Paleo 101

Many people have an interest in trying effective methods of weight loss. There are a lot of different strategies, exercise regimes, work out tools and even software for our phones to track our daily activity or even help count calories. In recent years, one of the more popular strategies taking hold with people is something called the “Paleo diet.” So what is it? Does it actually work? Can you try it? Let’s take a closer look.

Old Fashioned Eating. Very Old

The Paleo diet is actually the short form for “Paleolithic diet.” It refers to the Paleolithic era when humans on top of the food chain, but had not yet created civilizations, culture, or, most important of all, agriculture. At this stage of development, humans were still hunters and gatherers. This meant that they ate only what they could actually hunt down and kill, or what they could pick from trees, bushes, or dig out of the ground.

The Paleo diet is, in the simplest terms, a return to this kind of dietary lifestyle. It encourages people to “eat like a cave man.” This doesn’t mean that you have to scavenge berries from bushes or lie in wait for a boar to go by, but it does mean you restrict your food choices only to meats and vegetables that would have been available to a hunter and/or gatherer.

While this does mean what some would view as harsh limitations, like no dairy or grain-based foods, it a Paleo diet doesn’t require counting calories either. Paleo diets are already showing promise, with improved cardiovascular and metabolic health. But this has to be combined with some real exercise. For people that want real, lasting results, a change in diet must be accompanied by a change in fitness too. Then your weight loss will be anything but temporary.

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