Why do people do things contrary to what they are trying to accomplish? Case in point: people who exercise and spend an hour or more at the gym every morning only to eat bread, cereal, or donuts and kolaches. I don’t get it.

I had the rare gift of walking behind a lady in the grocery store one day who I recognized as someone who runs every single day in our subdivision. She doesn’t dottle either: she really runs hard. I figured her grocery basket would be the picture of health. I was so wrong. Everything in her basket was junk, pre-processed, and full of sugar. It’s stuff like this that makes me want to break my rule about telling people about Paleo and Whole30, but I kept it together and just smiled and walked on.

It’s not judgment; it’s sadness.

It’s anger at our bad nutritional science.

It’s empathy: I’ve been there.

I used to be a sucker to the cult of exercise and low-fat. I used to think that if I ate my oatmeal and baked chicken breast and salad greens with some exercise, I’d lose all the weight my heart desired. The opposite happened, and I got sick every single time. EVERY TIME! Since starting Paleo? I haven’t been sick yet.

I won’t say Paleo is the only way, because it’s not. It is how I lost 110 lbs in a year without exercise, so I know it works for me, but there are many ways to eat well without going Paleo. However, it’s a no-brainer that this idea of a “Balanced diet” is all bullshit. Just because we can eat anything doesn’t mean we should. Grains, dairy, pre-processed foods, and sugar are the enemy. Vegetable oils are inflammatory. Soy isn’t that great for us. Science is bearing all this out, yet people ignore it and stick with the bad pseudoscience of fat being the enemy.

Until people open their eyes, they will continue to be like a swimmer competing against Olympians while doing the doggy paddle. You will make some progress, but very slowly, and in the end, you’ll be very tired for very little result.