The Start of A Paleo Revolution?

Wow!  It was an incredible day yesterday… not only to see the Dr. Oz “Paleo Diet Craze, Does It Work” show, but to receive so many positive responses from so many people from friends and family to twitter followers and facebook fans.

Honestly, it felt like what could be a turning point of a food revolution, to borrow a phrase from Jamie Oliver.

I’m speaking from the heart here, to illustrate my passion on the subject, and I won’t ask to be excused for it!

The reason I personally connected with Dr. Loren Cordain’s work initially was because it just made sense. At my wit’s end of being sick to my stomach nearly every day from a very early age, and not understanding why, I was desperate to figure out what I was eating that was making me ill.  If it took over two decades of increasing GI distress caused by eating the ‘healthy’ American diet including whole grains, dairy and legumes to get me to the point of finding Paleo and being willing to try anything to feel better, so be it!  As it were, after three days of eating Paleo in my early twenties I experienced something completely foreign to me- no stomach pain, no digestion issues and no GI distress to speak of, whatsoever.

Not just at a surface “I just lost 20 pounds”, the Paleo diet goes much deeper. Yes, it is indeed an absolutely fantastic way to lose weight, but it goes beyond that.

It heals.  

If we can remedy our diet and replace all the refined grains, the dairy, the sugar and the legumes with what we’re meant to be eating- loads of fresh, local veggies, some fruit, wild proteins and natural fats, not only do we facilitate our body’s ability to reach and easily maintain a lean body weight, we can also put an abrupt halt to the development of leaky gut, which is the starting point down a road you just don’t want to venture down.

In lay terms:  scratch the inflammatory diet, go Paleo, and our bodies are far more equipped to deal with negative stimuli and as a result, symptoms of many health issues, from mild to severe, begin to lessen and even disappear. For good.

It’s not a ‘diet for cavemen’, nor an ‘all protein’ diet or any type of fad.  Unless, of course, I quote Dr. Cordain’s response when asked whether Paleo is a fad “If it’s a fad, it’s the longest lasting fad diet ever, over 2.5 million years!”

It is a balanced, healthy, common sense way of eating.

If the show yesterday has piqued your interest, that’s fantastic!

The more of you who give it a try, whatever your reason may be, the more we can work together as a whole to get healthy, in reasonable, sustainable manner!

We all have an audience, whether we realize it or not.  Moms, dads, siblings, teachers, roommates, friends… all of us have people in our social circles who could be so positively helped by the simple act of changing what we are voluntarily putting in our mouths.   While I’d never recommend being pushy or preachy about it, leading by example speaks volumes and if you’re the first one in your community to lose weight, cure your auto immune symptoms or clear your skin after a lifetime of dealing with acne, others are going to notice, and ask what your secret is.

Easier said than done?  Perhaps.  Yes, it will take a little getting used to, but the benefits far outweigh the cons and in all my years of working with people across the globe, I cannot honestly say I can think of a single good reason for not giving it a try.

To learn more, (and, by the way, for the recipes for all the dishes seen on the show), click here to get your copy of Paleoista: Gain Energy, Get Lean and Feel Fabulous with the Diet You Were Born to Eat (Touchstone, 2012) !

 We’re all in this together… let’s work as a team and get this message out there to everyone!