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423 of 462 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wolf's teachings in the Paleo Solution changed my life, September 14, 2010
This review is from: The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet (Hardcover)
Let me begin by saying that I have always been a healthy person--or at least that is what I thought. Since I was fourteen, I went to the gym almost every day and ate foods that I thought were good for me. Around the age of thirty I got super busy. Although I still worked out and ate foods that I had been told were healthy, I didn't sleep as much, stressed a whole lot more, and things began to go down hill. I developed a fairly good-sized tire around my midsection. The color of my skin was a little off. And, most importantly, I no longer felt super healthy. I tried everything I could thing of, which basically boiled down to eating less of the foods I had been told were healthy. I ate a ton of lean meats, and I combined them with a ton of carbs in the form of rice. I cut out every ounce of fat I possible could. And guess what? I started to feel (and look) even worse. In an attempt to correct the situation, I began working out even harder. Although I got stronger and gained more muscle, I still had that tire of fat around the midsection and had very little energy on most days. Was I just getting old? Were the good old days of being fit and healthy gone for good?
A friend of mine had been following Robb's teachings for some time, and he turned me on to the diet. As with most people who learned "nutrition" in college, I was highly resistant. I mean, why would they be teaching us the wrong nutrition in college. The professors seemed pretty smart, and I doubted that they had the goal of trying to kill me. But I was failing with the traditional way of thought, and so I decided it to give the thirty days. My friend told me that Robb preached the "give me 30 days" philosophy, and so that is what I decided to give this new and strange diet, which I still doubted would ever work. Well, thirty days later I had dropped TWENTY SIX POUNDS. Am I joking about that number--absolutely not. A part of it had to do with the fact that I was working out a whole lot more--but the only reason I could work out more is because I was feeling so GOOD. How good? Well, to be quite honest, I was feeling like I did back when I was eighteen (well, maybe not eighteen, but twenty one for sure.)
Now a year and a half later, I feel better than ever. That twenty six pounds of weight loss not only did not come back on, but it turned into thirty pounds of weight less (and yes, I needed to drop thirty pounds.) Just like Wolf's slogan, I LOOK, FEEL, AND PERFORM better than I ever thought imaginable. For someone who has always prided himself on being fit, healthy, and happy, I can honestly say I owe Wolf the world. His teachings have convinced me that getting older does not mean getting fatter, sicker, and less happy. Will you be eighteen for the rest of your life if you take Wolf's 30-day challenge and then adopt a Paleo lifestyle--no, probably not. But you most certainly won't be 40 or 50 or 60. You will look younger than you are, feel younger than you are, and be happy in your skin. Honestly, I don't see how you can put a price tag on that.
What about the sacrifices? This is the big one, right. Well, I have been on diets before, and this is not a diet. It is a lifestyle. And when you get that "diet" word out of your head, restricting certain foods becomes a lot less challenging. Trust me when I tell you that I was a guy who LOVED my bread and wheat beer. But you must also trust me when I tell you that I do not miss these delicious products in the slightest. . .Wolf's lifestyle plan puts you in much better contact with your body, and when you acquire that mindset, things that make your body feel, perform, and look better begin to taste better. Foods I used to despise now taste wonderful. And the foods that I once could not have lived without (bread, rice, pasta) are now the farthest thing from my mind. I've talked with other people on the Paleo diet, and many of them have told me that when they cheat, they can feel the negative effects immediately. Personally, I think I may have cheated on the diet twice in a over a year. Is it because I am super strong willed. Absolutely not. When it comes to will power, I don't think I have that much of it. The reason that I haven't cheated is because I simply don't want to cheat. When I smell the foods I once loved, I no longer have the urge to consume them. Did this take fun out of my life? Did this destroy the thrill of eating and socializing over a tasty meal? Actually, the opposite has happened. I actually enjoy eating a whole lot more because it makes me feel powerful, just like food should. It makes me feel strong, both mentally and physically. And despite what some people will believe, eating healthy does not destroy your social life. All it may do is add some interesting conversations into the mix.
In conclusion, try the Paleo Solution. it works. It works well. And it will change your life in ways you can not imagine. I know change is scary for a lot of people (it was for me), but when the changes you make break the barriers of what you thought life could be, you won't regret it!
