Obese with severe chronic IBS, I reached the point where I had to do SOMETHING. That same day I found on the Daily Beast an article that reviewed both Gary Taubes' new book and the evolution diet. I knew Taubes was the real deal; I had skimmed GCBC when it was published but couldn't figure out how to put his research into practice. (I had already tried various calorie restriction diets with low/limited carbs and always ended up gaining back all the weight I lost plus another 20 lbs. each time. So I just figured that low carb was impossible for me.)

However, reading about Gary's new book inspired me to try again. The evolution diet mentioned in the article seemed kind of flaky, so I started checking out other low-carb approaches on Amazon. I eventually settled on Robb Wolf's Paleo Solution and have never looked back. Within a few days my IBS symptoms cleared up (after years of misery). I am three weeks in now and loving it, despite the adaptation phase. (Being tired is no big deal compared to always being sick and unable to eat anything.) It is so wonderful to enjoy a meal and feel healthy again!

Although Robb's book was the perfect introduction for a beginner to paleo, my real paleo education came from this site. The first week I had lots of questions about this strange new lifestyle, and all I had to do was search your archives to get the answers (usually several different answers, showing a range of options). I'm so grateful to you all for that support when I wasn't sure what I was doing!

Thanks, everyone!

For me, it was:

gaining weight while wife was pregnant => 100 pushups program => P90x && cholesterol is high => whole grains! => cholesterol not improved => statin trial! => cholesterol better => continue whole grains! => cholesterol bad again! => statin trial again! => WTF? => Google => (eventually) Mark Sisson.

ive always been interested in food politics, and have always avoided highly processed packaged foods. when i was diagnosed with MS three years ago, it was natural for me to start looking at how i could manage my disease with diet, as a compliment to my disease modifying drugs. i gained a lot of weight on my IV solumedrol infusions, and through two pregnancies and as a result of being largely sedentary because of the MS (heat sensitivity and fatigue), and have diabetes in both sides of my fmaily so i really wanted to lose weight, too. i had been reading about dr. weils anti inflammatory diet and the mediterranean diet when a chemist friend of mine (used to work on dairy stuff at the USDA) directed me to weston a. price. i had already thoroughly consumes everything michael pollan had written, and was a member of an awesome meat, egg and veggie CSA. i had done atkins years back but hated how GREASY i felt all the time. my husband is pescatarian, so that made things difficult, too. my friend came to visit and told me about "good calories, bad calories" and we talked a lot about food and inflammation. things just sort of started falling into place for me. it felt like a natural progression. i love science, and i love food. i jumped down the rabbit hole and everything i read just started making more and more sense to me. i sat my husband down and told him taht i was just going to have to start eating more meat, and hoped that didnt bother him. i tried it for 30 days and was hooked. i feel better than i have since maybe my early 20s, but better even than that since i drank and smoked a lot back then. :)

I've been reading Krista Scott-Dixon's blog at stumptuous.com for many years. As a woman getting into weightlifting, her advice served me well. One day in November of last year, she posted an interview with Robb Wolf: http://www.stumptuous.com/the-paleo-solution-podcast

I checked out Robb's podcast and on the first one I listened to, he said something to the effect of, "Pending the results of this study, we may have to rethink our position on this."

Wait, did someone selling a diet book just say he'd rethink his position on something if good evidence came along? Maybe he's someone I should pay attention to. And his hard sell is "Try it and see how you feel," seriously?

I felt great. I've been paleo since. Hooray!

I became frustrated at not losing weight while exercising very hard (weights and cardio), supposedly eating "right", and being put on BP medication. I've always had an interest in anthropology, so I went to amazon.com and typed in paleolithic diet and the first book on the list was Loren Cordain's "The Paleo Diet". I read the description and the reviews and I decided to order it and subsequently devoured the book in a few settings. Since SAD, heart-healthy-whole-grains, low-fat and all of the rest of the standard advice was not working for me, I gave Cordain's plan a try ... and I failed the first two times. I just wasn't vigilant enough and there were other life stresses (PhD qualification exams, wife pregnant, etc.) that I told myself at the time were keeping me from being successful at it. One problem with Cordain's version of the lifestyle was I was hungry too often. He recommends no chicken skin, no bacon, etc.

