Chill. I Didn’t Kill Anyone,
I Just Went Paleo
I’ve said and done a lot of stupid things in my life. Most of them barely raised an eyebrow and I’ve rarely received any negative feedback for any of them(not to my face anyway). Sometimes those things were even encouraged but most of the time people didn’t even notice. So when I finally decided it was time for me to do something positive and get healthy, I didn’t envisage the negative reaction I would receive.
Let me say this upfront. My purpose in writing this is not to preach or sell you on adopting a paleo diet or any diet at all for that matter. Yes, I would advocate that everyone should think about maintaining healthy eating habits but that’s each individual’s journey and choice to make and what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. What I’m exploring here is the surprising reaction I received from some of the people around me for deciding to make that choice for myself.
Now, we need to head all the way back to… May 2014. The world hasn’t changed too much since then but I have. My story is the cliché of the typical office worker. Working long hours, no time to exercise and eating lots of takeaway because I wasn’t motivated to cook etc. My desire to start making healthier eating choices wasn’t initially motivated by trying to lose weight. Although I had definitely stacked on a few extra kilos I would’ve been more than happy to lose, the main motivator was that I didn’t feel good. I often felt tired and lethargic, was moody and irritable and my attention span and focus at work and in everyday life was slipping. Exercise and fitness was part of the equation but it didn’t take an expert to work out that my diet was the main thing I needed to work on.
As they say, ‘you are what you eat’ and I was eating a lot of junk food (chocolate, ice cream, biscuits) and takeaway, not fast food but takeaway nonetheless. I had made a few minor changes to my diet such as buying organic when possible, eliminating soft drinks and reducing the amount of junk food and sugar. I started to eat more vegetables. However, I knew it was not enough and those changes certainly didn’t make me feel any better. I was a man without a plan.
So I did some research, skipping any diets that relied on things like fasting or just eating/drinking one food (that included saying no to breatharianism) I knew I needed to do things I was reading like eat more vegetables, get protein, fibre and calcium, and look at that food pyramid thing but for every article I read there was always another saying to do the complete opposite. I did start to improve my diet a little, mainly through further elimination of processed foods. Mixed in with a bit of exercise I had lost a few kilos but didn’t feel too different. I still needed direction.
That direction came a few months later in the form a friend who also happened to be a naturopath and nutritionist. Before I knew it I was suddenly detoxing and then slowly converting to a paleo diet.
I didn’t make this switch lightly. As a matter of fact, up until this time my perception of paleo was negative, mainly due to the odd media article I had read. I like to research everything before I do something. Annoyingly so. I’m not going to spend time here explaining what the diet is in any depth other than to say the majority of people I’ve come across (myself included at the time) have a misconception as to it’s basic theory and foundations. What I did research looked reasonable to me; try and eat good quality (preferably organic food), lots of vegetables, fermented vegetables, moderate amounts of protein, good fats, a little bit of fruit, no processed foods, no gluten and cut the sugar. More controversially this includes cutting out a couple of recognised food groups — no grains and no dairy. Given the explanations my friend gave me around the science of it I thought at least some of it made sense and was definitely worth a try.
The result
I did end up losing a lot of weight. Roughly 9 kilos (20 pounds) dropped off very easily in a couple of months with a big reduction in body fat percentage. I certainly wasn’t starving myself and there was no calorie counting. I was actually eating more than before. It was simply a matter of eating healthier, real food.
More important to me than the weight loss though was that I did finally start to feel better — an increase in physical energy and a slightly sharper and less cluttered mind. The biggest change though outside of my physical appearance was that almost twenty years of suffering from constant weekly migraines soon stopped. This was a huge deal for me — I haven’t had one for five months now. I’m not even sure I can attribute all of these changes to the paleo diet itself. It’s quite possible that removing sugar, gluten and processed foods and all the healthy food I was eating might have stopped the migraines even if I did continue to eat dairy and grains. Maybe it was eliminating just one of those things. However, going paleo gave me a framework and better understanding of how to make healthier food choices. I’m a ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ kinda guy. I’m not going to mess with the formula if it’s working for me.
The reaction
Outside of some general ribbing from friends when I originally declared I was getting healthy and (semi) jokingly hinted at doing a summer ‘new body reveal’, everyone was generally quite supportive. It wasn’t until I made the switch to paleo that some of the negative reaction began. From the odd random general remark to more personal attacks as time went on (when the diet was showing positive results) I was surprised that some friends and acquaintances would;
- question my motivations for doing it
- make assumptions on what other lifestyle changes they thought I had made because of it
- assume I thought negatively of them if they had not made the same lifestyle changes
- even bother mentioning it at all
I should make it clear — I received a great deal of positive support from most people. However there was enough of a negative vibe going around for me to not just shrug it off. As recently as last week I received an email from a friend I hadn’t seen for a couple of months who casually dropped in that he thought I was being ‘fake with the whole healthy paleo thang’. It got me down at first until I started to think about why it might be happening.
