My Journey to Paleo

When an orthopedic doctor put me on the Paleo Diet in 2016 to help me heal from injuries I sustained in a car accident in 2015 and said I should stay on it for life, I took him seriously. I knew very little about the diet so I bought several books about it and several Paleo cookbooks and started doing my research.

​Nearly every author had discovered the diet on their journey to manage living with a debilitating disease. Several suffered from one or more autoimmune diseases or extreme food sensitivities. In my case, I was looking for a way to alleviate the residual pain I had from the accident and see if there was a way to participate in activities I could no longer do. This is what led me to this non-surgical orthopedic doctor. 

I had been a strong swimmer and there is not one stroke I could do after the accident, unless you consider dog paddling a stroke. Tennis, golf, cross-country skiing, shooting pool, bowling, playing my flute, are all activities I could no longer do. I still am unable to do these, but I’m not in pain like I had been, for which I’m very grateful.
 
I played a lot of sports growing up, and had managed to sprain nearly all my fingers. I had a doctor ask me once what happened to my knuckles since only two looked in proportion to my fingers. But for some reason it was just two on my left hand that for years had started hurting as soon as it turned cold. But the year after starting the Paleo Diet, I’ve never experienced this arthritic pain again. There are many other health benefits to the Paleo Diet besides reducing inflammation that causes arthritis and other ailments. I’ll talk about these in a future post, but with this post I want to continue my discussion of best diets for losing weight.
 
There are a few places on my website where I say that personally I like to eat mainly Whole30 (which is actually the strictest form of Paleo) since it’s so healthy and a good way to avoid weight gain. But I realize that many people want a wider selection of foods to choose from. Because Paleo was never meant to be a diet for managing weight, it takes some effort to figure out what to eat and how much if you want to lose weight.
 
I think the optimal diet for losing weight would be combining Paleo with Weight Watchers. You are allowed to eat anything on Weight Watchers. So if you would limit that to anything allowed on the Paleo Diet, I can’t imagine a healthier and easier way to lose weight.