Changing your weight at the venerable age of 66 can be rather problematic. Drop it too fast and your heart implodes. Gain it too fast and you get the same result, only sooner. In either case, your junk shrinks... no wait, that happens all by itself...
For many years, I've wandered in haphazard fashion down the isles of weight loss programs. There are something like a gazillion of them, I think everyone on the planet has published at least one book on the subject... Currently, I am on the Paleo diet kick. Paleo stands for Paleolithic which refers to a time in human history that predated the more current Neolithic period which is marked a change in human civilization. It was at that juncture, some ten thousand years ago that primitive man took a left turn and decided to settle down and grow stuff. We became an agrarian society which is defined as 'any society whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. Another way to define an agrarian society is by seeing how much of a nation's total production is in agriculture.' Once that new age began in earnest, we slowly began to walk away from a diet consisting of meats, fruits, berries and nuts and more towards one consisting of assorted vegetables and grains. And while that was not a totally bad thing to do, we've managed to pervert the process to such a point, by the 21st Century, that many of us are no longer walking very well. No, we are crawling, towards the nearest hospital. So, in review. The American male has gone from a totally lean eating machine to a fat and sloppy sophomoric blob who sits for most of his life while waiting for God to ring the recess bell... Not a pretty picture. Over just the past fifty years obesity has begun to run rampant with a corresponding large spike in the number of cardiac related deaths! Today, morbid obesity is pandemic in the US! Did you know that Paleolithic man did not know about much in the way of diseases? Most did not exist! Heck, he didn't even have tooth decay to worry about! And while it's true that few survived very far into their twenties, most of the deaths were the result of predation for in those times as life was pretty brutal and short!
Be that as it may, a few scholars have taken note that the average Paleolithic man ate himself a pretty decent diet. On any given day, the successful hunter would perhaps score some meat, maybe a birds egg and some berries. (Note that while I refer to men, the women did every bit the same type of jobs only they also had kids to be concerned with while the difference in overall muscle strength precluded them from as much hunting). So, for millions of years, we homo sapiens pretty much thrived as a species with nary a single can of corn among us.
Some of these self same scholars have thought about those ancient lifestyles and then concocted diet plans that sort of kind of emulate those much more basic lifestyles of old. If one were to go for a 'Paleo Diet', one would be giving up all processed foods (meats included), all grains and dairy products. Note that left precious little to choose from at you favorite grocery store! In fact, you would be limited to just fresh veggies, meats, nuts (not legumes) and fruits. Wow! Talk about a severe diet! Most people could not exist in a world without Hostess Ding Dongs, Lays chips, pizza and ice cream! But, that be the world I was headed for for the duration of my diet! Note, however, that once I reach my personal weight goals, I may just grab myself a frozen Digiorno pizza!
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