Hi guys!

I'm on PP and doing pretty well (since I stopped weighing and started just checking my clothes' size!! ). I found this forum "by mistake" and all this sounds really interesting and very logical!

Will someone give me a summary on the diet? Or should I say WOL? You really don't count anything at all? I'm a bit of a control fiend (as the abandonment of the 100 times a day weighing in might have given you a clue) and the idea of not counting carbs, calories, fibre blablabla sounds great!!!

I'm definitely going to order the book, but in the meantime ... and suggestions? (Limit to fruit? Limit to nuts?)

Gee, thanks in advance!!!

Liv

unless a person is significantly overweight, no limit to anything except honey. Audette allegedly eats a pound or more of health food store bacon per day.

The main paleo rule is...think like a 'cavewoman'. If it did not exist 40,000 years ago, don't eat it. If you can't gather it with tools no more complicated than a stick or a deftly-wielded rock, and if you can't digest it raw, don't eat it. No, you aren't forced to eat everything raw, but it's the core test--potatoes, legumes and grains are indigestible (or poisonous) raw, though you could eat meat, eggs, insects, fruits, most veggies, nuts and seeds raw.

While you're waiting for the book, check out the links at http://www.paleodiet.com/ That'll keep you busy for a couple years!

And yes, it does make a lot of sense to me, too (with some quibbles I have, like on Audette's thoughts on peanuts, cashews and green beans, all of which I suspect paleolithic woman would have gathered and eaten without hesitation)

... for your always kind and fast replies!!

And I'm sure any help is useful because since I live in Italy, any books I decide to buy take about two months to arrive and cost a real fortune!

I'm doing pretty well on my own variation of PP, although I've taken awhile to get settled down on this WOE ... in the beginning I was really driving myself bananas with the scale, as I said before and every fluctuation was a reason to think it wasn't working. I think maybe I was expecting to lose weight like when I was 20 and running around all day instead of 33 and glued to an office chair all day.

What about stuff like mustard and mayo ... guess they're no-nos huh? Raisins? I better start reading reading reading ...

Thanks some more Razzle!

Liv

Mayo is paleo--if you make it yourself or carefully buy (here in the US, at least) at a health food store. Ideally, you'd make it of olive oil or nut oil, egg yolk, salt, and any granulated spice you wish. Mustard, I'm not sure of (as I don't eat it)...the mustard seeds are plenty paleo, and I'd think dry mustard is fine...but there may be vinegar or some other ingredient that excludes the wetter stuff. (Some paleo people think a bit of fruit vinegar is fine, because as fruits rot, they produce vinegar. Audette says no on vinegar--i've seen paleo people come to cyberblows on this debate! ) Tea is fine, coffee is evil--oops, I mean non-paleo. There's also some arguing in the paleo world about adding salt to food--wouldn't coastal dwellers have figured out salt evaporation and done so? (There are some archeological finds that suggest this was done, but Cordain thinks it's awful.)

Dried fruit is fine, but of course would likely slow weight loss a bit--limiting (like honey) would be a good idea until goal weight is achieved.

It's an odd thing, paleo eating. You can try to be very pure about it all, but that's impossible, really. So many of our vegetables in the market are more neolithic than rice! (There's a great timeline about the introduction of various foods, linked off that paleodiet page. Iceburg lettuce is only 100 years old, for instance!) And the fruit we eat is far sweeter than natural (unhusbanded) fruit--something like crabapples would be closer to what paleo people likely ate as fruit--tart and fibrous. Some paleo eaters only eat fruit in season, to more closely mimic what must have happened 40,000 years ago. Some really get into the insect-eating, which I have not had the courage to try.

I'd say not to get too awfully fixated with the small amounts of stuff that might be non-paleo, or you'd drive yourself crazy--the touch of vinegar that might be in mayonaisse you get at a restaurant won't taint your immortal paleo soul or anything, IMO. (someone wrote an article where they followed Audette around at a buffet table and kept pointing out to him the non-paleo ingredients in food he picked up--so even the experts aren't all that pure, apparently!)

Thanks for your thanks, but I'm very happy to answer these questions--especially about paleo eating, a theory that truly appeals to my intellect. (I like my cheese tho, so I'm not giving it up! I'd eat bugs first. )

when you read his book he sounds like such a militant about the whole thing. i am on neanderthin myself and have been pretty obsessive about not eating things like vinegar, cheese or store-bought mayo. but he does mention that you can have processed meats "occasionally as a treat" which i do treat myself every weekend to bacon

also, what is your take on wine? ray says "if you must drink, do so only on special occasions (once or twice a year)"--yeah right.

