Ever since certain fad diets became popular in the seventies and eighties, the general conception of a ‘diet’ is viewed as a quick and easy tool to help its participants lose a few pounds, without any regard to lifelong eating habits. In other words, it is seen as a short-term fix. What ends up happening with people on these short-term plans is that they tend to go back to eating poorly after the weight goal has been met or worse, when the weight goal hasn’t been met and seems impossible to achieve. In fact, researchers at UCLA have recently revealed shocking findings: dieting just doesn’t work. The school reviewed 31 long-term studies on dieting and found that people who go on diets usually end up regaining all of the weight they lost, plus some after they stop dieting. In addition to the weight gain, researchers say that the ups and downs of dieting cause added stress and contribute to heart disease. The study seems bleak for those looking to shed pounds, but, still, people continue the quick-fix methods, moving to the next one as soon as they give up on the previous one, usually to no avail.

This yo-yo dieting confuses the body and frustrates the psyche, and never quite lives up to the sensational claims that these diet gimmicks advertise. Testimonials similar to, “I lost 50 pounds in 5 weeks!”, and “I dropped 15 pounds the first week!” lead to inaccurate interpretations of what a diet should be. If these people were to continue on their so-called diet, they would be weightless within a couple years. Now that would be amazing!

The truth is that these diets, which temporarily allow rapid weight loss, are often times just dehydrating the body. The weight lost on these diets is primarily in H2O not LBS, and since the body is about 60% water, it is fairly easy to drop a few pounds of it. Inevitably, though, the ‘contestants’ on these ‘miracle diets’ must change their habits back or at least alter them so as not to eliminate themselves from existence altogether.

These whacky eating habits are missing the point completely and they are leading to a misnomer, a diet, by definition, is not some two-week panacea to help you lose weight; it is much broader than just that. A diet is someone’s general intake of food. People still have a diet even when they’re not on a diet. A diet also is something that takes place over one’s entire life, not just the five weeks before one’s wedding day or class reunion. When looked at in this light, people who go on those gimmicky diets advertised on late-night television aren’t on a high-protein diet, or a lettuce-only plan; these people are on an extremely unhealthy yo-yo diet.

Changing one’s eating habits so drastically so often is bad for one’s health, something that most diet promoters fail to explain. Interestingly, an obese person has a better chance of living longer than someone who fluctuates habitually between being obese and having an ideal weight. A University of Michigan study conducted by cardiologist Claire Duvernoy, M.D. has found that a direct link between the gain-loss-gain syndrome of yo-yo dieting and cardiovascular disease in women. It turns out that such an oscillation of weight adds a great deal more stress than a constant weight. But Natural Man went through long droughts without food—doesn’t that mean that we are designed to withstand ups and downs in our diet like our ancestors? While we do have a remarkable capability to adapt to our environment (described further in Part Two), up-and-down dieting is still considerably harmful. In addition, during a drought, Natural Man’s body mass index (BMI) shifted from ideal to underweight and back—a completely different physiological story than a BMI that shifts from obese to overweight and back.
That isn’t to say that one shouldn’t try to lose weight if they’re a little tight in the waistline. The constantly obese person has a drastically smaller chance of living longer than someone at a constant ideal weight. A Dutch study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (2003) says that obese women live an average of 7.1 fewer years than women of normal weight. Obese men live 5.8 fewer years on average than their healthy counterparts. That’s almost 10% of the average lifespan!

The solution for everyone is to learn a method of eating that brings everyone to his or her ideal weight and keeps them there without the need to yo-yo diet. The typical counter to that statement would be, “Well, everyone is different. There can’t possibly be a diet that works for everyone.” But there is. It just so happens that at one point, all humans did eat the same diet: the natural hunter/gatherer diet, and they were remarkably healthier than we are today despite lack of medicine and wealth as we’ll see later. The Evolution Diet emulates this healthy hunter/gatherer diet and supports a robust lifestyle for everyone, regardless of personality or physical makeup. Because this method of eating is strictly linked to the natural methods of the body, it will work to create a stable, healthy weight for everyone who adheres to the guidelines. One of the most vital attributes of The Evolution Diet is that it is even beneficial for people who are already at their ideal weights, thus someone can maintain just one diet for their entire life, the healthy way it should be.

