I’m sure if you’ve read about any sort of diets in the last several years, and which ones are most popular right now, you’ve stumbled across the Paelo diet. If you search for the word “paleo diet” online you will get more than 15 million results pages, nearly all giving out guides, articles, recipes or nutrition books. Why has this diet grown to be so popular and how does it work? What is this diet about and why have so many people taken it to heart? Let’s have a real look at how this diet works and what is advises for users.

What is the Paleo Diet?

The Paleo diet is more about changing your habits with a change in the way you associate with food. It’s not a set plan that a person has to follow, but instead a lifestyle change.  There’s no set or established “Paleo” diet method that everyone needs to follow.  There’s also not just a “guy” out there who developed this diet on his own. The Paleo diet was a culmination of significant research that was packaged into a usable format for individuals.

There are several tenets of this diet that can be summarized, however. When humans evolved, we only had a select foods available to us which helped us to survive and thrive. We also avoided foods that did not provide proper nutrition typically, as these would harm us. Through this “trial and error” process humanity was able to improve our circumstances and improve our ability to survive. For thousands of generations, we did not have access to food that was very high in carbohydrates. Most of what we had was lean meats, naturally scavenged fruits/vegetables and other things. Dairy and grains were never a part of our diet until farming materialized and was widely available some 5000 years ago. Eating these whole, unprocessed foods is claimed by this diet to allow people to lose weight and remain healthier, while also cutting your risk of disease.

But What is Science Saying About These Claims

Paleo Diet Plate
What Foods You can Eat on the Paleo Diet

Sugars and processed food removal certainly  makes sense, researchers have been advising avoiding these foods for nearly a decade as an abundance of research shows their harm. Yet, what about dairy and whole grains? The science is a bit mixed on this and this is really where people need to think about adding these in with some moderation. Certainly dairy has a lot of fats, and grain has a lot of carbohydrates. However, fat and carbs are not bad for you in any amount, just in excess. For this reason, dietitians and USDA guidelines do advise having some of these foods each day.

Many of the paleo studies which have been completed show some good support for the overall diet and its goals.  A recent study showed that on average people lose 15 pounds per month with just this change in diet (note: calorie controls are not part of this diet, so this is indeed fairly remarkable). The Paleo diet has been transformed int the Mediterranean diet as well, which is just a different name for the same overall program. The long term effects of the diet are not well understood as of yet, but they do appear to reduce waist size, improve glycemic controls, increase energy, and increase weight loss.

Does the Paleo Diet Actually Work?

This is probably the single most important question. Yes, the studies resoundingly point to the Paleo Diet providing extremely good weight loss results to users. The results of these studies indicate that this diet does provide a reduction in blood pressure, blood sugar and some of the indications of early heart disease. In spite of these exceptional results, there is still much more than needs to be studied before doctors should be widely recommending this. The long-term impact of this diet still remains a bit unclear, though there should not be any harm from simply eating these more natural foods (after all, vegan diets have been shown in numerous studies to be extremely healthy).

While you may not experience the huge gains and benefits touted by many proponents of this diet, it certainly has a lot of potential benefits and the weight loss results are undeniable. It is a lifestyle change, which are historically the most difficult diets to stick to over a long period of time. Still, if you do manage to stick with it well, you can expect about half a pound of day of weight loss, without needing to starve yourself. While not the best diet in the world, it’s perhaps one of the more easy ones to adopt successfully.

 

All Natural Dieting

Many people try to lose weight either diet or exercise free, however, these methods carry with them many risks (along with a strong likelihood of failure).  The chances of experiencing failure when trying to lose weight using only one method is slim to none.  Most people who try to diet a lot or exercise “like crazy” will ultimately fail to lose much weight, and will quickly return to their original body weight after some time.  There are many claims of offers out there which proclaim that “diet free” weight loss is possible.  Yet, this is just completely ludicrous and can even be damaging for an individual’s motivations.  There are many products that claim to offer big results, even without dieting, but these are often not well documented in clinical studies.  Only methods that have been tried and tested and proven to work should be used by those looking to lose weight.

Supplemental Weight Loss AdvantagesMany weight loss methods claim to offer quick results, sometimes even within a matter of days.  Not all of these methods are bogus, but many of them don’t have any sort of clinical basis for their claims.  Not only are you battling your body’s own natural instincts by trying to lose weight so quickly, but there are a host of additional potential problems.  Your metabolism is highly sensitive to impacts in diet, particularly if you’re not taking a product that stops it from dropping when you cut calories.  Naturally your body will attempt to stop any sort of weight loss if you decrease your caloric intake, and it will also increase your hunger as well.  There’s no good that will come from trying to go through an all or nothing style weight loss plan.

The Weight Loss Supplement Market: What to Consider

There are thousands of treatments that are marketed every year that claim to provide massive weight loss to users, but almost never are they objectively tested in a clinical setting and actually proven to work.  The reason most of these methods “work” is they tell users to cut their calories and exercise more.  If they really were as awesome as they claimed, they would be able to help people lose weight without any real changes to their diet.  There are some treatments that actually can do this, such as Garcinia Cambogia or similar, but these are more the exception to the rule.

There are tablets, capsules, or powders out there that people recommend to help you lose weight.  Few of them work, but there are some key ways you can ensure the product you are taking actually works and delivers results.  Exercising and proper diet are one way to do it, but this carries some risk.  Many people who try to cut their caloric intake damage their metabolism in the process.  However, a lot of these problems can be mitigated with the right supplement addition.

There are a few things in particular which can help people shed pounds quickly and effectively.  The use of the HCG hormone has been shown in numerous studies to help people increase their metabolism and help them to burn off calories rapidly.  On average users lose at least 20 pounds per month during treatment, which is far more than just by dieting alone.  There are other choices out there as well, such as green tea or green coffee extract, both of which has been proven to work as well.  These treatments are much slower than something highly effective like the HCG hormone, but they do work as well.  You want to stay away from most prescription treatments because they can be quite damaging to your body over the long term.  A more natural treatment that has lots of clinical and research support is what’s important to help you improve your results.

All Natural Dieting