I’m an Omnivore

If you go check out my diet page you might notice that I’m going back on grains. In fact, I’ll be back on dairy in a month. My descent into the Paleo diet is going to have to be put on hold for a short while. Before I get too involved, I want to answer a very important question:

What really causes acne?

Is it poor hygiene? Not getting enough sunlight? Touching your face too much? As you can probably guess, I think the real reason behind most acne problems is diet.

I’ve got a damn good hunch that diet is the real issue for most cases of acne. Certain experiences have made me feel this way: for instance, my face was very clear during one week. I didn’t have so much as one pimple. I broke down one night during that week and bought a small box of Junior Mints. Within hours, I had several zits. It was ridiculous. In general, I have seen a significant improvement in my acne since I started changing my diet. However, this could be attributed to other reasons and I haven’t documented this change yet, so I am now planning to go back and see the difference.

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Did you know that, out of the three big macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins), there is one that is completely nonessential? It’s true. You don’t have to include it in your diet and if you don’t, you won’t end up nutritionally deficient. You can survive without this macronutrient for a long time and many cultures have been doing just that for centuries. Want to know which one it is?

Drum roll please.

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Many people that get introduced to the Paleo diet dismiss it immediately as nonsense. They attempt to find quick ways to disregard the entire idea, so they can go on believing that their diet is just fine.

Understanding Evolution
One of the primary reasons that the Paleo diet hasn’t become more popular is because of people underestimating, misunderstanding, or completely rejecting the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, the latter case appears to be very prevalent here in America (where we also enjoy the highest obesity rate in the world):

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My article, Trash the Scale: How to Calculate Body Fat Percentage, was accepted on the 1st edition of the Weight Management and Fitness Forum carnival. It was hosted on the Weight Master blog. Take a look. There are some interesting articles over there explaining the difference between “0g trans fat” and “no trans fat”, running a marathon, and pilates for weight loss for example.

Imagine, for a moment, our ancient ancestors. Imagine them hunting, gathering, and traveling great distances. Imagine the constant threat of danger.

Now what happens if one of them gets sick?

It seems to me that our Paleolithic ancestors couldn’t have gotten sick as often or with the same severity that we do. It would have been a death sentence.

Yes, we live in heavily populated areas and germs are spread easily, but I don’t think that’s the only answer. Germs constantly invade our body. Your body has mechanisms to fight these invaders, that is if your immune system is functioning properly.

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For the month of September, I have decided to study the benefits and feasibility of completely eliminating grains from my diet. What does this include? Bread, pasta, rice, cereal, oatmeal, and beer, among other things. I can already imagine my readers closing their browsers, grabbing their car keys, and heading straight to the closest bagel shop.

I know, going grain free sounds crazy. My fiancee thinks it’s crazy. My friends think it’s crazy. And I don’t deny it’s somewhat difficult either. Certainly, it is more difficult than just cutting out dairy as I have previously done.

However, giving up grains is an inevitable part of exploring a Paleolithic diet and that’s exactly what I am going to do.

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Now that you know the 10 Reasons the Freshman Fifteen Gets You, it’s time to step up and do something about it. College students are at the age where they have high metabolism and they should be at their physical peak. Do you really want to suffer through college overweight and under energized when you could be in the best shape of your life? The worst thing you can do is develop bad habits like eating terribly, going on no sleep, and avoiding exercise and think, “This is college. This is just the way it is.” Wrong. I had this attitude for too long. Your lifestyle in college is completely up to you.

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One of my readers recommended the blog of Art De Vany. Art is a Professor of Economics at UCI and he has been following the guidelines of what he calls ‘evolutionary fitness’ for twenty years. It seems that it’s working out quite well for him. He is writing a book about the topic: the first chapter on Art’s book Evolutionary Fitness.

Art also has some theories on the dangers of endurance training that I’m not really sure I agree with, but they are intriguing. I’m definitely open to new ideas. He writes about a good deal of other topics as well.

Anyways, Art sums up a lot of the ideas concerning an evolutionary diet elegantly, so he probably explains it much better than I can:

It begins with the premise that our bodies and minds are adapted to an ancient environment that passed more than 10,000 years ago. We evolved as hunter-gatherers over at least three million years and that lifeway shapes our attributes, behaviors, and capabilities as human beings. It is by understanding the hunter-gatherer adaptation and incorporating the activity and eating patterns of our ancestral lifeway with the findings of the best of modern science that we can live a natural and healthy life in a modern world that is very different from the one in which human beings evolved.