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I have started taking serious actions for losing weight, and recently I have read lot of stuff on the web space about palio diet. Can anyone tell me what exactly does it means and is it really useful for weight loss?

Paleo diet. It's a fad.

Wanna lose weight? Lift heavy, run hard, eat natural, sleep well, ignore Internet fads.

Does not look good for you at all.
Diets that limit food groups and ban certain foods like that just put the weight back on as soon as you start trying to eat them again anyways.

It is not a fad... if you mean a high-fat low-carb diet.  That is the natural diet for humans. There is lots of science to support it.
The current status quo guidelines that say high-carb low-fat is best is based more on politics from the 70's than on science,
and look at how obesity and associated health problems like type-2 diabetes have sky-rocketed since then...  

Carbohydrates ( sugars; starches; grains ) are non-essential to human functioning ( the body can create the glucogens
it needs itself without us having to consume it directly ) and carbs create high insulin levels which keep fat from being
burned as a fuel and causes it to build up in the blood, and stored as body fat...  A high-fat low-carb diet ( with a
medium amount of protein ) doesn't limit 'essential' food groups and is therefore not unbalanced.  

Check out the book, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living

A couple essays from their books:

The Sad Saga of Saturated Fat
http://artandscienceoflowcarb.com/the-sad-saga-of-saturated-fat

You Are Not What You Eat
http://artandscienceoflowcarb.com/you-are-not-what-you-eat

One can lose weight without depriving oneself of good tasting food or feeling hungry all the time...  

e.g.  Bacon!  


It works for me.  

High-fat/low-carb 'is' natural.  Look at the traditional diets of the Inuit ( fat from seal and caribou );
Plains Indian ( buffalo and deer fat made into pemmican* ) and West Coast Indians ( candle fish grease );
Masai ( Cow fat and cow blood ), and many other traditional cultures.
That is why it is called things like the Paleolithic/Caveman/Hunter-gatherer diet.      

* Like the Inuit(Eskimo) they gave most of the meat to their dogs, but dried some of it.  

Fat is where it is at.  We are not what we eat anymore than cars are made out of gasoline.   ;)

There is a lot of science to support many diets for humans, I agree. What works for some might not work for others.

I think it is a fad in that people only try them for a short while.  These branded diets are too specific and marketed for be a certain time length to encourage the dieters to do it by giving them a focus point...at the end of which a promise of being able to re-introduce the banned foods gradually, though inevitably the weight returns with bad habits as the diets fades away. A big part of large weight loss is morale to keep going and feeling they are cutting things out can get some folk really down...and back on the cakes with a vengeance!

People could live on 'ideal' diets but majority can't last and the quick loss and repeated gain takes its toll on health in itself.
Encouraging changing eating patterns, portion size and increasing activity needs to be looked at too imo.

I know the selective science going into paleo and its focus on native americans. It is completely ignoring the thousands of years maize/corn was a staple food of Woodland Indians and how they extensively farmed and cultivated maize and potatoes. It is also ignoring how this more stable food supply led to the Woodland Indians being more healthy and thus more "fruitful in multiplying."

I concur that the low-fat high-carb model as such is flawed and there is a dire need to generally reduce carb content especially in prepared foods (with HFCS being the main culprit).

The Paleo Diet however is just one of many variants of high protein high fat diets we have seen in the last two decades (from Atkins to Metabolic Diet to Anabolic Diet to I'm forgetting a lot of these). Paleo is currently "in", which is why I named it a "fad". In a year or two you will have another variant of high protein high fat being proposed under a new name. I've seen it happen often enough.

True. People need to find what works for them and not rely on one-size-fits-all type of guidelines.   In terms of the
science which suggest that high-carb is better than low-carb... Many of those studies were short-term and it has
been shown in other studies that it can take a month or more to adapt the body ( ketoadaption ) to start using
fat as fuel instead of sugar.  



Yes, and one must be careful not to blame a general diet for someones lack of being able to follow it, or a poorly formulated diet
( just to jump on the bandwagon and sell some books ) for the science that backs up the general theory.

There are many low-carb diets which are indeed of the faddish variety which leave out important things... for example a good
high-fat/low-carb diet needs to include an increase of salt intake because the kidneys tend to flush out salt instead of storing it...
salt of course is important and if one doesn't get enough of it one can feel light-headed ( and may even faint ) and feel lethargic ...
such symptoms are sometimes called 'the Atkins flue'.  One must also make sure they get enough magnesium to avoid muscle cramping,
as one may not get enough magnesium under a poorly designed high-fat/low-carb diet.  But it is easy to make sure one gets enough
salt and magnesium and to drink more water then they perhaps did before... so I wouldn't say that is enough to throw the baby
out with the bathwater especially when there is so much health to gain and body fat to lose.  


The great thing about a proper high-fat/low-carb diet is that one can feel satisfied with the foods that are available and so
it is less likely that one will quit and go back to a sugars to satisfy themselves.  

Of course I am not telling anyone what to eat.  One can look into the studies and science behind these various things...
and/or try different things for themselves...  One can even not bother checking things out and just go with official
nutritional guidelines...  I am sure the government wouldn't lead anyone astray ( they even have many
universities - which depend on government funding - to back them up.   ;)  I am not saying it is some big conspiracy
but it wouldn't be the first time some well known and highly paid researcher didn't accept new findings and admitted
they were wrong... )

Oh, it absolutely a conspiracy. Only it's out in the open. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are pretty much written directly by scientists employed by the agricultural industry lobbies.

There's some great documentation on that out there. I'll go see if I can find that again.

