It’s the Diet, stupid.

(I’ll apologize right here to the younger generations who are offended by the use of the word “stupid”. Growing up when I did, it’s a completely normal, unstigmatized expression of frustration with no horrible connotations, or life changing judgments involved.)

I’ve long suspected that I know the answer to my physical issues. And that’s because I do — it’s all in the diet. Sure I can find the time to exercise, and have been doing some good strength training. And I’ve been learning a lot about the aging process as I get more serious with that once again. But it all comes back to paying much more attention to my diet. Once again.

A friend recently asked if I’d ever heard of the Paleo Diet. Boy have I!

See years ago when the internet was a kid, I belonged to a low carb diet list. I was attracted to it since as an overweight teenager I lost a lot of weight on the Atkins diet, and wanted to get back into it. I had my highs and lows, but overall found a lot of success with a low carb way of living. A problem is that I don’t always have much control over my diet. I studied ketogenic dieting, and found great success with a targeted ketogenic diet, which was nicely outlined in The Ketogenic Diet.

Even back in the day, the low carb list vied with attention from the paleo list, which was essentially low carb. THe big difference both have made in their evolution is the attention to the broader range of hormones and chemicals in the modern food supply. So, they’ve both more or less gone organic, with Paleo dieting leading the way in that regard. And all of that fits in nicely with the “back to the land” movement of buying local, choosing organics which are better for the environment. And all of it is ultimately, to my mind, very Catholic to boot.

A Facebook friend (who grew up in France,) put it this way: “Just eat the French way. It’s basically paleo with a little bit of cake here and there.”

That I can handle. To a degree. I have some revamping to do.

But, a paleo diet, as outlined and explained by Mark Sisson at least, is a ketogenic diet. High (healthy) fat, high protien, lower carb, no refined carbs. A targeted ketogenic diet is a ketogenic diet in which you intake a certain amount of carbohydrate before exercise (I still use Smarties candies for that.) Not that I’m doing a ketogenic diet on a regular basis… yet. But, I do believe that’s the route I’m going. And if not explicitly ketogenic, then definitely lower carb for a good while. On the 80/20 principle at that. (Which could, you know, be considered a cyclical ketogenic diet if one planned better than I do…)

But that’s the latest on the diet front. Off to read more on hormones at some point today.

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The Rev. Kenneth Allen