>On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Jim Swayze wrote:
>
Is there any other explanation for why it is that I'm consuming FIVE TIMES
more fat (and who knows how many more calories) than before I started the
paleo diet yet have now lost twenty pounds?


>
I'm reading a fascinating book, "Lights Out" by T.S. Wiley with Bent Formby.
Wiley is an anthropologist and Formby has doctorates in biochemistry,
biophysics and molecular biology.  They were researchers at Sansum Medical
Research Inst. in Calif. doing diabetes research.

The book discusses paleo diets and lifestyle emphasizing the need for long
hours of sleep during the winter months in totally dark rooms (caves).  They
believe strongly in the importance of the body manufactuing enough melatonin
to ward of cancer, etc.

Re. diet/fat:
" These Ice Age centuries changed our metabolism permanently.  During very
short, not terribly warm summers, we scored enough carbohydrates to barely
get by.   Those who were exquisitely light sensitive and had great storage
potential lived, and we are their children.  Now these traits are a death
sentence.

Had Paleolithic man not eaten a predominantly protein-and-fat diet for the
better portion of each year, it would mean that he would have had to go
without food for thousands of years at a time.  Sorry, vegans, but that's
not very likely.

Those thousands of years of heavy protein and fat intake directly increased
brain weight, which fostered the evolutionary neural expansion we've cited.
For all human time, man lived and thrived on a diet conprised of 80 to 90%
protein and its attendant fat content at least seven or eight months out of
the year and the rest of the time on vegetation foraged only in
season......"

Jim, this doesn't exactly answer your question but it does seem that you are
now eating a more natural diet and one the human body is designed to eat.
BTW, my standard poodle is almost 12 y/o and eats a natural raw meat/bone
diet (with supplements) and she is very, very thin; all the fat she eats is
processed most effectively.

The book "Lights Out" is 205 pgs. of text and 105 pgs. of research
references.

Kath