For me it is about increasing health, prolonging enjoyable life.

Paleo is about the following to me:

• Minimizing risk of the deadly diseases of civilization, like CHD and cancer.
• Greater longevity and better health into old age
• Eliminating the non-lethal but more immediate diseases of civilization: GERD, IBS, hypothyroid, obesity, poor sleep, depression, etc.
• Undoing the damage to our diets and our economy caused by decades of junk science and consolidated agribusiness.

All of these are equally valid reasons to go Paleo, and they all matter to me. However, I wouldn't have ever bothered learning about any of it if I hadn't started out obese. It is vanity alone that kick-started my search into optimal health, and I think plenty of others echo this sentiment.

Yes, I started paleo because I wanted to lose weight. But, especially as someone who loves instant gratification, the energy and clarity I have when I'm eating paleo is what's keeping me here for the long run. Planning on tweaking things to try and improve hormonal issues, and it looks promising! The preventative aspects of paleo also are reassuring, as someone who's uninsured, haha.

It does feel really good to think that maybe, in several months, I can be lean for once in my life. But it's not "about" losing weight at this point. I think if it were, I'd be approaching it like any other diet-- one that I'd plan on using to my ends, and then more or less quit.

I started paleo because I was losing my quality of life, and it seemed to make sense to me that some of the issue could very well be the plastic and toxic chemicals I was ingesting and calling "food".

As I've said in another posting, for me, Paleo=Source rather than Paleo=Macronutrient Profile.

I've tried a lot of things over time, and tweak pretty often, fall back into old and bad habits occasionally, pick myself up, dust myself off, and try again--but for me, regardless of the shape of the body that I end up with, my over-riding goal is to have as happy and productive a life as I can until the day that I give up the ghost. I eat in an ancestrally-mindful way because I think it can help me get to that point.

It's part "other reasons" (like I study history and politics, wny not how the body really works and how even modern science and medicine can be so far off track!), and part I made it here after losing weight, but I don't know enough and keep reading to learn more.

As far as the current debates on things-

Insulin theory works fine for you if you are insulin resistant.

The stuff on leptin is really good.

The food reward stuff, for me, is the worst idea in Paleo. I tried reading Guyenet's site about it and switched the site off instead.

Some anecdotal/n=1 stuff: I got huge due to past medical history and got the medical runaround for 15 years. The idea that this is explained by some desire for chocolate cake to me is absurd and insulting. If I'm making this out to be a strawman someone correct it, that's what I read on Guyenet's site and stopped there.

I assume that food reward seeks to explain the current crisis in type 2 diabetes and obesity? All you need to know that this is not the explanation is find one of those charts that shows obesity, and T2 diabetes since about 1980, right when the low fat craze took hold. Food suppliers changed food. People ate it. Now here we are. It has nothing to do with some reward mechanism, it's whats in the store... It's not that complicated!

When I was huge, I had to see people for advice that never were huge. They were pretty much useless. I take the same view when I'm reading "experts" that come up with this explanation or that one, and it's just tireseome reading so many people act like experts on something they never experienced themselves. Maybe Guyenet thinks big folks are just waiting for the next treat because that is what he sees and he doesn't understand the rest.

I would rather hear from people that corrected mistakes, learned from them, and have something to offer. Sisson learned his lesson about over training and stress. Kruse lost weight fast on full on Paleo. The thyroid hormone dr I see works for one of the best clinics in the country and the founder was big himself at one time too. Jimmy Moore lost a ton of weight, still struggles, and he lets people know it. It's nice that a lot of folks are fit and stayed fit, but that doesn't make them experts on it!

Initially (in 2003) I started Paleo to lose weight. It lasted for a year and I lost about 100lbs.

After that, I fell in love with the sport of strongman where my weight was not a hinderance, so I replaced that 100lbs with 50lbs of muscle (and some fat).

When I resumed the Paleo diet in 2010, it was to combat my fatigue, my horrible leaky gut, inflammatory bowel issues, and allergies.

That was when I realized that obesity is a symptom, not the illness itself. Fix inflammation, and the body tends to set itself to "factory defaults".

So I currently diet with the goal of losing weight, and I track it diligently. However, my main goal is to treat my guts, my fatigue, and my body as a whole. Losing fat is just one of those items I'm "curing".

I originally became interested in healthy food because I was overweight. For me they go together and I would imagine for most people that have been overweight or are currently overweight and eating paleo or primal it is indeed about health AND weight loss. The ultimate goal is health, and weight loss is a desired and happy side-effect.

