The Caveman Diet Revisited - Eat Real Food.

The Good News

Over the past five years or so, following my Caveman Diet, I have lost about 15 Kgs. or 33 lbs. I stabilized around 78 Kgs. (171.6 lbs.) about two years ago. According to the British NHS my body mass is at the high end of healthy. I haven't done any lab tests for a while so I can't give you detailed numbers but I do feel a lot better with less weight.

Over the past two weeks I watched a lot of conferences on diet, obesity, diabetes, and other diet induced diseases on YouTube. The good news is that there is a high level of consensus that the principal culprit is insulin resistance caused by poor eating habits. We eat too many highly processed foods high in simple carbohydrates, low on dietary fiber and high in bad fats.

The Bad News

The bad news is that there is absolutely no consensus amongst the experts about what a good diet consists of. It took a while for this realization to sink in and by then I had seen a lot of videos but had not catalogued them. This prevents me from presenting a comprehensive overview of potential diets until I revisit the videos. I'm not sure when that might happen.

The Nutrients

The experts recognize three nutrients:

Carbohydrates
Fats, and
Protein

That's pretty much where agreement ends when it comes to diets.

The Disagreements

Calories

There is disagreement over counting calories and even about the usefulness of the first law of thermodynamics to live organisms.

One school of thought says that the body is quite capable of regulating the consumption and disposal of calories when fed an adequate diet. They point out that all non-domesticated animals have healthy body weights when they have access to enough food. They don't count calories.

Another school of thought says: "No oils!" Their reason is that refined oils are pure calories with zero nutritional value.

The reason for disregarding the first law of thermodynamics is not because it is not valid but because the body processes are so complex that it is not possible to predetermine how many calories are going to get used up.

Carbohydrates

The body's fuel is the simple sugar glucose. It is not "essential" because the body can make it on its own from carbohydrates and fats and even from protein which is not a preferred source of glucose. The body can only store small amounts of glucose and excess glucose is converted and stored as fat.

Denny Schlesinger

The Caveman Diet by Denny Schlesinger, January 3, 2010

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