PALEO-SHMALEO

A friend of mine (Hi, Dennis!) raves about the Paleo diet; for the uninformed, this is short for Paleolithic diet, ie a diet similar to what cave men ate before some fool started tilling the soil, domesticating animals and inventing agriculture, some 5,000 years ago. The premise is that we in the affluent Western world are fat and sick because we eat grains and dairy foods, among other things. People on this diet lose weight while eating a lot of meat, fish, eggs, veggies, nuts and berries. They lose weight, they feel good, they fix up their blood pressure and diabetes. (You’re supposed to exercise too; the cave man was not a sedentary fellow.)  So pish-tosh to bread, the biblical ‘staff of life’, and never mind the billions of folks who eat rice and pita and chapattis.

I confess I haven’t read the book, nor do I know any cave men (hmm, maybe I do…) but I have the gist of it. It might be ‘the best diet in the world’ as the website claims, but there are a lot of dietitians who disagree. In fact they all disagree.

But I’ll tell you what I do know; we eat too much. We eat too much processed foods. We sit on our butts a lot. We drive our cars everywhere instead of walking. We are indeed, too fat.

I’ll tell you what else I know; there are 1,000 diets out there and some of them are stupid. Also: losing weight is really REALLY hard, and keeping it off is harder.

Apparently recent research has shown that when weight is lost (and by weight I mean 10% of body weight, so 10kg if you are a zaftig 100kg), the body has a sort of emergency panic ‘Help! I’m starving!’ reaction which does NOT go away. And the more you lose, the stronger the reaction, at a hormonal level. There are grehlins (‘hunger hormones’) and leptins (‘satiety hormones’) and the grehlins go up and the leptins go down. So the dieter is plagued by hunger, cravings, and preoccupation with food until s/he can’t take it any more and the intake goes up and the weight goes up with it.

To those of us failed dieters, me included +++++, this at least gets us off the self-loathing hook. We all know that diets don’t work; now we know why. It isn’t our weakness and gluttony and lack of will power; it is our own body panicking and trying very hard to stay fat.

It’s also very bad news, as if we didn’t know, that given our Western lifestyles, once we are fat, we only are going to stay fat. And that might be sort of OK when we are young and sassy, but when we are over 40 or 50, the body starts complaining about it.  And then comes the diabetes, the arthritis, the high blood pressure, the heart disease etc.

I still say that the single worst thing you can do your health is to smoke, no doubt. But being more than 15kgs overweight is not much better.

So in my lifetime, a lifetime of struggle with obesity, this is what I have done in order to find some semblance of control over my tendency to be a fatty boomba:

Age 3 Mum didn’t give me any lollies because I was chubby. So was she.

Age 6-12 did ballet until I got too heavy.

Age 13 GP put me on Duromine. Didn’t help. I left out 10 years of angst at school, being teased.

Age 15, at 95kg, joined Weight Watchers, at that time a low carb portion control diet. I was the youngest member in Australia. I did OK. Lost 25kg. Struggled to maintain.

At uni, ran, swam, did karate and rejoined WW lots of times.

Tried Israeli Army Diet (hahaha! The IDF knew nothing of this.). Tried Dr Atkins. Lost weight, got bad breath. Couldn’t stay off carbs. Atkins + carbs = Fatkins.

Went vegetarian for 6 months. Gained 10kgs. Too much carb, not enough protein.

Age 24, got married, before which I starved at a fat farm for a week to be a size 12 which some people still think is fat.

Age 25 to 36- had 7 kids. ‘Nuff said.

After rejoining WW the 12^th time, I realized it wasn’t going to get me anywhere I hadn’t been. Went to Shondra Hill, who did the same thing but was a motivator. It helped. But then my mum died and I had my 5^th child, and I couldn’t keep it off. Food as substance to be abused.

Went to Jenny Craig. Laughed at the pretentiousness.

Tried Body Trust, the No-diet diet. Surprise! Didn't help.

Went to hypnotherapy. Didn’t help.

Learned about Optifast. Refused to go on it as it sounded insane and was very expensive. Wrote an opinion piece/expose in the Jewish News. Nearly got sued by Optifast doctor.

Went to a certain diet doctor until the humiliation was too much.

Went to acupuncturist, kinesiologist, chiropractor, psychologist, dietitian. Meh. I’m leaving out some stuff, too boring.

Meanwhile had personal trainer. Kept food and training log. Gave up carbs. Lost 15kgs. Couldn’t stay off carbs. Gained 20kgs. (I think there's a pattern here...)

Had cardiac arrythmia. Got scared. Had lapband. Lost 30kgs. Never looked back, although it’s not perfect by any means. I’m easily still 15kg too heavy.

Can you imagine how much time, money and effort I have spent on this? And it’s not over, it’s never over. I just try to do my best. Eat less, exercise more. Drink water.

So will I try the Paleo? Nope. But good luck to all you cave folks out there! If you can find food as pure and untainted as our ancestors had, lucky you! Just remember that the average cave man only lived to about 35. And walked everywhere.