Starting early in October of 2010, I decided to try again. This time Mark Sisson's "Primal Blueprint" and Robb Wolf's "The Paleo Solution" were bought and read. I still have plenty of stress in life, but I'm managing it differently and I don't let it stop me from truly eating right and treating myself well. This time around, I put much more animal fat in my diet and now I have no hunger problems. Despite all of the "terrible" fat that I eat ;-), I've lost 22 pounds since mid-October, going from 212 to 190 as of today. I have more to lose, but wow do I feel great and my mind is clear and sharp. Goodbye grain opiates and sugar fog. The first 10 pounds came off within 1 month. Following Sisson's and De Vany's advice on exercising has been a revelation too. I love running and then jumping on top of picnic tables at the park while out for sprints. I'll have to be more careful about that when summer comes, lest I upset someone's brie and bread. :-)

As for web sites besides this one, the following, in no particular order, are among my favorites and have been influential and inspirational:

Free The Animal

MovNat

Robb Wolf

Mark's Daily Apple

Cholesterol and Health

Hunt.Gather.Love

PaNu

Hunter-Gatherer

The Healthy Skeptic

Whole Health Source

Livin' La Vida Low Carb

Exuberant Animal

I first heard about it from Art De Vany when he was interviewed on the EconTalk podcast in March 2010. I researched more references online and started in June 2010.

Art also talked about performance-enhancing drugs in baseball in the podcast.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/de_vany_on_ster.html

My trainer came back from a vacation telling me he was now on the "Caveman Diet". I think he found it on some Crossfit sites, I'm not 100% sure what turned him on to it. I always made "healthy" snacks for him and my friends at the gym, so I looked up some recipes. I figured out it was really the Paleo Diet and forwarded him a lot of resources about it, but didn't really read much myself.

I was looking for a new goal because I had made it to my goal weight. \o/ The gym was going to be doing a Paleo Challenge over the holidays, but I was too impatient and started on my own. Because I am a book geek I bought The Primal Blueprint and The Paleo Diet. Honestly, Cordain's book was WAY over my head. When The Paleo Solution came out in September, it was perfect timing for me.

My goal with Paleo was to get my body fat under 25% and I did that the first 10 days. Everything I learned about it while I was researching though, just sucked me in and I'm here to stay. I found Paleo Hacks searching for recipes (one of my very favorite pastimes) and my filter here at work sucks balls and doesn't allow me access to a lot of blogs and message boards. Lucky day for me, Paleo Hacks actually works here, so I can do less work. ;)

You all have taught me even more than the books and podcasts have because being able to ask and answer questions has really led me to think more about all this stuff.

I did a detox called the CLEAN Program a year ago, partly for weight control and also to see if I had a food sensitivity (before that, I was doing Weight Watchers and didn't really give a crap about nutrition). After discovering my gluten intolerance had been making me miserable for several years, I got really passionate about healthy eating (at that time I was still eating brown rice and quinoa regularly), and that led me to researching fitness also. I found out about Paleo from stumbling upon Crossfit, and thought "well gee, that makes sense!" Watching Food Inc. & reading MDA.com helped inspire me to actually implement what I had learned. I think I had heard of the "Caveman Diet" some years back, but that was back when I was cool with having Totino's Party Pizzas on a daily basis.

I was trying to eat a healthy diet (read: lots of produce) and maximize nutrient density. I was coming to the conclusion that grains were not very nutrient dense, and no one could give me a good reason to eat them. I googled "grains nutrient density" and found mark sisson. I thought he was a bit hokey, but he piqued my interest and I found Panu.

I was never really interested in nutrition. I have always been tall and lean, and was healthy.

But I have always been interested in physical activity and health (I'm a physical therapist), in evolutionary biology and psychology and in Africa and african anthropology. So I 'discovered' the hunter-gatherer mismatch theory myself and did research on the internet, especially on the effects of physical activity and musculoskeletal health.

Of course I immediately realised that I was not the only one in the world who made that 'discovery'. And, in 2007 I stumbled upon Art De Vany's text on evolutionary fitness. Because of my background and interests, the premisse of the text made so much sense, it immediately changed my life.

First intelectually, then gradually changing diet and exercise wise, and while reading more and more about it, I changed my diet and lifestyle. And never looked back.

The only 'bad' thing that has changed, is the fact that I discovered the thing called 'blogs'. Although they are great, and I have learned a lot from the paleoblogs, they make me sit more that I sometimes want... ;)

Received daily Lew Rockwell (libertarian) emails that contained articles from freetheanimal.com. The rest is history.

I was always skinny (sometimes called too skinny) when I was young. After high school I stopped running cross country and all my bad eating habits caught up with me. After a few years and 20+ extra pounds, I finally decided to do something about it.

