanderthal children grew up about 3/4 as fast as Homo sapiens children, and were elderly in their 40s/50s. Homo erectus children grew up nearly twice as fast as Homo sapiens children. It's not because entire populations died prematurely.

Palaeolithic people were generally healthy, mostly free from disease and were on the whole no more violent than modern people, and quite a lot less violent than chimpanzees. Humans have been looking after sick, injured and elderly of their tribes for nearly 2 million years, according to the archaeological record. Additionally, later humans like neanderthals and Homo sapiens were at the top of the food chain so didn't live in fear of violence from animals either. They lived at low population densities, had not yet domesticated animals, so they were not exposed to many of the sources of disease that later populations were.

I'm not saying that they lived idyllic lives of bliss, a total lack of access to modern medicine and education/information isn't something I'd ever want for myself or my kids, but there's no reason to believe their lives were any harsher than a chimp or gorilla's life in the wild (a more applicable comparison for early humans like Homo habilis), or the lives of any other pre-industrial humans (a more applicable comparison for later humans like neanderthals and palaeolithic homo sapiens).

I say the above as a palaeoanthropology nerd, I don't actually eat paleo. I love my dairy too much and as I'm from a long line of dairy farming populations, I can digest it just fine. I will also point out that palaeolithic people would have eaten wild grains and legumes that grew within their foraging range. Neolithic people didn't invent grains or legumes, and they didn't start cultivating plants that no-one had ever eaten before. IMO the palaeolithic diet is actually very healthy, I mean 1.5 million+ years of hunting and gathering has resulted in us being extremely healthy on a diet of meat, fruit and vegetables.... the issue I have (in addition to not agreeing with unnecessary dietary restriction) is when internet "gurus" starts saying things like "caveman ate/didn't eat (add food here)" when the journal of human evolution can't tell me that, or any other scientific inaccuracies or total myths about palaeolithic people... unfortunately most of what most people believe about palaeolithic people are myths.

The whole concept of idealizing some ancestral condition is what makes it look comical. Paleolithic man had a short, miserable, disease ridden, and violent existence. But there is a reason the bible starts with the garden of Eden.


Wen you start with a flawed assumption, and build on it, things get weirder and weirder.

the assumption that palaeolithic people had short, miserable, disease ridden and violent existences is a flawed assumption. Shorter lifespan is correct, but only because Homo sapiens has evolved a longer childhood and longer lifespan generally to be able to learn and transmit far more cultural/survival knowledge from one generation to the next. Neanderthal children grew up about 3/4 as fast as Homo sapiens children, and were elderly in their 40s/50s. Homo erectus children grew up nearly twice as fast as Homo sapiens children. It's not because entire populations died prematurely.

Palaeolithic people were generally healthy, mostly free from disease and were on the whole no more violent than modern people, and quite a lot less violent than chimpanzees. Humans have been looking after sick, injured and elderly of their tribes for nearly 2 million years, according to the archaeological record. Additionally, later humans like neanderthals and Homo sapiens were at the top of the food chain so didn't live in fear of violence from animals either. They lived at low population densities, had not yet domesticated animals, so they were not exposed to many of the sources of disease that later populations were.

I'm not saying that they lived idyllic lives of bliss, a total lack of access to modern medicine and education/information isn't something I'd ever want for myself or my kids, but there's no reason to believe their lives were any harsher than a chimp or gorilla's life in the wild (a more applicable comparison for early humans like Homo habilis), or the lives of any other pre-industrial humans (a more applicable comparison for later humans like neanderthals and palaeolithic homo sapiens).

I say the above as a palaeoanthropology nerd, I don't actually eat paleo. I love my dairy too much and as I'm from a long line of dairy farming populations, I can digest it just fine. I will also point out that palaeolithic people would have eaten wild grains and legumes that grew within their foraging range. Neolithic people didn't invent grains or legumes, and they didn't start cultivating plants that no-one had ever eaten before. IMO the palaeolithic diet is actually very healthy, I mean 1.5 million+ years of hunting and gathering has resulted in us being extremely healthy on a diet of meat, fruit and vegetables.... the issue I have (in addition to not agreeing with unnecessary dietary restriction) is when internet "gurus" starts saying things like "caveman ate/didn't eat (add food here)" when the journal of human evolution can't tell me that, or any other scientific inaccuracies or total myths about palaeolithic people... unfortunately most of what most people believe about palaeolithic people are myths.

^ THIS.
I eat primal because I can't give up dairy and see no reason to. I also haven't completely restricted any food groups because life wouldn't be fun if i never ate grains, legumes, sugar, etc. again. I feel amazing eating 80-90% primal and I don't really miss the "bad stuff" anymore but still enjoy whenever I want so long as it fits my calorie/macro goals even though I usually end up sick afterwards.

I think my approach is perfectly fine and I'm definitely not overly obsessed. I don't get why people get so worked up over the paleo/primal diets. There are plenty of success stories with it, for one but a lot of them still have non-paleo foods in moderation. Its a known fact that meats, vegetables, fruits, and healthy fats are healthy and that processed/artificial crap is bad and not anything that we actually NEED. That's the whole concept basically. Some come to eliminate but most will tell you they still indulge periodically. The guy that came up with the Primal diet, Mark Sisson, even indulges in non-primal food occasionally. So I don't see the big issue but anyway. That's totally off subject.

& To pcastagner - The quoted above explains everything better then I ever could but I can say this much, a lot of research suggests that many of today's most common diseases have became more prevalent since our diets have put so much emphasis on grains. Wheat is loaded with anti-nutrients and can prevent full absorption of vitamins, minerals, etc. There are also studies that show saturated fat can be good for us. Paleolithic people ate whatever meat they could find which typically included eating organs, fatty cuts, etc. Anything that COULD be ate was ate. & Sure if their were grains/legumes in their area, I'm positive that they ate them. I'm sure it wasn't year round though because to my knowledge wheat doesn't grow year round, not naturally at least. I could be wrong but still. Even if they did eat it, it was nowhere near the same as wheat today. Wheat today is heavily processed and refined. Anyway, you're entitled to your own opinion but don't try passing it off as facts. You have flawed assumptions, as you say, about the Paleo/Primal approach.