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156 of 173 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
READ THIS BOOK!!!!, October 29, 2010
This review is from: The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet (Hardcover)
About five months ago, I started doing CrossFit (an exercise program/gym). The coach explained the Paleo diet model and suggested this book. It took me almost five months before I read it, but prior to reading I had pretty much adopted a Paleo diet, which completely changed my life. I mean, really changed my whole experience. I used to be a vegan (six years ago for four years), but then my hair started thinning and that was the end of that, so I started incorporating fish and eggs, and a little dairy. But I was still almost always hungry, and it seemed no matter what exercise I did, or how much, it wasn't ever really getting me to where I wanted to be, even though I thought I was eating super healthy. I also drank a lot of wine, which interfered with my sleeping. All in all my digestion wasn't so good. I felt my health slowly and steadily declining. So, long story short, when I started CrossFit I decided to give this Paleo diet a try. Amazing results! Never felt better, my blood sugar is even and steady all day long, and my sleep is restorative not something to "get through"; not to mention, my body is rockin'! I don't crave sugar, which is a miracle, and I hardly drink anymore. Why? Because I feel so good, I have no desire to mess that up. Me, a wino, yes, giving up wine. For once in my life, I'm lean, I'm stronger than I've ever been, and I feel certain solidity to my being. I never thought it possible. So then I bought Paleo Solution, because I'm thinking, "I gotta learn why this diet works so well. What's up with this Paleo stuff? I want to tell the world about it!" I was skeptical about the read, despite my great results in trying out this lifestyle. Books on diet and health can sometimes be boring, daunting, and uninspiring. Right? How many books have you bought, hoping to find the thing you were looking for, only to quit reading it half way through? Robb Wolf has assembled an incredible amount of information into one book, and he's presented it in a simple way. He's also got a great voice -- a great sense of humor -- and it feels like he's talking directly to you. I liked this. It felt personable and it was engaging. Plus, I was understanding all this scientific information, (and I'm not scientifically oriented at all), which when all put together into the bigger picture was like "WHOA!". (It was more like a holy you know what). So here's the skinny: If you are suffering from diabetes, a heart condition, high blood pressure, an auto-immune disease, indigestion, cancer, a sugar or alcohol addiction, or pretty much any illness; or, you are an athlete seeking greater performance, or you're wanting to loose weight and look and feel fabulous and incredible, then you MUST read this book! It's quick, it's easy, informative, it's entertaining, and it will change your life like it did mine. That is, if you're willing to give it a try. And for those of you who are vegetarian, or concerned about industrialized farming and general slaughtering practices, I suggest you check out eatwild on the internet to find out where you can get grass-fed animal directly from sustainable farms in your local area. READ THIS BOOK, for your health, and for the health of your family. Thank you, Robb Wolf!
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48 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This BOOK and its CONCEPT Can Change YOUR LIFE - RUSH to Buy It - Five Stars, January 17, 2011
This review is from: The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet (Hardcover)
I know, you have tried every type of diet and nothing has worked, and it's been that way for years, and always you wonder why? What the Paleo people have done is taken everything we know about health, fitness, dieting, nutrition and turned it on its head. It's because they have gone back to the beginning of man's existence, looked at his surroundings and figured out exactly how we have been genetically programmed to live. Just think about it, our ancestors go back 7 million years, and most researchers believe that our genetic systems haven't changed in at least 200,000 of those years.
This means that if you took a child born 200,000 years ago and instantly brought him to our day and age, that child would grow up just like any other child. The reverse is also true. Geneticists have also found by studying bones and so forth that mankind 200,000 years ago did not suffer from heart attacks, diabetes, and certainly not obesity. A lion or other predator would have had an easy and quick meal of anyone who was overweight and could not run for his life.
Author Robb Wolf was a research biochemist who went on to become a strength coach and what this tells you is that the whole book is basically a guide written by a coach to tell his clients how to understand and institute a Paleo diet and lifestyle, and the job Wolf does is EXCELLENT. This is probably the best Paleo book on the market for everyday use as opposed to a theoretical exercise. In this book you will learn:
* Why INSULIN dysregulation is the key to everything!
* Why our body's system is CONFUSED and BROKEN in our modern world.
* Why the French, Spanish, and Greeks consume more fats then we do and yet are healthier.
* You need to control the CARBS to control the INSULIN.
* How to protect ourselves from Blood Sugar CRASHES.
* Grains (breads, pastas) raise our Insulin levels and wreak havoc on our systems.
* SLEEP, the most beautiful gift nature gives to us.
* Why we can handle ACUTE but not CHRONIC stress.
* Do you own your THINGS, or do your THINGS OWN YOU?
You need to think of this book as a manual for the Paleo lifestyle. It is that good. When Wolf talks about exercise, he gives you scores of pages about exercise with easy to follow photographs of the correct way to do them, because words cannot describe exercises in sufficient detail to replicate them. He gives you 40 pages of foods and the details for each recipe that he writes about. Nothing is left to chance. There is a 3 day meal plan, a 2 week meal plan, and a 30 day meal plan, all covered in detail.
He teaches you how to shop and what you should be buying in the stores including discussions about olive oil for salads versus cooking. You want fish; well Wolf tells you how to buy wild fish like shrimp, mussels, claims, sardines, mackerel, pacific salmon, and others. He tells us we are designed to eat meat, poultry, and seafood.
I was particularly pleased with his discussion of vitamins and supplements. The problem with most of them is that what it says on the bottle is not what is inside the bottle. The whole industry is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and not the Food and Drug Administration. If you went out and bought 50 different bottles of vitamins by 50 different manufacturers, and tested the contents in the laboratory, only in a handful of bottles would you find that the contents of the bottle matches the label. In addition, nowhere in prehistoric times did the cave man have access to such concentrated vitamin sources so our systems are not used to them - be careful.
CONCLUSION
In The Paleo Solution, Wolf gives us 288 pages of interesting, no nonsense narrative, followed by 30 pages of references. There is no index. My recommendation to you is that you read this book with a pen in your hand. When you find something that is important to YOU, then annotate it, and write the reference and page number on a blank page in the back. In other words make up your own index. This book will change your life, and the way you think about your life. If you suffer from stress, diabetes, heart disease or any one of a dozen other maladies then Paleo may be for you. Since nothing else has seemed to work, maybe trying something different is the way to go. Good luck and thank you for reading this review.
Richard C. Stoyeck
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