There's been a lot of talk about eating "Paleo" or "Primal" or "Keto" - talk to enough people and you'll realise actually even within each name, everyone has a slightly different understanding of what these terms mean.
Maybe not so much "Keto", but for the other two, the story that's told is that the food we have access to today is very different from the food our ancestors have evolved to be able to survive and thrive on. The call is then to return to eating how these diets claim our ancestors used to eat, which promises benefits of weight loss if desired and other associated health benefits.
There are probably details I don't know, but it seems like most of these diets call for the removal of refined carbohydrates and processed foods from consumption. Replace those calories with protein and fat that "resembles" the diet of our ancestors and magically the weight is supposed to come off and we're supposed to return to our ideal homeostatic state.
I'm not saying these diets won't work for you ... I'm saying these diets will work for you if they happen to work for you.
These diets MAY help you to regulate your appetite such that without having to be meticulous about tracking your intake, you might naturally find that appetite downregulates such that you're able to come to an intake that suits your needs. If so, then that's awesome.
I really just don't see it happening for the Recovering Fatass.
We have a strange way of abusing almost any kind of protocol and trying to hack it into oblivion to justify unencumbered consumption.
I really don't believe that carbs, or processed foods are the enemy. There's something about the psyche about the Recovering Fatass that could probably put on weight regardless of any kind of foods you allow/disallow.
Recovering Fatasses probably also existed in the Paleo world - it was just much harder for them to manifest their inward desires through their physical state because it was much harder to access food sources.
Back then if you wanted to eat some pork belly, you'd have to hunt a pig down, kill it, gut it, butcher it, cook it. Your success rate probably wasn't 100% and even if you managed to catch a pig, you'd be burning a crapload of calories trying to catch it and even the pig would've expanded a crapload of calories running away from you.
Today, you can order fully prepared pork belly online that will get sent to you at your doorstep that was prepared from a pig raised and slaughtered in a farm where it probably didn't have much space to even move. Your total caloric burn in the process is scrolling and clicking on your phone and walking to the door to pick up your food when it's delivered. 100% hit rate for your hunt too.
Recovering Fatasses LOVE to consume food and the reward centers that get triggered in our brain when we consume high calorie/high fat/high sugar/high salt foods cause us to crave and seek out these foods.
Evolutionarily, we're wired to want these foods because storing of bodyfat is our body's way of preparing for future shortage of food. It's just that today we're living in a modern world where there isn't a shortage and we've gotten very very good at making foods that trigger those parts of our brain and most of these foods are have a very low satiety to calorie ratio.
So I can't be 100% certain, but i'm pretty sure if you managed to time travel a Paleo Recovering Fatass from the past to today and taught him how to "hunt" (give him disposable income and teach him how to use a food delivery app) within 1-2 days he would be drowning in a pile of cheeseburgers pizza and beer.
I'm not discounting the fact that certain people have intolerances to certain types of foods. Or that ketogenic diets may help people who suffer from seizures. If you're one of those people, yes, cut out whatever is causing your system to go haywire.
For the vast majority of us though, we can do fine with a mixed bag of macronutrients. We can even be lean eating a diet completely made up of processed foods with high palatability IF we somehow can keep our desires in check.
There's a difference between eating for body recomposition goals and eating for health. For example, good fats ARE really good for health, from what I've read. But if we overconsume nuts, avocados and extra virgin olive oil, we're going to put on a crapton of fat. And the excess fat will negate any of the health benefits these healthy foods may promise.
If you don't believe me, then spend two weeks eating nothing but pork belly basted in paleo butter. Make sure that even when you're full, you keep eating, because you love the taste of it. Watch what happens.
In the world of diets, Recovering Fatasses want to believe in Eden, the magical diet that will allow for as much consumption as desired, way past the point of fullness or satiety. It does not exist.
Trust me. I've tried all of them in the past. I either overate while I was on them, or not being able to have refined carbs ever DID help me downregulate my appetite for the foods I WAS allowed, but I would eventually crack and find myself inhaling a giant bag of doritos when I cracked.
My opinion on the matter (which you don't have to take as gospel truth) is that simply, Recovering Fatasses love tasty food. And as a species we've gotten better and better at engineering foods that rate higher and higher on the ability to deliver palatability that make us want them more, since they tap into our evolutionary impulses. In general most of these foods have a ton of calories, but even if per unit they don't, they make you want to eat a billion units anyways.
