The Paleo diet is Dead- Long Live the Paleo diet!

PaleoJays Smoothie Cafe

Ok- the paleo diet was ground breaking in every way! It was actually started by a man named Walter Voegtlin, who was a gastroenterologist. He called it the ‘Stone Age Diet’, a diet that eliminated most all foods that came after the agricultural revolution approximately 10,000 years ago.

After him, Loren Cordain is the one who revived it around 2005. This is when I discovered it, and even wrote to Cordain about a health problem of my wife, and he graciously responded. We adopted his diet, and her health problem resolved completely, and quickly! That is when PaleoJay was born…

Other Paleo gurus emerged, all of which had a lot to offer in different ways. As in most other things, the approach evolved as more was discovered. Trial and error, along with lots of research, caused the theory to evolve. The one thing that remained constant was the ever-present knowledge, revealed by archeological records, that health and overall wellness had been far better for ancient humans when they consumed an evolutionarily correct diet: only sourdough and otherwise processed grains allowed, if consumed at all, in minimal amounts. The same with sweeteners like sugar, which were largely unknown to our ancestors.

My health, and that of my family, improved dramatically from around 2005 to today. My body fat dropped quickly, which revealed my long-exercising body that was buried beneath it. My migraine headaches went away quickly and completely, and I largely stopped cardio or ‘aerobic’ types of training for long periods, going only for sprints or ‘heavy hands’ walking while swinging dumbbells energetically. I worked way more on flexibility, and began running and walking barefoot- voila- my feet problems also disappeared!

Robb Wolf, Loren Cordain’s student, emerged as a guru, and led lots of folks on the evolving path of paleo. Chris Kresser was a voice of reason throughout, as were Beverly Meyer and Mark Sisson. I took ideas from each one, tested them in my own life, and either kept or discarded them as I learned and experienced more. Jimmy Moore was a voice of cheerful reason, and his many, many guests kept me informed and enlightened over the years, primarily about proper nutrition.

But my ideas about exercise also continually kept evolving, with the lifting of really heavy weights being revealed as problematic, and unnecessary, just as had aerobics and cardio earlier on. The importance of sleep kept rearing its head, as did ancillary practices like forest bathing and the importance of sunlight and then true darkness to maintain our circadian rhythm.

A couple of years ago or so, the term Paleo itself kind of disappeared! Now, magazines at the supermarket checkout and the new bestseller books were all about KETO. It was very similar to paleo, but instead of being about a totality of lifestyle being reached through diet and other practices- now it was just consume lots and lots of fat! This, coupled with zero carbs, resulted in fast fat loss; and it appears that, overall: this is basically all the majority of people care about.

Keto is, therefore, very one dimensional; focussing on fat loss almost entirely. It is really more, to me, of a therapeutic, short term view of how to live. If you force your body to live off of ketones, of basically FAT, you become, as Mark Sisson puts it: a fat burner. So, your body is running off of the cleanest fuel it can. This way, it can avoid seizures in epileptics, for instance, which has been known about for a very long time.

CARNIVORE is the latest form of evolutionary nutritional diets. Shawn Baker, Paul Saladino, and a host of others now to

Support the show