The early adopters were all about health. It was crazy back then (4-10 years ago) to eat such a diet. Only people, who've really tried a lot went paleo as a last resort. You can still find old threads on curezone and other disease forum quoting staffan lindeberg.

I started for health.

Paleo is, to me, about health via the removal of toxins. For many people that will bring them down to a healthy weight(healthy != skinny, thin or ripped).

Due to media brainwashing, at least in America getting healthy and losing weight are nearly synonymous. This, combined with obsiety being the most visible health problem, is where the confusion comes in.

Weight is the last thing on my mind, since I never really had any issues with it. My main interests are skin, mood and sleep. I'm also interested in muscles and allergy relief, but as a student I can't be working on my diet all the time.

A lot of people do paleo for various reasons : to bring down their cholesterol, to deal better with horrible allergies, to solve cardiovascular problems, ... Weight issues are so common though, that you'll easily be under the impression everyone does it for weight loss. I don't see many people with a good composition around me : everyone is skinny or has lipodystrophy, has a beer belly, a big butt, ....

My weight was fine and I wasn't looking for a way to lose any. I was also very healthy and unlike most people really feel no better or different on paleo than before.

So why even do it? I see it as an investment in my future health - I want an old age with minimum health issues. Vanity-wise I would also like to stay younger looking for as long as possible. Let's see how it goes.

For me the weight is an added benefit. I started Paleo as a test a month ago (yes, I am new), and saw results within days on multiple levels.

My reasons are based on my background:

I was diagnosed with colitis when I was 4, was reasonably flare free when I was thirty, and developed psoriasis when I was 31 (oh, goody!). I was convinced that somebody up there just didn't want me to have a social life. Although I have access to great healthcare, and have seen a number of hospitals from the inside, doctors were mainly giving me more "tests" and less "results". Add to that the fact that I am from a "well to do" family in terms of bodysize, and you can imagine I have tried almost everything. So when I do something it has to have a clear ROI: the Paleo lifestyle is the first to offer me that on multiple levels.

Another factor is that I am fairly analytical in the sense that I can be a very good b.s.-artist, having earned my living with that, so as a result I can spot one as well. So when I decide to do something the science behind it may be "new" or non-conformist, but it must be clear and repeatable. Again..

In short, whatever Paleo does, it works for me as a whole.

Before doing paleo, I was both fat and strong, my fat hides all my muscle definition, I was that sort of health conscious guy, I knew some foods are bad for me but kept binging on them.

Initially I was "web-crawling" for information on weight loss on body-building sites. I wasn't looking for some magic pills; I was looking for motivation and a way to ditch those unhealthy food. I came across the term paleo and was hooked. I decided to give it a try because many of its explanations make common sense (and I was a math major. The explanations make sense is definitely a big plus for me).

In four months, I lost around 20lbs, and my physique is much better. I still have some belly fat to lose. Right now I'm still on paleo, but for different reasons:

1) To maintain/achieve better physique (this one stays the same);

2) To maintain overall health and enjoy the health benefits;

3) Because paleo seems to fit myself -- my body doesn't seem to digest starch very well;

4) Most importantly, to get full and enjoy food. Paleo is full of food that I enjoy.

Sure, health is something that is important to keep in mind. Paleo is helping me try to keep my binging under control. But mostly, for me, at least...paleo helps me see food from an entirely new perspective. I think of food as food. I am trying to have an active relatinship with food, rather than blindly consuming and paleo helps me do this. This probably makes no sense, so I'll try to explain.

I used to pick up food almost mechanically. I used low-calorie food as a way of filling me up without thinking about my food. I picked food that would give me a false sense of fullness. I looked at food as a forgein object almost, inspecting the ingredient list and spending 2 hours in the grocery store looking at the boxes. Food as nourishment didn't really cross my mind. I began to think more about where my food came from a long time before paleo, but paleo brought it up a notch.

On paleo, I've gained a sense of awareness. I love the "thinking" of paleo living more than any other positive benefits of the diet. I eat my food with much greater appreciation of what it is doing for my body. I look at food in a whole new light. I am connecting my food to life for the first time. I eat with much greater respect, knowing that my food was real. I try to know where my food comes from. It's like being connected to the earth (you are probably rolling on the floor and laughing at how cheesey I sound now).

The thing that drove me to begin paleo was how much people seemed to respect food--the focus on real food. Grassfed and humanely treated meat, relationships with farmers, and respect for natural living, thinking about environemtnal pollutants and chemicals in our lives (both for us and the animals and earth)...You'll never find this in a slim-fast forum or an atkins forum. Paleo seemed to attract people that wanted to live a good, happy life, and not just diet and lose weight which seems to be at the center focus of lots of programs out there.