Read more in The Evolution Diet!

By Jessica Ryen Doyle

Maybe it was a bagel, or a bowl of cereal to go along with that cup of coffee.

Now compare that to what Olympic gold medalist and swimming sensation Michael Phelps eats in the morning, and you might feel a little malnourished:

— three fried egg sandwiches with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions, and mayo
— one five-egg omelets
— a bowl of grits
— three slices of French toast with powdered sugar
— three chocolate chip pancakes
— two cups of coffee

Altogether, Phelps consumes 12,000 calories a day while in training. Compared to the 2,500-3,000 calories a day the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends for men depending on age and activity level, Phelps diet seems outrageous.

But it is, in fact, a completely normal diet for an Olympic athlete like Phelps, said Tanya Zuckerbrot, a nutritionist and author of “The F-Factor.”

”

Look at his picture, he’s completely ripped,” Zuckerbrot told FOXNews.com. “He is clearly burning that many calories — if he wasn’t, he would look chubby.”

Zuckerbrot said Phelps probably doesn’t eat that many calories during his off-training season as his high-fat, high-carbohydrate diet would be dangerous to his health.

“It’s interesting, if he wasn’t eating that many calories, he wouldn’t be winning, because he wouldn’t have the energy,” Zuckerbrot said. “The carbs is what the body uses for energy. You have to give the body glucose to fuel it. That’s why people on the Atkins diet (an all-protein diet) can’t work-out.”

For lunch, Phelps drinks 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks, one pound of pasta with tomato sauce and two large ham and cheese sandwiches (with mayo) on white bread.

For dinner, Phelps’ meal consists of six to eight slices of pizza, another pound of pasta with tomato sauce, and 1,000 calories of energy drinks.

These meals are important, Zuckerbrot said, because the breads and pasta are made up of refined carbohydrates, which digests quickly and give him instant energy.

Zuckerbrot said she would not recommend Phelps’ diet to the average person who hopes to have a high intensity work out at the gym for an hour, but then sit at their desk all day.

“This is a diet created for an Olympic performer,” she said. “Clearly with 11 medals under his belt, it’s working.”

Bryan Appleyard thinks he has found a diet that really works: it took him three weeks to shed 14lb with healthy ease. But he had to go back 5,000 years to discover the science behind it

“The average,” says Arthur, “is always misleading and may not exist.”

The obsession with the bell curve and the average has corrupted us. We tend to think of stable models not just of the human world but also of the human body. Almost all dietary and fitness regimes are based on a homeostatic view of the body – meaning it is a self-regulating system that maintains itself in a continuous, stable condition. The average is the ideal. So we are told to eat regular meals consisting of a balance of the food groups and to take regular exercise, dominated by steady aerobic activity like cycling or jogging. This is all wrong.

But though Arthur’s economics feed into his Evolutionary Fitness regime, that’s not how he got there. He married his first wife, Bonnie, in 1957. They had three children, two of them adopted. Their biological son, Brandon, was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes at the age of two. “I went down to the Chicago University bookstore and bought everything I could on metabolism, including the big, thick textbooks, and I started ploughing through all that stuff.”

Some years later, Bonnie received the same diagnosis. By now, Arthur had decided most of what they were being told by doctors was wrong. “We had to neglect a lot of advice from doctors.”

He began experimenting with diets. Prolonged high blood sugar is fatal to diabetics.

It is lowered by insulin injections. But, Arthur reasoned, why not keep the blood sugar low in the first place? “I was frustrated with the doctors. We were having reactions day after day. So I decided to start testing. Something was driving her blood sugars up, so I started systematically eliminating foods that drove them up. Beans – something as simple as beans sent her blood sugar sky-high. Pasta was disastrous. There was something wrong here, this can’t be the case, you’re shooting her blood sugar up like this.”

It was clear that carbohydrates were the problem. By removing them from the diet, Bonnie and Brandon’s need for injected insulin dropped dramatically – so dramatically that one doctor refused to believe Bonnie had diabetes. But it wasn’t enough for her. She developed a rare complication – systemic vasculitis – that was eventually to kill her. Brandon, though lapsing from the low-carb diet, has done well.

