> Are most people on the Neanderthin diet on it for health reasons or for
>losing weight? I switched from Atkins three weeks ago.  First week I lost
>3 >lbs., second week I stayed the same, and this last week I slowly gained
>back 2 >1/2 lbs.  My diet consisted of   eggs, meat, nuts and pemican and
>lots ( 1 >gallon) of water. I was hoping for a better weight loss. I still
>have 75 pounds >to lose. Can somebody please give me some helpful hints.

I am on a Paleolithic-style diet for health reasons and performance
reasons. If anything, I had the opposite problem--I am a skinny
distance-running type (5'8.5" and 130-135 lbs.) and found it a bit
difficult *maintaining* weight on a my former mostly-raw near-vegan regime
without gorging on avocadoes and nuts. Also I was hungry all the time and
wolfed down mounds of carbohydrates (per current gospel in the running
community) like sweet essene breads which did nothing to quench my appetite.

Once I switched to a more Paleolithic-style diet including fish and meat,
it was extremely easy to maintain or even put on weight if I wanted (in
fact, now, if I am interesting in staying at my competitive running weight,
I actually have to purposely manage it just a bit, and never had to do that
before), and I stopped being hungry all the time.

It has struck me as amusing that so many people on this list may be on
Neanderthin to lose weight (I have only cursorily glanced through the book
and didn't see anything I hadn't already researched myself, so ended up
just skimming it rather than reading page for page), although I guess that
should have been obvious from the title. I think I must have stopped after
seeing the "Neander" part of the title--enuf to get *me* to look at the
book!--and completely missed the "thin" part of it! :-) just thinking it
was a catchy phrase. So for me animal food has been responsible for helping
me gain or maintain weight and muscle mass rather than losing it. But if it
also helps people who are overweight lose, then more power to the diet.

Now that I think about it, the fact it helps some people like me gain or
maintain, while it may help others lose makes me wonder what the reasons
are that could be responsible for two different effects from the same
regime, etc., and what a phrase like "normalizing" one's metabolism (so
that some lose, some gain) may actually signify at the biological level.

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]>