A commenter rings in, very eloquently. Yes, I just wasn’t up to putting anything on the front page & new today. This should not be taken to mean that this comment is something I’d not have at least highlighted anyway. I just love really good writing, and this is.

Flying Burrito Nola:

Greetings all. Have been reading this blog surreptitiously for several weeks and it’s been like a breath of fresh air and virtual camaraderie in the previous isolation (and subsequent revelation) of my own little caveman study, where I have used myself as a Guinea Pig for almost a year — and the results are so absolutely conclusive (as many of you know). There is energy, clarity, fat keeps disappearing all by its magical self and I’m never really hungry anymore…that part is actually a strange byproduct. There is really sustaining energy, real fuel in the former slag heap now! Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and kick my old self awake.

But it all started really many years ago when I would walk through the aisles of my local grocery store and just always have all these little alarms go off — this sneaking sense that 80 percent of the food stuff in the grocery store was really somehow non-nutritive poison. I’d think, that box of cereal there tastes kind of good but always kind of makes me feel lousy, or that can of soup there doesn’t really taste like a good meal should. I’d look at rows and rows of "groceries" and walk up and down each and every aisle with micro-explosive panic attacks going off in my head that something just wasn’t quite right here, vaguely remembering how much of this stuff ultimately never really made me feel all that good and always thinking that something seemed wrong with this picture spread out like a false wonderland before me. Many times I would walk out with nothing and remain hungry and confused. It’s just I felt like every time I ate this or that packaged thing, I would still feel hungry or like something was missing. I often dreamed of home-cooked meals of a fine roast and vegetables or a baked chicken (you’d think I would’ve rented a clue) but indoctrination and laziness always caused me to look the other way for some pre-packaged food stuff I could quickly throw in the microwave or eat immediately (even though I cooked professionally for five years!). It started becoming a sort-of personal, secret torment. And I could never lose that extra twenty or thirty pounds no matter what I did, no matter how hard I pumped the bicycle or barbells.

Years later, I came across a journalistic expose by Gary Taubes, "Good Calories, Bad Calories". Something about Mr. Taubes’ massive tome convinced me that he was about to crack it wide open. Here was the empirical evidence re-sampled and free from the maws of corporate grocer lobbies, political influence and self-interest. Really, people like the Inuit can eat whale fat and NOT get fat and die (so to speak)? When I finally got to the last chapter that revealed Taubes’ conclusion, I was so startled that we all had been so misled for so long by the lie of the ridiculous "food pyramid," and the erroneous concept of "low fat," etc, that I felt like "Neo" after he had taken the red pill from Morpheus that psychologically revealed the construct of The Matrix ("take the red pill…and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes"). It has really felt like that, your eyes suddenly open and you look around and see mankind with all sorts of modern ailments like diabetes and simple reoccurring illness like the common cold and the flu, so to speak, getting fatter and unhealthier eating all kinds of junk and processed stuffs masquerading as fuel when the reality can be so much different. Others can say this better than I can.

Forgive the protracted soliloquy and I don’t mean to hyperventilate. I just wanted to say thanks to Richard Nikoley very much for filling the vacuum and speaking so eloquently for the rest of us and providing such an excellent, erudite forum with which we can all connect and share our paleo experiences. I, for one, will never look back! I’m looking down at my feet and my toes now wriggling happily with the 30 pounds of less weight to carry around that I lost effortlessly over the past year. Another side effect is that my emerging arthritis has completely disappeared, which is great news for an artist who works 24/7 with his hands. Anyway, I feel like you are speaking for many of us, Richard. I really appreciate your blog, I got you bookmarked.

PS. Love Teatro, have had that for a long time. Saw Emmylou Harris with Daniel Lanois, it was magical. Ricky Lee Jones was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen also–back in the early days.

And he has a postscript.

PS. I’m six feet tall and at my heaviest, weighed 250 lbs. I now weigh a lot less but it’s not really about that, it’s really kind of everything else. I also agree about the hair and shampoo thing. Stopped using soap to wash the hair about three weeks ago. Works…and no more Winter dandruff.

Got an email today from an ER doc gone paleo. Waiting to hear if I can publish it or not. Hey. I’m getting to the point where I can just let others write the bog.

I’ll be in Hawaii, or on some other beach…