The Paleo Diet - Forget What You Think You Know About "Dieting..."

What if there was a "diet" that just worked. What if it was simple, easy to follow and didn't make you count calories or weigh and measure foods. What if there was a diet that allowed you to feel satisfied and abundant instead of deprived, hungry and stressed?

The Paleo diet is that diet.

The Paleo diet works. It works for losing weight, it works for athletic performance, it works for digestive and other health issues. It just plain works.

Most diets fail and most people fail on diets because the majority of diets aren't in line with our genes, our hormones or our biological drives. They rely on willpower. Paleo is a diet that works WITH your body and not against it on every level.

What is a Paleo diet and why does it work so well?

A Paleo diet is a diet that excludes "New" foods relative to what our bodies are used to from an evolutionary standpoint. New  foods are those that have surfaced over the past 10,000 years such as grains, dairy, sugar and man-made, processed foods.

Incidentally, the above "new" foods are the foods that give people problems the most often. Since I started eating Paleo in 2004 and blogging and speaking about it in 2009, I haven't encountered anyone who wouldn't benefit from giving up most - or all - of the above new foods.

"Eating Paleo" would mean eating lean meats, vegetables and fruit. That's it and those are the basics of the diet.

These are the foods humans spent more than two million years eating and adapting to. Our bodies are more accustomed to and happiest eating these foods than anything else because that's what our genes evolved on. Our bodies are literally programmed to thrive on Paleo foods.

Whether your goals are weight loss, athletic performance, health and healing or even taking care of the environment, Paleo is how to make it happen.

Recreating a Paleo Diet in the Modern World...

A Paleo diet includes:

• Meats- Preferably organic and grass-fed/pastured
• Fish - Preferably wild-caught
• Eggs - Preferably local and pastured
• Vegetables - Preferably organic
• Fruits - Preferably organic and in limited amounts for certain populations

A Paleo diet eliminates:

• Grains and grain-based foods like bread, pasta, rice, etc.
• Dairy like milk and butter
• Anything Processed or man-made
• Anything in a Package
• GMO Foods
• Factory-farmed and hormone-fed meat
• Processed vegetable oils

There's a lot more to be said about the advantages and health benefits of a Paleo diet. (If you're interested, leave a comment below and I'll write more on the topic.)

For now, suffice it say that anything "newer" than 10,000 years old - and some of the foods we eat have been in existence for a much, much shorter time - isn't optimal fuel for your body, regardless of your health goals.