I'm 99% primal, moving toward full paleo. I still track my calories because I could easily eat 1000 calories worth of raw cashews in about 5 minutes (not kidding--I did this once). I think it's good to keep track, at least in the beginning, just so you have a grasp as to what you're eating.

I'm not sure I understand the second part...if you're making a paleo recipe, use the recipe builder on this site for an accurate calorie count/macro ratio.

You can count calories AND do paleo. I do. I even recommend it. Having said that, the absolute worst case scenario is you try it while logging and find you are too hungry relative to your calorie goals and you try something else. This tends to be the opposite problem of most. Usually folks go paleo and find themselves eating fewer calories than their goal because they aren't hungry enough.

I think that if you've tried other things and it's worked out for you long term, then you probably wouldn't be looking for an alternative. If you're wanting to really see if this works, then you should try jumping in! Gaining a few pounds will not be the end of the world in the grande scheme of things. But I'm sure that if you really stay true to yourself through the process (give it a month), you'll see AND FEEL the positive effects (including either weightloss or smaller measurements, toning, depends on your starting point and goals and activity level/changes).

Whether it's low-fat or high-fat ways of eating, you're taking a chance in order to see potential results. If you don't stick to it, you won't know if it was a success or not. I do think that mindset has a lot to do with eating for weightloss/health. If you're miserable and freaked out the entire time, your body will react, craving comfort and familiar foods (at least mine would! Bacon and whipped cream (primal) are great comfort foods for me now though )...plus the added stress on your system can cause other issues, unrelated to the food you put in your mouth.

I vote that if you're wondering about it, give it a real shot. If you're scared to death, then keep doing your research, find success stories of people that started in a similar place to where you're at (you may even find people that were scared to death of eating so much fat each day!). If you start today or a year from now, at least you'll be in the right mindset to begin.

Agreed. When I tried going Primal back in the summer of 2011 (wow, hard to believe it's been almost 2 years now!), by that point I had decided, what do I have to lose by just trying it?? I was afraid of eating way more calories due to eating more fat, but it turned out that since fat is more satiating than empty carbs, I was eating about the same calories at the end of the day. I just exchanged less carbs with more fat and a little more protein. As it turns out, it helped allieviate a lot of health issues that I didn't even know were related, I didn't need any rx medicine any longer (just take supplements now), all just because I was frustrated with the scale.

Also, I can eat the same amount of calories now than I did weighing more, and still drop fat.