Book Review: The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet

I just finished reading The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf and oh my goodness.  There have been a couple books that have really “changed my life” to use a cliche.  The first was Secrets of a Former Fat Girl by Lisa Delaney.  I could really relate to her and it really got me motivated to get started on my healthy lifestyle back in 2009.  The second was In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.  After reading this, I completely changed my diet to a diet full of natural, healthy foods.  The third was This is Why You’re Fat by Jackie Warner.  She taught me how to really concentrate on building muscle and eat an even cleaner, healthier diet, and cutting back on grain based foods.  The Paleo Diet for Athletes by Loren Cordain had a bit of an influence on my diet, suggesting to me that perhaps a Paleo Diet was the right move for me.  It lead me to research this diet even more.  Now, The Paleo Solution has solidified my decision to switch over to a Paleo Diet.

While Paleoista was a quick introduction to the Paleo Diet lifestyle, The Paleo Solution was much more in depth, scientifically.  Most of the book was about the Why rather than the How.  My favorite thing about this book was that it used biology and how your body reacts to certain foods rather than research studies which can be skewed (remember, we all need to be skeptics?).

He starts off describing his own lifestyle as a vegan and all the illness and physical problems he had his entire life.  It is great to hear that he has tried other paths and found that the Paleo Diet worked the best for him.  He talks about his journey into finding the Paleo Diet and why he decided to try it.  (Did I mention he is a scientist?  I think that automatically qualifies him as a skeptic!)

Most of the book talks about the biology of eating and its extremely eye-opening.  You learn a lot of stuff in this book and it can get a bit technical.  Luckily, Robb writes with a lighthearted feel, often joking and calling you “Buttercup” which brings the seriousness of the book down.  This section is extremely well written for the non-scientist, broken down into simple sections and terms so you can easily retain the information.

After he’s done discussing insulin levels, LDL, and many other health things, he finally gets into the How part of the book.  He provides you with a complete 30 day meal plan to follow with lots of recipes!  I somewhat skimmed over this section but several of the recipes caught my eye.  The meal plan looks excellent and I am thinking about trying it out myself. If you know me, you know I absolutely loath following a meal plan so that should be interesting!  Yes, it looks so good, I’m considering it myself!

Finally, he discusses supplements.  I found this section rather helpful and interesting.  He doesn’t really want to promote supplements but finds that some people do need them.  Some of his numbers I’m not sure about here without better evidence so I took it with a grain of salt.  He does discuss who should take them and who shouldn’t which I found rather helpful too.  Its not a one-size-fits-all thing.

Overall, I loved this book!  I can’t wait to pick up a copy of the original book, The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain (so I do things backwards ok?!) and I’ve started dabbling around Robb Wolf’s website too for more information.  My body has already reacted positively to following a mostly-Paleo diet and I’m going to continue down that road.  While I’m also an “everything in moderation” person, my “moderation” is a lot smaller than most.  I’ll still have grains and dairy now and then but most of my diet is now going to exclude those things for the sake of my health.

Finally, I wanted to say thank you to my friend Tiffany, who has been talking about Paleo to me for so long.  The real reason I started thinking about it was because of her.  If she hadn’t kept mentioning it and telling me how great she felt, I never would have considered it for myself!

So, if you are curious at all about the why of the Paleo diet, this book is extremely enlightening.  And I’m telling you, that meal plan is nice and simple and the recipes sound amazing!