My point is: the Paleo Diet is stupid. Why do people do it? To live like the cavemen? It's like, I am so white and privileged that I'm going to deprive myself. For fun! For my health! Because every nutritionist will tell you that you should absolutely eliminate entire food groups from your diet.
But, just FYI, it's very doubtful that cavemen made pickled eggs in all of those mason jars they had lying around. It's also pretty unlikely that they ground up almonds to make MAGIC COOKIE BARS. And they definitely did not shop at Whole Foods. They scavenged and hunted. So if you really want to be cavemen, I suggest you take off all of your clothes and go kill squirrels in the park near your apartment. Otherwise, you can just live like it's 2012. And that's OK! It doesn't make you a bad person. It just makes you an EVOLVED person, a person who walks on pavement and uses an electric stove to cook. And it's fucking fine!
 |
| Do you want to look like this? |
My main issue with the Paleo Diet, and any fad diet, is the pomposity that comes along with it. Oh, you're eating flour? (Insert disgusted look here.) I don't eat that. Well, actually you do. You know how I know that? Because I see you post pictures of the ice cream and cake and bread bowls that you eat on your "cheat days" on Facebook. Which brings me to my next point: the Paleo Diet, like any diet, is not sustainable. And in a year or two when everyone forgets about it, and it gets filed away in your memories next to the Atkins Diet, you'll be happily eating processed meat at a McDonald's on your road trip to Las Vegas. And I will know that because you'll post it on Facebook.
And it will still be OK.
Preach on Sistah! Agreed. I'm on the PBR diet at the bar. Results? Non-diminishing waistline from my wallet.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is–as someone who truly believes that not eating many carbs is right for me (and not because of any fad but because of years of reading), this is exactly how I feel about people who don't eat a lot of calories. I don't need dirty looks when I buy my full-fat cream cheese, and I can guarantee it's not the cream in my coffee that's made me fat. Basically, you eat what you want, and I'll eat what I want. I'm looking at you, VEGANS.
ReplyDeleteI love this post so much. You had me at the crack about mason jars (seriously, fuck those things and everything else Pinterest has made bizarrely ubiquitous, right?)
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Katie mentioned in her comment about you-do-you-and-i'll-do-me, and understand that things like wheat and flour and dairy, etc., don't work for everyone, but unfortunately I think that most people aren't able to fully remove such things from their lives, and that's what these types of diets call for. Not modified Paleo, modified Veganism, etc. That doesn't work.
My problem is when extreme diets like Paleo/low carb is that they are too extreme to be such fads. If you aren't doing those diets PROPERLY, you're not only not doing yourself any favors, but you're probably hurting yourself a bit. These are incredibly difficult lifestyles to sustain, and person after person goes 3 weeks or whatever he/she can handle loading up on fat and then on the 4th week need to "cheat" (or usually just quit altogether) with a bagel or a pizza. Then they act like it's normal, everyone cheats on diets. That's true, but buddy, you just ate 7 pounds of bacon last week. Your body hates you now.
Ditto veganism (just to prove I'm not just opposed to low-carbers). If you're even marginally lazy as a person, it's impossible. Vegan baked goods are still baked goods and subsisting on them because you don't know how (in 2012!) to figure out alternative protein sources or cook a vegetable doesn't make you some dietary hero, it makes you a fat vegan.
I hate diets. I'm always on one to an extent, and yeah, my usual mode is counting calories (so Katie Ett will prob punch me). I see nothing wrong with dieting in the sense of monitoring what you're eating and listening to your body and think it's something everyone should be doing to an extent, but I feel like living an unhealthy life but occasionally waving around the the one sexy photo of yourself "from that month I was Paleo - I really need to start that again" is not sustainable as a lifestyle, so why waste your time?