Do you think the Paleo Diet is the perfect option for weight loss; what risks do you think are involved?

It is known that any diet that reduces the variety of foods results in eating fewer calories and promotes weight loss. Cutting out entire food groups like grains or convenient foods like refined sugar or highly processed foods greatly reduces the variety of foods. The Palio diet is based on false assumptions about human evolution and physiology. Humans are omnivores and thrive almost everywhere because we can survive on almost anything. Some humans live on nuts berries and tubers while other humans survive on little else than raw seal meat and whale blubber. Physiologically we are much closer to herbivores than carnivores indicating that most of mankind throughout most of human evolutionary history we ate mostly plants. Most people’s diets now are so unhealthy that the paleo diet is a significant improvement though. As far as the best diet people have been arguing about this since the ancients. Some of the best data on this comes from The China Study. China is a large but isolated society for much of its history. Chinese are homogenous genetically yet being a large country has many different regional diets ranging from heavy on meat, to seafood centered, to near vegetarian. The conclusion that the investigator Thomas Campbell came to is the less animal food the better. Regions of China with the highest consumption of meat had the highest rates of chronic disease and the shortest lifespans while regions with the lowest consumption of meat had the lowest rates of chronic disease and the longest lifespans. One problem is that there are no traditionally vegetarian diets. It has been unclear if the results can be extrapolated into showing that the vegetarian diet is best and better than the near vegetarian diets the healthiest Chinese eat. Other studies have indicated that we can’t correctly extrapolate that the vegetarian diet is best. While heavy meat eaters are the unhealthiest and shortest lived near-vegetarians appear to be the healthiest slight outliving strict vegetarians. It is a reasonable assumption that going back to the diet we evolved on is a better choice than eating foods we have not had time to adapt to. The diet we ate during most of our evolutionary history was largely plant based with occasional access to meat. Even going back a few centuries for most humans meals were generally plants with meats reserved for seasonal feasts. Kings who ate feasts of meat every day suffered from the chronic diseases most people face today, obesety, diabetes, atherosclerosis, gout, etc.

guess what? Run, and eat healthy. youll lose weight.

Filletofspam’s answer was almost entirely correct. (Two exceptions: 1. His first sentence is mistaken; cutting out green vegetables, for example, is extremely unlikely to produce weight loss. 2. Humans are not really omnivores, but that’s too complicated to explain here.) However, he neglected to say two other essential things:

1. The kind of near-vegetarian diet that is, as he stated, optimal for human nutrition and long-term disease prevention is also optimal for achieving and maintaining one’s healthiest weight. That’s true both for those who need to lose weight and for those who need to gain. BUT…

2. Not all near-vegetarian diets are equal! A diet based primarily on starchy, carbohydrate-dense vegetarian foods (like grains, white potatoes, etc.), is probably inferior to a broad “paleo” diet of the kind Colleen described (not the more strictly carnivorous version). That’s even more true if the vegetarian foods are highly refined and processed, and have lots of added sweetener, oil, and salt.

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So that raises the question, which sort of near vegetarian diet is optimal for nutrition, disease prevention, and weight regulation? Here’s the short version, in order of descending quantity:

Lots of fresh green and cruciferous (cabbage-like) and other vegetables, around half of them raw (salads); lots of fresh fruits; a moderate amount of beans and other legumes; a lesser amount of whole grains; some raw nuts and seeds; and, optionally, a bit of fish and low-fat animal foods. As much as possible, avoid refined or highly processed foods and added sweeteners, oils, and salt.

This can be boiled down (so to speak) to one rule of thumb: Eat foods with a high ratio of micro-nutrients to calories; minimize or avoid calorie-dense foods (i.e., those with a high ratio of calories to micro-nutrients).

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For most people, I think, there are three big surprises about this diet: 1) It easily provides plenty of high-quality protein; 2) as a weight-loss diet (for those who need that), it does not demand a focus on portion control; and 3) after a not-too-long transitional period of unlearning bad eating habits, it turns out to be much more tasty and satisfying than all our addictive and toxic comfort foods.

I’ll give more explanation and sources when/if I have a chance to write up a How To about it.

Food is not the enemy for weight loss actually good protion of nutrition is good for weight loss, sometime weight gain is becuase of low nutrition. If you need more information, please contact with us with e-mail.