It sounds like you are assuming eating healthy foods till you are satisfied is bad. But, I personally I have a much harder time eating excess calories on a paleo diet than I did before going paleo. Also, I've heard recommendations from paleo people that some people may need to watch calorie consumption... Usually this refers to things like nuts which are easy to "over-eat".

Well, glancing at the site and the number of questions and tags pertaining to binge, overeating, weight-loss, and extreme fasting windows (1 meal a day) leads me to believe that the vast majority of people on this board have terrible relationships with food, and difficulty eating food in moderation. If this board is representative of today's paleo community and what it has become, yes I think paleo is overfed and does rationalize overeating and poor relationships with food (food as toxin not medicine).

I think that pretty much every diet sect tried to promote the "eat as much of this X clean and pure food and you will be healthyskinnypureliveforevah!!!" I say this because I try to read up on many forums including (Gasp) vegetarian, bodybuilding, Peat eating, etc. I think the message is supposed to be "eat to satiety" but many people seem to have broken satiety meters. Maybe they don't eat mindfully, maybe their endocrine system is broken and they don't easily register a sense of fullness, maybe they just feel good eating (which is something I can relate to.)

For Paleo that means heart healthy animals fats are thumbs up. Fruitarians gorge on bananas, some bodybuilders are eating MCTs all day and cherry turnovers till they bust at night. All think they are eating the perfect diet for their goals prolly.

Weighing and calorie counting is verboten in many of the low carb and paleo circles for some reason. Paleo people didn't measure what they ate! Amirite? Bah. They also didn't eat their liver lettuce wraps or coconut oil lattes sitting in traffic and in front of Paleohacks.

I guess what I am saying is that it doesn't do anyone who is new to improving their nutrition much good if they aren't committed to becoming aware of how much they are eating. Paleo foods aren't magic. They can be just as fattening as SAD foods if eaten in excess. Personally I think that people should track their intake for a short while until they have a grasp of what a regular portion looks like and feels like in da belly.

$.02

Eating disorders are the norm in standard North American food culture. Going paleo doesn't mean that will all disappear. People are asking questions here because they are in process of re-adaptation and learning. It's expected that much of that will be about cravings, binges, and cheats... this forum is supposed to help with that kind of issue right? :)

Overeating: Now I get to eat more of the high fat foods I always enjoyed but thought were 'bad'. Yet my total daily calorie intake is lower...and I'm not hungry/craving all the time... Win/Win.

Eating fats without restriction showed me that I was not a glutton and I wasn't broken. I ate the fat, I ate the meat, and then I stopped and went about my day without ruminating over food. That NEVER happened before eating pastries or cereal or healthy whole grains.

I'm not the most studied person here in philosophy, but I think this would be called a non-sequitur. Either way if you don't understand this particular portion this WOE perhaps you should re-read The Paleo Solution or The Primal Blueprint or even Perfect Health Diet or WAPF. It's been well explained.

Paleo is about learning to trust your body and to eat according to you need. That doesn't sound like over eating to me. I know personally my daily caloric intake is between 500 and 3200 calories -- that's what works for me.

This is a community pushing IF, prescriptive cycles (ie leangains), etc. None of which approch over-eating.

Relative to other dietary regimes which emphasise portion control and food energy value, paleo encourages unrestricted eating in terms of quantities and calories. This is largely because the paleo type diet tends to be one of the most satiating of all diets.

However, within your question there is an important implication, and that is whether the satiety of a paleo diet is sufficient to limit food intake in order to maintain a healthy body composition.

During ancestral times the availability of food, whether meat or plant based, would have been variable and perhaps seasonal. Certainly it would have been far removed from having a stocked up pantry or the convenience of a supermarket. Also, there would have been a considerable investment in calories that would have had to be expended in order to secure the next food parcel.

In other words, it is not just the type of food but also the availability of food that is critical to emulating a paleo dietary template. Consequently, unlimited availability of food is not paleo.