I started with the South Beach Diet and from there went to P90X. I never noticed Mark Sisson b/c I also skipped the ads at the end. I didn't pay attention to the diet or supplements with P90X but stayed on a mostly SB diet eating plan.

I loved it, but it took so much time to work out for nearly an hour every day. It started to wear me out. So I eventually stopped doing it and my bad eating habits crept back in. I didn't really lose much weight on the diet or with P90X, maybe 10 pounds, so they both just petered out.

I ended up putting on more weight and reached 190 on my 5'9" frame...I was a muscular 145 in high school and the extra weight devastated me.

I became obsessed with health. I read WebMD all the time and searched for nutrition labels. I started using FitDay and would obsess about how much I was eating. I started reading Health News on google. Anything health, I wanted to know about it.

And then one day I ran across Fitness Spotlight. It made so much sense! I read about real food vs fake food and decided to cut out processed crap from my diet. After that I moved on to Mark's Daily Apple and eventually landed at Panu. I cut out dairy for a while but didn't notice much difference. I've now eliminated wheat and plan to stay wheat free based on what I've read about how it messes people up.

My weight is currently 160. The evidence of Paleo working is so obvious to me, it's no longer just about losing weight, although it is the only thing so far that's allowed me to lose a significant amount. It's about staying off meds and keeping my health at an optimal level.

I'm pretty new to all of this, I'm still not 100% paleo/primal as I am still working in the beer industry, which makes it kind of hard, but doing my best. Oddly enough, I was not looking for a diet or fitness regime, although I am dire need of one. I got a link to Richard Nikoley's Free the Animal blog from one of the other blogs I read regularly. The whole no soap/'poo thing interested me, and while I was reading he kept talking about how this was a part of a much larger way of life that he had been doing. I followed that down the rabbit hole and things just started clicking. I started looking at my own diet, activity levels, lifestyle overall, and things just started making sense. Binge on carbs, feel bloated and gross, yet still somewhat hungry? Check Have the need to exercise a ton, but lack the energy to do so? Check Wild fluctuations in both mood, energy, weight, and overall well-being? Check

I have also been fighting a losing battle with gout for the last few years and I think the weight loss, activity level, and food choices involved with the lifestyle will help greatly. Given the gout issue, I will still avoid things like organ meats, and keep my shellfish intake somewhat low, but otherwise I am really looking forward to taking this journey with all of you.

I discovered Paleo through acne.org. I had known about the diet for quite some time, but I never gave it a chance because it seemed severely restricted at that time, and I was still scared of consuming red meat every day. Oh boy was I wrong.

Always interested in nutrition. Discovered the Zone, which made no sense but seemed to work, though probably by calorie restriction as much as anything which has various unpleasant side effects, like no energy. My brother introduced me to Atkins, which made somewhat more sense if still not obviously right. Found a low-carb podcast, Jimmy Moore natch, and at some point he interviewed Mark Sisson, and the evolutionary piece fell into place and finally there was an approach I could really have a high degree of confidence was fundamentally sensible. Eating as we are evolved to eat: okay, I get it. Optimal? Maybe. Basically good? Must be. Mark's amazing book clinched it. Thank you Jimmy. And Mark. Since then, Robb Wolf has been a huge source of info, but it's Jimmy and Mark that got me there.

My brother-in-law, a family physician, interjected into an extended family conversation about weight loss, saying, "It's all just silly. Eat only what was available to a cave man, and you WILL lose weight."

He also made a casual mention about leptin/satiation pathways that got my attention (as it was in a conversation referencing my daughter's seemingly bottomless appetite).

Though he is not a paleo eater by a long shot, those two concepts he had discussed stuck in my brain.

Later that month, I started Googling on this concept. Soon I was reading up on Cordain's Paleo concepts, and soon after landed on Mark's Daily Apple. I spent SO. MUCH. TIME. on MDA, read practically every post on my smartphone. I made the leap in late June 2010.

I was miserable and uninterested in food. I downloaded a bunch of health podcasts, including Robb Wolf's podcast. I never got to listen to the other ones, the Paleo Solution podcast gave me inspiration and results.