for me, it's more like once or twice a week

karebear, I'd have to do more research to answer that--wine would have to be better than beer (grains, eek!) and don't fruits naturally ferment and create alcohol? I find these thought experiments amusing (part of why I like this diet's ideas, I think)...I'll do some reading and let you know what I find about the history of getting drunk. (come to think of it, taking mescaline or psilocybin mushrooms would probably be more paleo, as highs go...and I'd love to come to a trial where someone used as a defense of their illegal drug use that they were a pure paleo person and waved Audette's book around )

Okay, editing now....some quotes from on-line sources:

"We know that primitive man [sic] ate grapes because their seeds have been found in caves along with stone tools. Since grapes will become wine, if just left to their own devices, it is almost certain that wine was 'discovered' not 'invented'."

and... " Wild grapes, hang down in clusters of great beauty, sweeter and juicier than most fruits. They are striking and tempting so that they would have received particular attention from food gatherers among communities fortunate enough to be living where vines could grow. If the gatherer of wild grapes found him/her self with more than his/her family could at once consume, he/she would put them into a vessel, and if the vessel happened to be of clay, so that the juice of any crushed fruit could accumulate, the grapes would begin to ferment, since yeasts are present in the bloom on the skins of all wild grapes. Sooner or later some thirsty member of a food-gathering community, not long after the first invention of pottery, would have taken a drink from a vessel which two or three days earlier contained grapes, but which now contained-wine."

So with this logic, you could certainly sustain a "paleo" defense in the paleo-correctness court, I think.

hey razzle,

i love your take on the whole thing. and it sooo works for me. besides, i read that drinking light could ward of alzheimer's. the study was published in lancet and it said

"Already shown to help prevent heart disease and strokes, light drinking may also ward off Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia."

"By the end of the study in 1999, 197 of the participants had developed Alzheimer's or another form of dementia. Those who fared best were people who drank between one and three drinks a day. They had a 42% lower risk of developing dementia than the nondrinkers."

good for my heart and my brain

of course, moderation is the key

Hi I'm back, I've been flat on my back with the flu for a week and have been dead bored without being about to zip around the forum (internet only in my office).

News: the Paleo diet thing has really taken my fancy because it really sounds logical to me and so I've been doing a sort of modified Paleo (I've never been into extremes) which is the Scarsdale diet. And I can tell you that in about a week (of which most was spent in bed because of the flu) I've lost 2 kilos, all my colitis and stomache problems have just DISAPPEARED, I'm never hungry, I eat a ton of fruit so I satisfy my very sweet tooth and zero cravings. Last night I even managed to taste some chocolate (Easter day I was sooooo good!!) without breaking down and drowning myself in it!

And that's about it... Almost Paleo has olved my problems (rememeber that i've been trying these various diets since about february!!)

Good luck to all who want to try and thanks to all those patient people who have been supporting me and putting up with all my trial-and-errors!!!

Bye for now
Liv

Liv, that's a great way of phrasing it -- "Almost Paleo" !

Glad you're feeling better.

As far as trying various diets, me too, and i guess most people do the same thing -- gotta keep exploring 'til you find what works for YOU, on an individual basis. It's not just a matter of weight loss but also long-term health concerns -- arthritis and other auto-immune stuff, diabetes, digestive problems, etc.

Hey, i'm curious -- have you always lived in Italy? It seems like such a beautiful place! And such an abundance of great food!

Foodie

I've been living in Italy since I was 17 (am 33 now), was born and brought up in South Africa before that. (Dad's Italian, Mom's Zambian ... big mix, huh?!?).

Italy is a food heaven, no less, and family ties are really strong compared to Anglo families. Feeding people is a demonstration of love and affection, and eating it is a show of appreciation. It's tough. I guess in the US eating is more recreational but that makes it less emotional. (Wow! What a lot of adjectives ). I guess!! (What are the Arkansas specialties?)

In your other post you mentioned cravings and sugar addictions and, yes that's me!!, but I have to admit that on this WOE I don't get cravings, so when I crash I sadly have to confess that the reason is always psychological. Aren't we always our own worst enemies!!!

Keep posting!! Keep losing!!!

Liv

O your ancestry sounds soooooooooo interesting!!! How exotic and cool!

Life here in Arkansas is very very "white" LOL I'm part Anglo, part Native American, part Lebanese, and who knows what else, and as an "Air Force Brat" i grew up in Asia and California. So as you can imagine i feel VERY out of place here in Arkansas. Mostly they're nice people, just so ... i don't know ... xenophobic is the word which springs to mind

Arkansas specialities? Let's see ... they have this awful thing they call "chocolate gravy." You melt some margarine (yes, margarine!) in a pan and stir in some bleached white flour (seriously), then you stir in some Hershey's Chocolate Syrup, and then some milk. When it's hot and bubbly you spoon it over white "store" bread or those white-flour biscuits that are sold in cardboard tubes in the supermarket. It's truly the most horrible tasting stuff imaginable, LOL

Down in the southern part of the state, i imagine the food is better and more traditional than up here, but perhaps that's just wishful thinking

Hey there Foodie!

