...edit... >eventually abandon it (quietly) and try something else. Some >people on this list, for example, have without fanfare stopped >Neanderthin and taken up the Enig/Fallon _Nourishing Traditions_ >way of eating, for the simple reason that they found it worked as >well as or better than Neanderthin for them. For many (perhaps >not all) "forbidden" foods there will seemingly be some people >who feel better when they eat them. > >Todd Moody >[log in to unmask] Todd's reply has intrigued me quite a bit but first I want to introduce myself. I have been cutting out non-paleo foods on and off since January. I am now at an impasse and am looking for advice. I am very skeptical of any diet-health related information since I was totally bamboozled for my 10+ years as a vegetarian. As a vegetarian, I was asking 'Is there chicken stock in this?' of everything but dessert. I really believed the party line which is that as long as you're getting enough calories, you're getting enough protein. I was living on breakfast cereal, yogurt, pasta & veggies, beans & rice, bananas & Nutri-Grains. After reading Ward Nicholson's interview on the BeyondVeg site, I realized that I was 'failing-to-thrive'. I was sluggish and my brain was often foggy, my muscles would be quite sore for days from some light weightlifting and my vision would get blurry at times. I finally counted the grams of protein I was getting and was way under the RDA. So my New Year's resolution was to give up vegetarianism and never look back. It was hard since I was very concerned about killing animals. My thinking had always been that as long as I could be healthy as a vegetarian, there was no good reason not to be. My premise seemed to be falling apart so I made the switch. The paleo diet-health theory is very convincing to me so I have tried hard to stick to the guidelines. I have had some wonderful benefits. All the problems listed above disappeared plus no more heartburn or insomnia. Plus I don't have to eat every 2 hours which has improved my quality of life enormously. The problem is this: Each time that I stick to the guidelines for about 1-2 weeks I get this horrible growling hunger in my stomach. It's not a blood-sugar drop kind of hungry which I am very familiar with from my former life - it's a gnawing and very distracting feeling. Eating paleo foods (with plenty of fat) doesn't help. I need to concentrate at work so I end up eating rice or ice cream or flour tortillas for a few meals and I can get it to go away. At least now I can get right back on the wagon again where at the beginning it would set me off track for days. So anyway, I'm wondering how we survived as a species eating basically meat & veggies for so long. I can't go 2 weeks. It makes me think that I'm missing something, but what? I have read the Nourishing Traditions book as well as Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Both are very convincing - Price's pictures really deliver the message. Life would be a lot easier if I could make a sandwich from sprouted grains or eat some oatmeal (soaked first) now and then. Plus it would fill me up better. A friend at work is from Taiwan and she says in her culture you don't feel full unless you've had rice. I am very interested in finding out how people are faring under the Nourishing Traditions guidelines. Is there a list or bulletin board where these people chat? Have any of you tried both and have reasons for choosing paleo? I know that keeping the carb counts reasonably low helps a lot of my problems and I would continue to do that no matter what. I am interested in feeling good now and preventing chronic disease later. Thanks for your help. Lisa