Read Arthur De Vany's essay when it first came out. I was a vegan at the time, as were a number of current paleo enthusiasts. I was also interested in evolutionary psychology. When I became overweight a few years later, I eventually tried a LC diet but it didn't work out, maybe because I didn't implement it well. I lost weight predictably eating low, measured calories. But when I reverted to ad lib eating, I gained some of it back. Rinse and repeat. Low calories for a while, get bored, get overweight. All this time, in the back of my head, I kept thinking that evolutionary fitness and nutrition was somehow the key to working this out. The blog Conditioning Research led me to Hyperlipid, PaNu, Whole Health Source, and then the Perfect Health Diet. That put it together for me, and I cut out wheat, excess fructose, and excess n-6, stopped being concerned with eating saturated fat, and started eating starches like sweet potatoes. That led to no more take-out, fewer restaurant meals, much less processed food, less hyper-flavored food (may be important), and lower calorie density in general. Hunger levels dropped, the diet was very palatable, and I was able to cut my energy intake without counting calories. I think that some of what we paleo enthusiasts talk about is far from proven, and that for the most part it is informed speculation. I think we have it mostly right, but wish there was more skepticism in the community. Frankly, it reminds me of how the vegans would talk back in the day. That being said, I believe it would help many people if these ideas became mainstream.

I was a triathlete and a vegetarian and read Paleo Diet for Athletes. Eventually I dropped the triathlete part, and hence the high carb and lower fat attempt at paleo and now am much leaner and healthier than I was either as a vegetarian (duh) or a triathlete. I still coach triathletes but I am a huge advocate for paleo with all my athletes.

Through a friend who lent me his copy of the paleo diet by Loren Cordain. Mark's daily apple and Robb Wolf (blog and book)

I discovered it on Beyond Vegetarianism years and years ago when I was veg*n and thought it was interesting but wasn't convinced. I didn't really come to it for myself until much later, when I was Googling therapeutic interventions for the spondyloarthropathies and came upon paleo again.

Brian Appleyard's feature in the Sunday Times about Art De Vany

I stumbled across all this through the no-poo post on Free the Animal, Jan 2010. Wish I could remember exactly how it crossed my screen but my guess is some RSS feed I was subscribed to or a tweet.

Primal/Paleo is the best thing I've ever done and most likely a life-long change.

I found it,by just doing some google searches on how to chain my diet for health. I am not to far into it, but glad that I changed.

I've started with the anti cancer book of David Servan-Schreiber, I was then convinced to drop out sugar and processed food. Then I discovered youtube videos of Mark Sisson and Erwan Le Corre. After reading the primal blue print, I was hooked.

I got here via a bizarre conflation of Life Without Bread by Wolfgang Lutz and good old Stefansson. I drifted around the internet's fringe meat diet sites until I found paleonu, and immediately connected with the skepticism Dr Harris provided. I was already sold on ancestral diets, but hadn't really had the exclusionary theory put into words before. GG Dr. Harris.

Eventually I found this site, and thanks to my blockheaded inability to let a chance to debate pass by, I started posting.

Here's a little map: Weston A Price > Stephan guyenet > Chris Kresser > Perfect Health Diet > Mark Sisson > Robb Wolf > Panu

I think Jimmy Moore also deserves a shout out as does Chris Masterjohn. I still tend towards a conservative Weston A Price nutritional view but for me that really just means being more of a stickler about food sourcing.

Through a long, long trail.

I was (mis)diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic when I was 26. (I'm actually a type 1.) I wound up on the internet looking for ways to help myself. Wound up practically living on diabetesforums.com (still there!) and found a LOT of info about low-carbing to improve my blood sugar. I didn't listen to most of it, and wound up really really really sick all the time. Not with sugars, but with intestinal stuff. I was POSITIVE I was celiac and even went in for testing. The day after the endoscopy, I went gluten-free and felt way better. But I was told I didn't have celiac, so I stated eating wheat again. Felt worse again.

I eventually found Mark Sisson and PB and am still working on implementing it. But when I follow it to the letter, my sugars are fantastic. So I'm trying :)

Reading Sweet Poison was my first clue something was up. I found sugar incredibly difficult to give up. Somehow I found my way into paleo discussions, and everyone was talking about Good Calories,Bad Calories (published as The Diet Delusion in Australia). So I read that and about half way through the book, the penny dropped. Ahh, this is about insulin! So then I was able to kick the sugar/grains/milk/fruit habit. I haven't lost any weight in nearly three months, but I have a lot more muscle than I've ever had before, and I'm down two belt holes. I think I must have felt a lot fatter than I was, because I was always bloated. Anyway, I would love to lose some weight, I am overweight and do carry a lot of fat.

This is roughly the path I took:

Diabetes --> Atkins (then nine years passed) --> Low Carb Forum --> Protein Power, GCBC, Bernstein --> Fat Head --> Jimmy Moore, PaNu, HyperLipid, Free The Animal, Whole Health Source & WAPF --> Mark's Daily Apple, Robb Wolf, Cordain, PaleoHacks and a host of others