For a man who barely gets enough to eat, dieting is irrelevant. For farmer who works all day in the fields, no dieting is required.
Whatever food we eat gives us energy. Energy is required for doing work. So when the intake of calories is more than the spending the amount of energy by means of exercise, walking and other physical activity, the remaining amount of energy gets deposited in the body in the form of fat. Over the time, than body weight will go on increasing. The energy group foods are fat and carbohydrate. Our bodies have evolved in such a way that their first choice is sugar or carbohydrate followed by fat in the form of saturated oils.
Most people who wish to shed the extra pounds, go for exercise and dieting. These diets contain generally more proteins and cut down on the carbohydrates and fats and sodium. Also most of the obese people are those who are generally well off and have occupations which involve very less manual activity. As the time passes by, many ailments take over, forcing such people to go to doctors, dieting and exercise. They want quick results which are unattainable causing frustration.
Many smart health experts take advantage of this and float different types of diet plans with exotic names. There are at least more than dozen such plans. Some of these are Mediterranean diet, Ketogenic diet, Low-carbohydrate diet, Intermittent fasting, Veganism, Vegetarianism, Plant-based diet, South Beach Diet, raw food diet, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig Low-fat diet, Dukan Diet, Mayo Clinic Diet, WW International
Nutrisystem, Whole30 , Alkaline diet, Blood type diet, Diabetic diet, Cabbage soup diet, Zone diet, Atkins diet, Flexitarian.
Paleo or Caveman Diet
One such diet plan is called Paleo Diet. Also called Caveman’s Diet. It’s based on food sources for humans during the Paleolithic area, which spanned the time period of about 2.5 million years to 10,000 years ago.
From the name, you can guess the type of things one has to eat or avoid. Caveman was our primitive ancestor who barely knew the recipes and ate whatever came his way. He didn’t know agriculture. Although he had learnt to make fire.
He was essentially a hunter and survived on the animal flesh which means that he consumed more protein rich diet with minimal processing. At the most he was roasting the animal. Secondly he ate fruits and flowers and whatever grains were growing naturally.
So the Paleo Diet plans stresses on eating animal proteins, fish, lean meat, fruits, nuts, eggs, and cereals. It rules out eating the dairy products like milk and milk based products like cheese, potatoes, butter, and curds etc. It also emphasis on inclusion of critical ingredients like vitamins and minerals.
Naturally Paleo Diet will be costlier to other diets. Also from the energy point of view whatever food plan you follow, you have to side by side reduce the already deposited extra fats. So exercise is a must along with the dieting. Caveman didn’t have many worries like modern man. Most of his time was spent chasing the animals for hunting and fishing with not efficient tools. So he was always exercising his body.
I doubt that with this type of strenuous physical routine the caveman would have become overweight even after eating the fat from the animals. These diet plans all boil down to the fact that if the intake of the calories is offset by spending those calories through physical exercise and activity leaving a slightly negative balance, you will be fit