The why
I could be very wrong but I think there were three major reasons something as innocuous as adopting a healthier lifestyle annoyed people. A couple of them related to my choice in choosing paleo and the other was more related to human nature in general.
Reason 1: people didn’t understand what the paleo diet is and is not
Now I myself was as guilty as anyone of this until just before I started adopting it. I used to think ‘oh the caveman diet’ and ‘eat lots of meat’. Some of the things friends and acquantances thought it was when I mentioned it varied from ‘isn’t that where you don’t eat for 5 days and then eat as much meat as possible for two?’ to ‘you only eat cheese and vegetables?’ to ‘it’s just grass and nuts only eh?’. I can understand people not taking me too seriously for trying a ‘fad diet’ when those are the sorts of things they believe it is. Sure, people can educate themselves but they are also time poor. You’ve gotta hand some of that blame over to…
Reason 2: the negative media reception labelling paleo as dangerous or a fad
The media portrayal towards paleo where I live (Australia) has always been fairly negative but it’s definitely picked up venom over the last year or so. From continually being called a fad and/or celebrity diet to even having the British Dietary Association claim the diet is ‘worse than drinking your own urine’ (I’ll test that out and get back to you), the media isn’t helping portray the people who are on it in the most positive light.
People who go paleo are also often likened to those who have joined a cult because they tend to praise the positive changes it’s brought about in their lives. I don’t see any people claiming miracles from it and I’ve certainly heard stories from others who said they tried it and it wasn’t for them. As an aside, I’ve personally always had a fascination with cults and I can tell you now that no matter how much I like paleo it just doesn’t hook you in enough to get in a brainwashed state about. As an aside, if you are looking for a cult that liked to eat healthy then you’ve come to the right place. Check out The Source Family (who are sadly no longer)— mixing up clean living with free love, the Sunset Strip and psychedelic guitars. Now there’s a diet I could get brainwashed by…
I would love to discuss why I believe the diet is getting so much negative press but that’s going off topic (and I might also start to get labelled a conspiracy theorist on top of all the other insults!). I also believe some advocates of the diet create an image problem by pushing the whole ‘caveman’ connection too hard. From a PR and marketing point of view it helps feed into the fad hype. Needless to say the media portrayal hasn’t helped endeared my friends to my choice of diet. However, outside of paleo I think the third reason runs a little deeper than what people think of the diet itself.
Reason 3: who’s judging whom?
Once I did start to take the diet seriously, I cut down on the amount of alcohol I consumed (which believe me was already next to nothing). It also meant when I was out to eat with friends that I would seek out menu options that best fit the diet but I never tried to influence the choice of restaurant or the dishes people wanted to order. As friends began to notice the weight loss and I mentioned how happy I was with the overall improvements, they were slightly bemused that I would talk about cooking techniques, recommend healthy meals or the pros and cons of certain types of oils. It was definitely totally out of character for me. I never once though tried to ‘convert’ someone to paleo or say anything to anybody regarding their dietary choices unless asked.
What I found was that I was now sometimes not being invited out to dinner (‘you probably wouldn’t have been able to eat anything’) to being told I probably shouldn’t come because ‘if you’re not going to drink anything you probably won’t be any fun’. I also got some feedback and could tell some people were starting to think I was judging them on their dietary and lifestyle choices. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. I felt that the judgement and assumptions were coming from the opposite direction.
I’ve never noticed any big personality changes in friends of mine that have made lifestyle changes — they’re still the same person underneath. I’m fundamentally the same person as well — just healthier and happier. Oh, and a lot skinnier. Everyone comments on my weight — ranging from ‘you look great’ to ‘you look like you have cancer’. All of this has definitely affected the level of friendship I now have with some people, which I’m a little saddened by and also find slightly ridiculous. I didn’t initiate any of it.
I do think that when a friend makes a lifestyle change it can make one reflect on where they’re at with that aspect of their life. And maybe they don’t always like what they see looking back at them. But I’m just speculating and each to their own.
Life after paleo?
Well if that all sounds a little dramatic I agree with you. Eating healthy should be no big deal and for most people it hasn’t been. In most cases, a diet doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about ones personality or identify who they are. It’s just the way a person chooses to eat. I don’t always find paleo easy to stick to— especially when eating out but I’m very happy with the results so far. As for some of the negative feedback I’ve received it doesn’t really get to me anymore — only just enough to write about it! I’ve ‘cleared the air’ with a couple of people regarding some of their comments, agreed to disagree with others and let the rest of it slide.
For the time being there is no life after paleo as I’m sticking with it. At this point in time I wouldn’t change a thing. I feel too good.