…

But why are carbs such a problem? The very persuasive answer to this is why I went on the diet. Humans evolved over millions of years, probably on the African savanna. We were, for almost all our existence, hunter-gatherers – agriculture and settlement began only 10,000 years ago. Both sides of the dietary debate agree that this means we are omnivorous – hunter-gatherers have to be – and that because of our massive brains we have unusual energy requirements. Both sides also agree that settlement and civilisation changed our diet and living conditions radically. We may live longer because we are better protected from predatory beasts and all the other traumas that would have afflicted early man, but we also have new diseases, new miseries.

“We live,” says Arthur, “like lab rats. A lab rat has a life expectancy three times that of a wild rat because it is protected from accidents or disasters… But it doesn’t live better.”

Advocates of FBCG believed that the big dietary change behind our new miseries was increased consumption of animal fats on the basis that, for early man, there were lots of vegetables and fruit lying around, but a good kill would be rare. Recent research, however, suggests that kills could be very large and our ancestors did not, as we do, carve out the best bits; they ate the whole animal. Their fat intake was, in fact, much higher than we thought.

…

First, you free yourself of the homeostatic delusion. We are not made to eat regular meals or take regular exercise, nor are we meant to suffer chronic stress in an office. Our ancestors ate when they could and kept moving. Most of their life was stress-free, but occasionally they would be subject to acute stress in the form of an attack by a predator. So Arthur e-mailed me these recommendations. “Don’t eat three square meals a day. Skip meals now and then. Work towards an extended overnight period of no eating. This means eat sometime before you sleep and don’t be in a hurry to eat breakfast… Do not fear hunger. Nothing but good will come of it, but it must be episodic, not chronic.”

And on exercise: “First, everybody over-trains. Don’t do it. Don’t trudge away on a treadmill, count sets or repetitions, or work out according to a top-down Soviet model. You will hate it and it does not produce results. You must let it happen. You must have a playful, intermittent form of exercise. And you must exercise. The benefits are profound… Make it fun, intense according to your own fitness and goals, and brief. The goal of an exercise session is to promote growth-hormone release, to build muscle, and to elevate insulin sensitivity. Brevity and intensity are keys. Intensity means a little burn in the muscle, not heaving and straining. Brevity means you do not release stress hormones. So, you are favourably altering your hormone profile.” Superman’s grandad, it turns out, gets by on no more than 45 minutes in the gym and only when he feels like it.

Getting the food right is hard work. Arthur shops only on the outer edges of the supermarket, where they keep the fresh stuff.

…

Arthur drives me down to the golf club in his perfect Range Rover. It is still blindingly hot; the red desert is shimmering. We sit down for lunch. I stare critically at the menu.

“The turkey wrap’s good,” says Arthur.

“Wrap! Are you mad? It’s carbs.”

“You’ve got to live in the real world, Bryan.”

We end up with salads. Mine arrives with a cigar-shaped toasted bun on top.

“He doesn’t eat bread,” says Arthur, whipping it off and handing it back to the waitress.

He’s right, I don’t. I am early man, hunting and gathering, fighting lions, treading the outer reaches of the supermarket, spear in hand, picking up armfuls of celery. Celery? Yep, that’s what I meant to tell you – it works wonders for the testosterone.

Breakfast
I tend to eat last night’s leftovers: turkey with jarlsberg cheese and fruit, bacon with red grapes, omelettes with rosemary, olives and spring onions.

Lunches
Usually salads, with red cabbage, romaine lettuce, spring onions, garlic, kale, broccoli or cauliflower, with salmon, tuna, turkey, chicken, pork or steak.

Dinners
I sometimes eat a whole rack of ribs with salad and vegetables. Or a large steak, trimmed of fat. Almost always there is a beautiful salad and vegetables.

In an article in the August/September Scientific American Mind, neuroscientist and psychologist Kelly Lambert showed how our brain’s reward system is triggered from the type of manual labor and mental tasks our ancestors and confronts the paradox that we are getting more and more depressed as we become more and more pampered. She poses the question, “Did we lose something vital to our mental health when we started pushing buttons instead of plowing fields?”

Lambert pinpoints the accummbens-striatal-cortical network (the “effort-driven-rewards system”) for the need to remain active in order to remain happy. She said that we needed some sort of mechanism to keep our ancestors from becoming “cave potatoes”. “Hanging out all day didn’t put freshly caught game on the campfire…” Lambert said.