Well I don't know about the Paleo Diet in particular. I am talking about high-fat/low-carb in general.

Of course one can use grains etc. to give one sugars to fuel ones body, but it may not be ideal for everyone and high-fat/low-carb may be better for many if not most people. The fact that the body doesn't seem to be designed to store much sugars as fuel ( which is why marathon runners and other high performance athletes need to keep taking it to avoid slamming into the wall ) and that the body readily stores fat that it doesn't immediately burn seems to suggest it is the bodies preferred fuel source. Even an athlete with a lean body ( ~ 10% body fat ) still has lots of fat stores to maintain high performance over a long period of time. More and more very high performance athletes ( e.g. ultra-marathoners ) seem to be getting into high-fat/low-carb diets.

About agriculture and what it has done for our health over time... here is another article worth pondering:

Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breeding-the-nutrition-out-of-our-food.html  

And again let me reiterate my point from my last post, that I am not suggesting what is the right diet for anyone else.
Like with money ( to perhaps bring in a bit of topical relevance for what this forum is about   ;) )
I feel it is best for each person to take responsibility and action for ones own well-being.  

Yes I am sure there is a lot to that...  I just haven't looked too much into all that myself.  I am more interested in finding what works for me and following that. 

I haven't read it yet but I heard this book gets into a lot of that:

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventional/dp/1400040787)

While also seemingly backing up the science in the 'Art and Science of Low Carb' book I already mentioned:

I'm pretty sure OP was asking about Paleo diet in particular


...and asking advice....

Not a bad book, if a bit on the light side for my taste. I like my stuff to be "more fat" in academic content. I'll go have a look for what I'm thinking of tomorrow when I can access my databases again.

I am sure he will find much to chew on with the information I and greyhawk presented.   ;)

I don't think it's a fad. I think it's how we ate during our evolution to get us where we are today.

Meat, veggies, fruit, nuts, eggs, plus anything else we could easily find.

High in vitamins and minerals to help fight disease.

If you are just trying to lose weight, the best thing to do is to just eat less. This might sound simple but it's actually very hard to practice. Sure exercise helps but changes to your diet is where 80% of your weight loss come from. Many things suggest eating less calories under a certain threshold. I've found that if you drink a lot of beverages like juices and soda, then you can possibly lose about 500-1k calories just by switching to pure water. Fruit juices and smoothies sound good and healthy but they actually tend to take away the fiber that you would normally get from the fruit itself. So eat less calories and drink water is your easy key to weight loss. Replacing unhealthy food for healthy food also helps as well.

Check out Dr. Terry Wahl's work on Minding Your Mitochondria.

Also, why not just try it for 6 weeks? Your body will let you know. Go heavy on the fresh veggies.

Better than paleo is keto: http://www.reddit.com/r/keto

Works wonders for diabetes, high blood pressure, weight, acne, pretty much all diseases of civilization.

Stop eating trash food, start eating health food, do not eat TONS of food and start do something. Problem solved without alien "diets" or whatelse

Yes you have to eat less. No, having a breakfast with eggs and bacon and butter is not ok.

I could write a book on losing weight and make millions, it would only be on page long and read : Eat healthy, exercise - The end.  

They did that. Didn't sell.

Write a book telling people to cut out certain foods for certain amounts of time and stick to all kinds of rules and they will lose half their body weight in a month. They sell.

I like the idea of eating like a caveman, but I don't think they were into weight loss. The bottom line is if you eat very little and move around a lot, you will lose weight.
In fact starving yourself is the only proven diet that will prolong your life. Your long, hungry life. lol

What on earth does this have to do with BTC?

kale shakes

To have a successful book in today's world it seems it doesn't matter what is written - and what science might or might not be behind it - but what celebrity wrote it... 

I have my own diet:

1)  I only eat 2/3 of what I put on the plate.
2)  Go to the gym and hire a trainer.  Work out 3-4 hours a week with a trainer or in a class.

You'll definitely lose weight.

Paleo diets are based on a simple premise—if the cavemen didn’t eat it, you shouldn’t either. So long to refined sugar, dairy, legumes, and grains (this is pre-agricultural revolution); hello to meat, fish, poultry, fruits, and veggies. What you eat and how much depend on your goals or the specific program you’re on, if you choose to follow one.

Is it so hard to just have a healthy died and don't eat too much? Do you have to eat like cavemen?  :-\

Paleo / Slow Carb worked for me for a bit. I mean the basic concept of not sucking down so much bread and sugar is a good one. But the only lasting weight loss i've had is from calorie counting with short bike rides everyday and now Weight Watchers with the same exercise. Averaging about 8lbs a month.

I gained a lot of weight as a result of meds I was on. Unfortunately I cannot exercise due to exteme pain and muscle dysfunction.

The counter this, all I did was simply (1) cut back on carbs and (2) eat more veggies and fruits and (3) no eating after dinner. This affects me particularly because I'm a night person: I have little appetite during the day and a huge appetite at night - not sure why it just seems to be baked into my genes (also hotter at night, higher energy, increased heart rate, etc.) Yet avoiding food in the evening does not seem to increase my appetite during the subsequent day. Not sure why though.

Ended up losing 25 lbs pretty fast with these simple changes. Unfortunately, now I'm under my target weight and too skinny, but that makes some sense since I cannot bulk my muscles at this time.

My conclusion is that dicipline is what matters, and small/sustainable changes can have a big impact over time provided you follow it to the T. Anything extreme just doesn't work, for many reasons...

Try the Polio diet. You cant walk to the fridge ;D