Originally Posted by
bakerjw
I lost weight on the Atkins diet. I didn't feel bad other than missing carbs. I wasn't exercising at the time too.
I lost even more weight with a low glycemic index diet. Very coarse grains, vegetables, lean meats, etc... I still eat this way. The 21 whole grain bread that I eat now is unbelievably dense and has a low GI number.
The way that I see it, as hunter/gatherer humans evolved, some would live in areas where winters would be harsh. They might have stored some foods for the coming winter; however, when stores were light due to drought and all that was left was meat, it was likely very lean. I've never hunted and eaten a fat rabbit, deer, quail, pheasant or grouse. Animals will fatten themselves up a bit going into Winter but once hard times hit, their fat reserves are what keep them going. Eskimo types that live on seal, whale and other marine mammals have almost always had a diet high in fat and they seem to do well with it.
Always points to ponder.
I will say though that a diet high in processed starches and sugars combined with a sedentary lifestyle will make you fat.
Avoid the evolutionary logic, recent archeology where they're actually sampling fossilized human poop shows that diets varied so much regionally that there's almost no way to know what kind of diet your ancestors were genetically adapted to. There's a lot of reasons that someone from southern Italy would probably have died if they had been forced to switch to an Inuit diet and vice verse, for example.
The most recent research seems to indicate that the proper balance of macronutrients and calories in/calories out is an individual characteristic, and that one size fits all diets are simply impossible.
I congratulate you on finding a diet you can sustain and, it sounds like, enjoy.