Eating Paleo...lithic

I've been doing some reading, and I've noticed -- there's a difference between eating "Paleo" and eating in a "paleolithic" way. "Paleo" appears to be another fad diet, slightly reminiscent of Adkins, while a paleolithic focus just has to do with eating things naturally and staying away from manufactured foods and junk. Things on a paleolithic diet would generally be found in the produce department, the meat department, and the dairy department of the grocery store. You can count the freezer department as long as you're avoiding all the areas except the frozen veggies and fruits.

The Paleo diet claims that you should eat "in moderation" such things as diet soda... nuts... coffee... tea... wine... beer... Well, okay. I guess moderation in these things is a good thing. After all if you go crazy on the nuts, it becomes a serious high-calorie diet you're on and not a weight loss plan at all. And diet soda is definitely not good for you (not to mention it being completely unpaleolithic in every respect). But then the diet plan goes on to say that there's a laundry list of foods to completely avoid. Included in this list are foods such as: butter, cheese, yogurt, milk, barley, corn, millet, oats, all rice, rye, wheat, quinoa, beans of every variety, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc... etc... ad nauseum. Included in their list are actually such obviously natural and healthy things like snowpeas and sugar snap peas.

On the other hand, eating in a paleolithic way is simply a common sense approach to foods. An if-God-made-it-I-can-eat-it mentality. This is refreshingly free of rules and restraints and confusion. It causes me to breathe a sigh of relief and say, "I can do THAT forever." How simple. Made in a factory = no. Made by God = yes. Ahhhhhh...

For most people, including myself, this requires a huge adjustment. There are things I am still consuming with some regularity that come out of a manufacturing plant. Greek yogurt, for one. My yogurt has been instrumental in helping me to achieve a stomach that functions without causing me pain and other unfortunate side effects which go along with IBS. (Anybody needing any more information as to what I'm curing will simply have to google it because I refuse to put it on this page.) My yogurt stays, and I don't care how or where it's made. That being said, I can make a shift to plain yogurt rather than the fruited, sweetened varieties and I will be a baby step closer to Paleolithic.

The truth of the matter is that even if I am not whole-hog gone for Paleo, the pieces and parts of it I have come to embrace have made me a better, healthier me. And since that's a step in the right direction, I will keep it.