We've gotten even more amazing at eliminating any friction involved in the end user having access to these foods.
If you're a coffee drinker and you drink it not just for the enjoyment of it but also for the stimulative effects, you'll probably be aware that the body builds resistance to these effects and over time you need more caffeine for the same effect.
The pleasure we get from the taste of food is the same. Over time, overexposure to hyper-palatable food builds a taste preference that requires more and more hyper-palability to be able to access the same amount of food reward pleasure.
I really don't care if your pre-packaged Paleo approved version candy bar is only made up of Paleo approved ingredients - if it tastes exactly like a candy bar over time you're going to want more and more of these candy bars. And if you have the pysche of a Recovering Fatass that's left unchecked, you'll just become a Paleo Recovering Fatass.
I'm not saying that we need to return to eating strictly single ingredient foods forever, or that we can't have candy bars.
I'm saying we need to be adults.
Being a chronic alcoholic will kill you. Having a beer with your buds once in a while will probably only enhance your life.
Similarly if you love candy and pizza, it's fine to have some. Just understand that they might make you want more of them and the pleasure received from chronically eating them will decrease over time, leading to more desire of volume and overconsumption.
Adults also learn over time that extracting true value from relationships takes time and investment. Our relationships with food are similar ... when we invest some time in learning to extract and sense the subtler, more complex tastes in less immediately palatable foods, we actually will be able to enjoy every single meal. Palatable, or Hyper Palatable.
Simply existing and being alive can actually be very pleasurable, it's just very hard to enjoy it if your norm is the reality you experience only when you're high on heroin (from what I hear).
While i'm not advocating anyone flirt with hard drugs, I am saying that hyper palatable foods have a drug like effect on our minds. Thankfully, consumed in appropriate doses, they very likely have negligible effects on our health markers and our body composition goals. The issue is understanding the effect they have on us as individuals and learning how to enjoy them without overdoing it.
But it's not the carbs themselves. Or the fact that our ancestors didn't eat them. It's just that your ancestors aren't alive today and don't have access to this level of awesomeness.
So in actionable terms, here's what I would recommend.
If you are where I was, where you find yourself consistently needing a 6 pack of beer a day (minimum) and you can slam two huge packs of chips like they are nothing, maybe it's time to accept that you're on the hook, and you're addicted. It's not the food industry's fault - the food industry is a business and it SHOULD be trying to make awesome things that you want to consume consistently. It's highly unlikely that at this point reverting to foods that have a more normal level of palatability will give you any kind of enjoyment.
It might be time to go cold turkey. Just for a while. There are rewards. After a while, your taste buds will adjust. When you get to the point where you can experience the explosion of flavour that biting into a great slice of pineapple can offer, you know you're getting somewhere.
Sit with this for a while. Learn to be present with whatever "non cheat" food you're eating and give yourself time and headspace to really taste all the goodness there is in it. Even when it's not blatantly obvious to you at first. After a while, you may still be thinking about all those non paleo or cheat foods you used to enjoy, but you'll also feel like you're not missing out on something if you don't get to have as much of it as you want everyday.
Invest some time to learn how to prepare combinations of "non cheat" foods that fit your caloric and macronutrient needs that you find delicious. This has an added effect where because you know what goes into making food taste great, you'll develop a more discerning palate even when you're eating your "cheat foods" and you won't settle for simple deliveries of aggressive one note flavours and you will find yourself only wanting foods that can deliver both intensity AND complexity. This actually will eliminate a LOT of the prepackaged processed foods from the list of foods that you desire. You may even enjoy the baseline non-paleo approved one note snickers bar for once in a while, but you will know what it is, and what it isn't. When before, to you, it might have been everything.
I don't know about you, but to me, being lean isn't worth never eating a piece of cheesecake or pizza ever again. And it doesn't have to be that way.
Carbs are not the enemy. Fat isn't the enemy. The food industry isn't the enemy.
We are the enemy. But if we give ourselves a little bit of time and space, we can become our own allies. And the reward of being able to enjoy everything - with the "healthy foods" tasting delicious, and the "cheat foods" being guilt free, I think is worth it.