The term diet has been spun into something that it is not.  More often than not if one says 'Diet' it is seen as a temporary or fad like thing in order to lose weight or augment your lifestyle for temporary gain.  Diet in its definition means the continual eating habits of a creature.  So, we know cows mostly eat grass and that is their diet.  Predators are carnivores and subsist mostly on meats.  Somehow a diet has become misconstrued over the years as something else.  It is now a marketable term and not true to its meaning.  So, with trepidation, I often say I am on the Paleo diet and it is misunderstood as something akin to the Atkins diet for meat eaters or that I only consume what cavemen ate which is wholly untrue and often leads to crooked eyebrows or being told I don't need to be on a diet, that eating red meats will kill me, or some other myth perpetuated by misguided information.  This mental programming of the word diet along with the 'diets' in question is part of the problem with health and nutrition.  Diet is part of your lifestyle and what you can handle ingesting on a continual basis and what your body should be fed habitually.

We as humans don't really have a solidified diet per se according to nature.  There are things which we should and should not eat but we have a very robust system that allows us both meats and vegetables and some in-between items.  There are a lot of things that we cannot adapt to though and should be removed from the body altogether in order to achieve optimal energy levels and ease digestion.  We can eat and pass pennies but that doesn't mean it is good for our body and you may or may not have adverse affects from doing so.   The same can be said for gluten, legumes, dairy, sugar etc. all of which can have adverse affects, hidden or visible.

Unlike most of the Paleo Cookbooks out there, Well Fed is written by someone who has spent a lot of time in a commercial kitchen.  Most of the Paleo Cookbooks on offer currently are written by homemakers or someone that has experimented quite a bit with their meals to adapt to a Paleo lifestyle.  I am not saying the other cookbooks don't have good food, because they do, but this one gives you more of the basic building blocks to create a lot of combinations for meals.  Consider it similar to Food Legos for the hidden chef in you.

When I first picked up this book I was a little confused with it.  I don't think it is so much the presentation as it expects a little more out of you in the kitchen instead of just handing you a list and directions.  There are some recipes that hand-hold along the way but it is much more free-form and relies on you to spice things up a bit more.  At the same time one recipe can be changed up quite easily with the addition of other spices or varied slightly and the instructions are there for doing so.

I always scoffed at people using trekking poles.  I hiked almost my entire life without the use of poles or walking sticks.  I didn't want the extra weight and I didn't need to look like a grandpa walking around the mountain.  It wasn't until around 2010 that I was passed by some AT through hikers much younger than me with poles did I reconsider my stance.

I did some research in the usage of them, considered my typical knee pains when traversing downhills and decided I wanted to give them a shot.  I didn't want to spend yet another 100+ dollars on something that I didn't even know if I would use so I waited until I found a sale online (my usual game) and I picked some up.

There's a bit of a stigma with Paleo in that it is expensive to eat this way. My retort is: “What is more costly, medical bills or a better diet?”. Once you give up on boxed foods and start buying whole foods you should begin to see a difference in meal costs for the better. You can easily put together a meal for four for about 15 dollars which is a lot cheaper than eating out. Speaking of eating out, you'll likely reduce that considerably since it is somewhat difficult to source a restaurant that is conducive to your eating habits.

The initial costs can be a bit off-putting and a lot of times I recommend starting slow in replacing items. Eat down what you may have stocked up as you build up new supplies, or if you have long term storage, give it away or keep it stashed for emergencies.  I went the cold turkey route and tossed out everything in favor of my new lifestyle.  The choice is yours if you can afford it or if your health can hold out for a little while longer as you make the transition.  Some people are in dire straights with obesity or metabolic issues and need to shock the system as far as I am concerned.  If the temptation is there then they'll never achieve their goal.

There's a certain misconception around that fat equals fat on the body.  The notion, upon closer examination, is illogical ,however; I was certainly under this spell for the longest time of my life.  Eating fat does not equal fat.  Growing up in the 80's everything was low fat and Jazzercise or aerobics with colorful leg warmers was the way to fitness godliness.  As I have learned, both couldn't be further from the truth.

Further hang ups tend be with the types of fats.  Everyone knows that we need more Omega 3's and less Omega 6's but at the same time we're told to use "healthy" fats and oils like vegetable oil which is loaded with polyunsaturated fatty acids and Omega 6.  So, if you take away nothing else from this then understand that you need to dispose of all those corn, canola, peanut, soy, and grape seed oils.  Yeah I thought grape seed was ok too for a while but it's no better than the others.  Canola is used so heavily now it is disconcerting.  Canola was originally designed as an industrial lubricant and even a lot of olive oils sneak in a portion of canola to round out the rest of the bottle and cut the cost.  Canola is, as I understand, a product of Rapeseed and not exactly good for our systems.  Another terrible "fat" is the alternative butters.  Margarine is one molecule away from being plastic not to mention all the other so-called butters which are nothing more than chemical compounds made to taste like butter.  Thanks, but I'll take my chances with something natural and something my body knows how to process. So, toss them out and don't look back.  If you're serious about reversing your health, start here.