180 Degree Health: Paleo Fail by Matt Stone
Extract:
I have written about the before and after of eating a low-carb Paleo or low-carb non-Paleo diet for going on three years now. While it is extremely common to lose weight without effort, hunger, or cravings – and have amazing energy levels to boot (and temporary alleviation of health problems), that doesn’t make it healthy, sustainable, or permanent. In what I would venture to guess is the majority of those that embark on a low-carb diet, the results are short-lived, followed by the emergence of a clusterf$%# of new health problems related to adrenal burnout, hypothyroidism, and the hot mess that stems from it. Because of the roughly 3-12 month window of tremendous vigor, vitality, and effortless weight loss that many, myself included, experienced on a low-carb diet – I have dubbed this the low-carb “honeymoon.”
I’ve received no shortage of grief from people over my criticism of the deified low-carb Paleo diet. Low-carb, and particularly low-carb Paleo which combines two ideologies, is served up in the bowels of the internet as being the underground solution to the deadly and corrupt eating recommendations that flourish in mainstream media and academia. While I have little love for Western Medicine, or the industrial health/corporate food/drug/agriculture empire, that doesn’t mean that low-carb Paleo is the great “secret” to health that has been stifled by the “man.”
Anyway, in my experience personally and in communication with tens of thousands of people all over the world for the last half decade, I can say definitively that low-carbohydrate eating, with or without the silly Paleo fungus that often attaches to the groin region of this movement (manifesting in the desire to fast even when you have signs of a low metabolism, and avoid acceptable and sometimes preferable food sources like grains and dairy products) can be dangerous.