The Evolution Diet works to promote the type of behavior the effort-driven-rewards system by emulating our hunter/gatherer ancestors and to eat what and how we were designed to eat. Pick vegetables and fruits, eat fresh foods, and exercise! Perhaps with more studies, we’ll be able to add depression to the list of ails that The Evolution Diet cures.

(Unfortunately, some militant editors on wikipedia have decided to remove The Evolution Diet and its beneficial links from Wikipedia. Please go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_diet to insert your wisdom!)

Thank you for your help.
-Kathy

I feel great and I’m looking better! Thanks!
-J

I LOVE THIS DIET BECAUSE IT IS GIVING ME ENERGY, IT IS HELPING ME TREMENDOUSY WITH DEPRESSION AND I HAVE LOST 3.4 LBS. THIS PAST WEEK!
-Elva

I have to admit, at least this diet recommends protein. I’m sick of all the other diets telling me to eat more fruits and vegetables.
-Eleanor

interesting
-joanna

Thank you so much for the information!
-Katherine

thank you
-patsy

Thanks very much I have been working hard to improve my health and seem to be on the right track
-Anne

Thank you
-Kimberly

Cheers!
-Leslie

I’m healthier than I thought - found this website via wikipedia and shall be using your site more. Can’t wait to have a browse.
many thanks
-suzanne

healthy information which has givev me inspiration,
thank you!
-Anthony

This all sounds so good. It all seems to be right on the key.
-Yasmine

Thamks. Your analysis helped a lot. !
- Supriya

great tools!
- William

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- Anne

Yay! I’m pretty happy with my results.
- Ashley

Thanks. I’ll recommend this site to others.
-Orlando

This diet is amazing!
-Suzie

thanks
-Philippa

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- Oriana

Lowered bmi by 2 points. Raised my health score 112 points.
- G

good stuff
-Tim

Thankyou
-Daryl

it is really helpful. thanks a lot. best wishes.
-Nisha

Thanks, this was great!
- John

Thanks for the evaluation. I’ve tried everything, including exercise and dieting before, but I suspect I know the problem - I never paid attention to my BMR and caloric intake. I ate good foods and very balanced meals for periods of time, but I definitely have eaten too much of it. I need to reduce caloric intake. Thanks for calculating my BMR - it will help.
- John

Here’s some great info
- P

thank you for the help
- Debbie

I love this diet- I feel great every monrnign and I know that I’m using my metabolism more and more- it’s great
-Jenn

thanks
-Elham

thank u for the input
-Stephen

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-Natalie

This tool is great. I learned a lot of things.
-Subodh

Interesting
-David

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-Hasan

great site. thanks
-Stephen

Thank you…
-Cheryl

Thanks
-Param

Thanks I needed a wakeup call.
-Dane

Very informative
-William

thanks
-John

This was very informative! Thanks
-Katherine

THANKS!
-Viviana

Nice…..
-Dick

Made me think…
-a

I have no sugar in the house. Use Splenda.Usa canola oil,for grilled sandwich stirfry vegetables and e.g ground beef, lamb chop, rib steak, once in a while.Exercise , can’t right now. eating shredded wheat, lactaid milk, splenda, for breakfast at times and sometimes before going to bed to curb sweet tooth.
I found the tests beneficial and interesting at the same time.
Thank You
-Carolyn

Thank you.
-Keith

drinking tap water 4 to 5 lit. per day i will try to reduce my weight
-Surendra

Also I new ‘about’ howmany calories I needed to maintain weight but never the actual. This will help me as I strt my new regime.
Thank You
-Heidi

Thanks so much- YOu’ve gotten me on the right track- I love the diet
-Patsy

Joe,
Your advice on weight loss was really helpful.
-Chirstina

I WOULD LIKE TO LOSE WEIGHT BUT MOST OF ALL I WOULD LIKE TO FEEL BETTER ABOUT LIFE!!!! THANKS
-RAYMOND

thankyou, it was very informative
-Kusal

thanks for the suggestions…..your site helps a lot
-Imelda

interesting
-Maria

The report is very informative and agrees with what I am taught and worked out for myself, i.e. my BMI and BMR (am training to be a doctor).
-Abby

