I'm glad to see this thread still going and that all you guys having become quiters hitting up the dunkin donut shops every morning.
I have admit my passion is nutrition. I try to avoid the word diet because that suggest starving yourself. I never do that. I have officially lost 20 lbs since I started my paleo/ancestor eating lifestyle a little over 6 months ago.
I went from 175lbs and pushing a 34" pants down to 32" (which are becoming baggy on me!) and 155lbs! I did this
solely on diet alone over the course of 6 months! I'm really happy with the results, and like I said before, I do NOT limit the quantity of my food - I regulate the quality of it.
I examined both "diets" and picked the best parts of each. From a paleo standpoint, I adopted their NO WHEAT mantra based on the fact that wheat is a genetic frankenstein that makes us fat. When I stopped eating it, I stopped craving sugar. And I LOVE sweet foods. It's pretty amazing that lost those cravings. So it was real easy to give up drinking SODA. I think that is the most important aspects of Paleo: No wheat/grains and little to no processed sugar.
The ancestor diet studies what our great grandparents ate. You know, back in the days where heart disease and cancer weren't a household word. This traditional diet embraces animal fats as a source of nutrition. So I eat a dozen eggs a week, 1/2 stick of butter, plenty of pork (bacon!) and beef. I am living proof that saturated fat does not make you fat. Of course I eat plenty of fruit and vegetables too.
Now the dairy question. Many people doing paleo give up dairy. I ended up doing so for a different reason. My kids and I have had chronic ear infections and allergies all our lives. After some unconventional reading, store bought dairy was said to be the number one cause of ear infections. So when I was tired and scared of too much antibiotics, I decided to ban store bought milk in our house. To my surprise we survived the 2012 flu's/colds through winter and 2013 spring with NO EAR INFECTIONS. This in itself was amazing! You will never see a plastic gallon of milk in my house. The stuff is CRAP. Between the hormones, antibiotics and junk they feed factory cows, along with the added sugar, the whole "GOT MILK" propaganda campaign can kiss my ***.
To make things more interesting during that time, I did not give up milk. I drank RAW organic milk from grass feed cows. Which is high in fat and nutrition. So the milk itself was never the problem. It's the CRAP factory farm milk that is making us sick.
I have learned alot about nutrition the past 6-8 months and am still learning. I can tell you now when I go shopping, its like I"m in the Matrix. Everything has Wheat/Sugar/Vegetable oils. So its challenging. The good thing is they sell Gluten free bread so I'm not totally depriving myself of grains. But I am learning that factory farming and processing of name brand food is NOT food, but food like products. They are essentially selling us edible industrial waste.
So if you ever find yourself working out, but not losing any weight, that is why. To start with, stop eating wheat and you'll stop craving sugar. Next stop eating processed anything. Make little changes in WHAT you eat, and you'll see a big change in yourself.