It depends on whose version of Paleo you are talking about, imo there are versions that rationalize UNDER eating, specifically the low carb version where people are starving themselves of glucose.

Also there are individuals who rationalize an unhealthy relationship with food by saying they are eating Paleo, but their version of Paleo isn't necessarily anyone else's version.

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: paleo-type diets assist in calibrating hypothalamic satiety regulation (this is the part of the brain that monitors and integrates signals from the bloodstream and various parts of the gastrointestinal tract and regulates appetite).

This means that for most people they don't have to count calories or portions or otherwise restrict their diets manually - their body provides a strong signal when they've eaten enough for their needs and they stop eating.

But: in some people, even on a paleo-type diet the signal is weak and can be overridden. These people need to take extra care not to overeat as they will not be able to manage their overweight automatically.

I think Atkins rationalized overeating. Obese people don't like to give up overeating, and Atkin's Diet Revolution's ketosis strategy provided them with a way to do that so long as they removed most of the carbs from their diet. Paleo borrows this strategy. IMO our ancestors ate this way when they had the opportunity, but not as an invariate pattern diet.

I think the question suggests that the desire to over eat is bad and suggests an "unhealthy relationship with food"... Whatever that means. Humans are designed to eat as much as possible and to love eating just like dogs or other animals will when possible. When there was a lack of food this desire was healthy an essential. Now it is contributing to unhealthy weights since there is an excess of food. I don't think overweight people have an unhealthy relationship with food... They just have a desire to eat a lot, as they should. Now that there is such an excess of food, skinny vs fat just comes down to how much self control the person has.

I don't think paleo rationalizes overeating per se. Some may assume this. However, it encourages eating paleo foods until you are full. Many people, when trying to be healthy, try to scrutinize every calorie and shy away from fat. In turn, they feel deprived most of the time.

Paleo, on the other hand, encourages nourishing you body instead of depriving it. In the SAD culture, eating until full or satisfied, especially if you are "dieting," is frowned upon. Compared to a SAD "dieter," a person following the paleo lifestyle would be grossly overeating fats.

Some people following the paleo lifestyle may go too far and give the impression that it's okay to go crazy and eat all the fat you possibly can. In reality, I think it really means that you should not deprive yourself of fats and foods that are taboo on SAD diets. Overeating on a regular basis, paleo foods or not, is hard on the body and the digestive system. Also, who feels like working out when you're always stuffed? Not me!

I have a huge issue with satiety normally. I used to eat large amounts of junk food every few hours. We are talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000-5000 calories a day. It is why I am obese and diabetic.

Eating paleo with a strong low carb bent keeps my blood glucose levels stable, and has lowered my blood pressure. It used to be I could eat 2-3 plates full of food at a buffet and feel like I was starving after. I have gone from over eating heavily to being lucky if I clear 1600 calories a day without being hungry.

I eat every single meal with a vegetable, lots of vegetables if I can. Sometimes they are cooked in fat, sometimes not. Breakfast usually contains bacon and eggs. With lunch and dinner being fish, fowl, pork, or beef. Each meal coming with a lot of veggies.

C'mon, 50 pounds of bacon per day isn't over-eating, it's unconditioned love.

There are several things happening here.

1. People use butter, coconut oil, cheese, chocolate, nuts, etc as some of the main sources of their fats. Of course these are easy to over consume. These things aren't really paleo. I view butter and coconut oil as ways to cook my food, not ways to add fat to coffee. Cheese, chocolate, and nuts can be consumed in moderation by some and have no effects, but no one should be encouraging consumption of these foods. This is a meat, veggie, and fruit diet. Everything else is a paleo-maybe and can easily be over consumed.

2. A large portion of paleo people are on the diet to lose weight. Plain and simple, they come into it with bodies that are wrecked. This means people's bodies won't have the correct signaling of when someone is full or hungry. They'll overeat on any diet this included.

3. People love to be 80/20. Its a rule mark gave us that people use all the time. If your cheating 20 percent of the time, I doubt your body will ever fully recover to the point where its signaling correctly to your brain.