Good Healthy information
-Rama

thanks.
-Becky

I rule!
-Matt

Sweet
-Jen

It’s been really educational. Thanks!
-Tracy

Just wanted to let you know that you’re right on bro- it’s a solid diet
-Ben

Hmm
-Simon

Thank you for the info.
-Elisa

thanks
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thank you!!!!!
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-Rob

thanks
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good
-Clairol

This was great! I’m impressed.
-Sharrhan

SIMPLE DIET THAT REALLY WORKS … PROMOTE MOTIVATION
-Jane

Thanks for doing this. Americans who work with me have AWFUL diets.
-Miriam

SEND US YOUR SUCCESS STORY: success@evolution-diet.com

Cooking Light
Corn Bread Bites

Energy Index: 5.12 Protein Index: 1.98

Ingredients

2/3 cup all-purpose flour (about 3 ounces)
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup reduced-fat sour cream
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 (8 3/4-ounce) can cream-style corn
Dash of hot sauce
1 large egg, lightly beaten
Cooking spray
Preparation
Preheat oven to 375°.

Lightly spoon the flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and next 4 ingredients (through salt) in a large bowl. Combine cheese and remaining ingredients except cooking spray in a small bowl; stir with a whisk. Add to flour mixture; stir just until moistened.

Divide batter evenly among miniature muffin cups coated with cooking spray. Bake at 375° for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool in cups 2 minutes on wire racks; remove from pans. Cool completely on wire racks.
Yield

12 servings (serving size: 3 muffins)
Nutritional Information

CALORIES 108(28% from fat); FAT 3.4g (sat 1.9g,mono 0.5g,poly 0.1g); IRON 0.8mg; CHOLESTEROL 28mg; CALCIUM 89mg; CARBOHYDRATE 15.5g; SODIUM 221mg; PROTEIN 3.7g; FIBER 0.8g

Energy Index: 3.95 Protein Index: 16.109

1 1/2 ounces turkey deli meat (with more than 1 but no more than 3 grams of fat per ounce), sliced into bite-size pieces
1 cup chopped celery MEN: 2 cups
1/2 cup shredded romaine lettuce MEN: 1 cup
1/2 cup chopped tomatoes or halved cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion MEN: 1/2 cup
1 tablespoon fat-free Caesar dressing
One 2:90 wrap (serving size: 35 grams) or tortilla
Freshly ground black pepper

In a medium bowl, toss the turkey, 1 cup celery, 1⁄2 cup lettuce, 1⁄2 cup tomatoes, and 1⁄4 cup red onions with the Caesar dressing. Microwave the wrap for 10 to 15 seconds to soften it. Mound the dressed salad in a line across the center of the wrap. Sprinkle with black pepper to taste, wrap, and serve.

Energy Index: 1.051 Protein Index: 19.451
Working Time: 20 min, Marinate: 30 min, Cook: 15 min.

1 lb. tuna steak
1-1/4 tsp. sesame oil
1 Tbs. plus 1 tsp. lemon juice
1/3 cup lite soy sauce
1/3 cup Hoisin sauce
2 tsp. honey
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-1/4 tsp. Chinese five spice
1 Marinate the tuna steaks in the sesame oil and lemon juice for 30 minutes.
2 Prepare an outside grill with an oiled rack set 6 inches above the heat source.
3 On a gas grill, set the heat to medium.
4 While the tuna steaks are marinating, combine the remaining sauce ingredients and heat in a pan for 10 minutes over medium heat.
5 Grill the tuna steaks for 6-7 minutes on each side, turning once, basting each side occasionally with the sauce.
Per serving: calories 205
fat 3.6g, 16% calories from fat
cholesterol 54mg
protein 26.9g
carbohydrates 15.5g
fiber 0.7g
sugar 3.0g
sodium 1098mg

Energy Index: 2.348 Protein Index: 6.185

Working Time: 5 min, Cook: 5 min.
1-1/2 lbs. canned baked beans
3/4 cup lowfat cottage cheese
3/4 cup applesauce
1 Heat beans in a microwave or in a skillet.
2 Add cottage cheese and applesauce and serve.