Why would you stop eating gluten products, breads, etc? Do you have Celiac Disease or some other gluten allergy? Why stop eating diary? Are you lactose intolerant?

My main reason for trying this diet was that I had heard of, anecdotally, several athletes that had success with this diet. They reported less frequent infections in the upper respiratory, losing body fat and feeling better over all. I have a story with a terrible immune system which has left me with common colds, sometimes as often as every month during the winter/spring time. This of course have interfered with my training. I felt that I would try anything really to strengthen my immune system, especially since I nowadays have kids in kindergarten coming home with a virtual smorgasbord of viruses on a daily basis.
My personal, non scientific, theory was that if I was just the slightest bit intolerant to either gluten or lactose, then my immune system would have to work in some way all the time just to handle all the grains and dairy that I stuffed my stomach with. But this was just a theory of my own and nothing that I can support with any scientific evidence. I have, however, since then read some stuff that Lorain Cordain and Joe Friel have written on the subject and they seem to be of the same opinion.

"Has this Paleo diet been investigated in any peer-reviewed controlled studies? If so, what were the outcomes? Was there an overall lowering of BMI, BP, cholesteral levels, or other objective measure?"

If you want some scientific studies that seem to support the idea that grains and dairy aren't the best:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6823/5/10

http://www.springerlink.com/...ent/h7628r66r0552222

http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/3/1/39

http://www.ajcn.org/...ontent/full/81/2/341

There's a lot of "just so" hypotheses in the area of evolutionary biology that has to be taken with a "grain" of salt, but I feel that this approach to nutrition is promising in all its simplicity.


"From your brief description, it sounds like the most likely cause of the changes you have seen is calorie reduction. You said you were normally eating 6-8 cheese sandwiches per breakfast. That's an enormous amount of calories. Staying on your previous diet and just reducing the cheese sandwiches to 2-3 would probably give you similar results."

Maybe it would. But the thing is that I do absolutely nothing, within this diet, to restrict the amounts that I eat. I just eat until I'm satisfied. Eating 2-3 sandwiches would leave me craving more. Cutting out both grains and dairy makes it easier to avoid sandwiches because they are nothing but grains and dairy.

"I'm not busting your chops, I'm genuinely interested in the investigative path you took to follow this particular dietary strategy."

The Paleo diet was also appealing to me given its simplicity. It all makes sense I think. I don't think that it's the answer to everything that has to do with nutrition. But it does make sense that what humans ate 100 000 years ago when the selective pressure of evolution was much greater than nowadays, would be foods that are mostly beneficial for our survival, fitness and health. At least I wouldn't die or get ill from starting to eat only fruits, vegetables, fish and meets! It was worth a try I figured.

I would be interested in seeing a few days' food logs from you. I am curious of what you eat, when, how much you're training, and when.