Ah HA! and Happy Weekend

Cavemen did not do this.
But they wanted to.

Of course there was always lots of evidence of, or at least discussion of, the possibility that the Paleo diet wasn't all it was cracked up to be. For me, it definitely wasn't a good fit.

This piece refutes one of the central claims of Paleo-purveyors, which is that the reason Paleo dieting is good for you is that our bodies haven't had time to adapt to the grains that are now in our diets but weren't when we were cavemen. The article points out a number of examples in which adaptation happened extremely rapidly- much more rapidly than the 30,000 years or so that have elapsed since grains were cultivated agriculturally, ground up, and used to make delicious carb-y bread. Further, some foods, like tomatoes, weren't available to cavemen either, and Paleo diets don't outlaw those.

The author points out that this fact isn't to say that the Paleo diet won't help you lose weight. It's just that any restrictive eating plan where you cut out whole food groups and think intensively about what you're putting in your pie hole probably would.

I would only add to that that while we may have been eating grains for the last 30,000 years, it's really only in the last 30 years or so that we have started eating so many crazy, super-processed grain products. Because they are delicious, of course, but they are completely devoid of nutritional purpose, and they are making us fat. So while cutting out grains entirely probably isn't necessary (or even a good idea), getting rid of the junk carbs almost certainly is.

Happy weekend all!

Coming Out of My Cave

I'm back! Were you worried?

The beast stirs...

No?

Not even a little bit?

Well, fine. I'm fine, since you asked. 

I may have fallen into a small winter hole. 

You know, a winter hole. The warm and cozy spot you snuggle into to hibernate when it's dark and dreary outside. Dark when you wake up and dark again about 20 minutes after you eat lunch, unless it's cloudy/raining/sleeting, in which case, it's just dark all day. 

You can just feel the hope, right? RIGHT?!

I'm not fully out of the winter hole yet, but I'm trying. There's light showing through. The daffodils seem to have some faith that eventually the gloom will part, so I'm going with them. When have they ever been wrong?

There's been so much interesting health news in the past couple of weeks that I've been feeling antsy to talk about, so I finally shook off my Snuggie and took up my laptop.