You sound a lot more exotic than me! Wow! And yes, I guess that was my general impression of what Arkansas must be like judging from books and movies. Still, I'm a US fan and would love to see it all, not just the "tourist States"!!

And that chocolate stuff does sound pretty disgusting, but I regrettably have to confess that during a binge I've eaten worse than that!!! Sounds quite fun compared to what I have managed to punish myself with in the past! Fortunately the real binges have left me, but the occasinal hog fest is still a problem. Anyway ... I won't tantalize you with Italian specialties, which are mostly carby and different everywhere you go ...

Keep posting and keep with it!!!

Liv

hi guys

so what do you guys usually eat? i am really curious liv, do you have any south african specialties that you cook?

and foodie212, i've lived in california since age 4 (dad was in the army) and lived in maryland on and off for 10 years after i graduated high school. i went to under grad and graduate school out there (but i had to move back home). so i know how hard it is to go from living in california to living in the southern part of the united states but there has to be some specialties from arkansas other than the "chocolate gravy"

LOL Nah, i look Anglo -- my mother's family is from Ireland and England, and my father's family is Scottish, Lebanese, and American Cherokee. As far as i know, that is, LOL It's such an incredibly dysfunctional bunch of people with a pathological divorce rate, illegitimate children all over the world (thanks to a lot of the men in the family having served in the U.S. military), etc. Up until 2 years ago i never really knew my older brothers, as they had been abandoned with distant relatives when they were little kids. They grew up not even knowing each other, as they were raised with different relatives, and one of my older sisters too -- she later came to live with us as a sort of unpaid servant to take care of the little ones! Why in the world my parents -- who hated each other and finally got a divorce -- kept on having kids they didn't want is just beyond my comprehension. The whole thing is so sad and mixed up. I used to think we were the only family in the world like this but now i realize it's not a rare tragedy.

It has totally warped my views on population control -- i'm all for forced sterilization for people like that.

Okay, that's my non-PC rant for the day, ha!

In my opinion, all human beings are "cousins," because we all descended from Africans. At least, that's what the paleoanthropologists say and it makes sense to me. So, hi Cousins!

About Arkansas -- actually it's GORGEOUS here. Almost tropical, really, compared to anywhere west and/or north of here. We're sort of at the northwest corner of The South. It's green here most of the year -- millions of shades of green. The winters are usually very mild and the autumns and springs are so pleasant and soft. The summers are a bit overwhelming sometimes due to the intense heat combined with the high humidity -- i think we need gills instead of lungs to survive the summers here But basically it's a great place to live. It's very cheap to live here, and mostly peaceful. The drawbacks are that we're so far from civilization No sidewalks, no decent health care, no public transportation except in the 4 "large" cities, not much culture, and a basically awful school system (unless you're lucky enough and wealthy enough to live in a school district with "magnet" schools). There's a little library in the nearby town which is only open on weekdays, during school hours -- which makes NO sense to me.

And there's a phrase i read once, but can't remember where, but it's true -- "In the South, the Past isn't over. It isn't even the Past."

Okay that's my Welcome To Arkansas lecture

Hi KB! Well, let me think -- there are lots and lots of casseroles around here Usually involving rice and chicken, or pasta and chicken, or chicken and chicken

Rice is a major crop in Arkansas, and Tyson Chicken Corporation is a major employer all over the state. So rice and chicken are "big" here.

I honestly can't name even a single "local specialty" because Arkansas is sort of a "backwoods" sort of place that doesn't really have it's own culture. There's a "hillbilly" stereotype that was strictly a Hollywood and tourist-board marketing thing for decades -- you know, the Beverly Hillbillies and the Li'l Abner and Dogpatch -- and i think it's really been a damaging thing for the people who live here and grew up here. And then the !~#&*! Clintons ... grrr ... everyone is deeply embarrassed and will never get over it. The Clintons made all Arkansans -- even people like me who just live here and aren't really REAL Arkansans -- the laughing stock of the world and reinforced all the stereotypical images people have of this place.

People here are basically just like people everywhere, except they're "born isolationists" and have a long legacy of pessimism and poverty that began long, long before the Great Depression and continues in so many areas to this day. I don't really know if it's the geography (after all, geography shapes so much of history), or the catastrophic damage caused by the Civil War and the KKK influence, or just what it is.

Well, i'm chattering incessantly as usual, sorry. Mostly i wanted to say, there aren't any Arkansas specialities that i can think of, except that chocolate gravy thing. There's a lot of "imported" cooking -- from the Deep South But nothing that is uniquely Arkansan.

At least, as far as i know. If i come across anything i'll post it.

I miss the food in California! Everything imaginable in the markets, and real spring rolls at the restaurants. *sigh*