I'm a 58 year old female, height 5'2". I have many years of substance abuse recovery, but have struggled with fat for much of my adult life. Among other health problems, I have rheumatoid arthritis. Last August (2010) my arthritis was so bad that on a long-awaited trip to New Zealand/Australia, I was unable to hike-- just do the standard tour bus stuff and little enough of that before sidelined by pain.

Determined to somehow reverse this, I despaired of following the Zone diet (which I'd tried before with some success, esp. for the arthritis)-- it is far too rigid for me to keep up for long. The Hacker's diet -- pure calorie restriction -- is tough for me to do as well; moderation has never been my strong point (although the online tools are cool and I still use them.) Where could I find a food plan that would leverage my substance abuse recovery skills? Then an excerpt from Robb Wolf's "The Paleo Solution" arrived in my email. I checked out the book; the claims for Paleo addressed many of my health issues. And it was something I knew I could do-- adding grains, legumes and dairy to my list of substances of abuse.

So, in September of 2010 I started Paleo. My implementation is simple: No grains. No legumes. No dairy. No kidding. Results: My arthritis no longer requires medication; I no longer have chronic heartburn; risk factors for heart disease have dropped. As an added bonus, I lost 30+ pounds from my top weight of 196 before joining FatSecret in July 2011.

I'm hoping to find some support here, as a description of the Paleo diet leaves most of my acquaintances with their jaws dropped... and food addiction is just not something that is talked about in my usual recovery groups. If anyone knows of an in-person "Neolithic foods Anonymous" group I'd be happy to join-- or if anyone else is interested in such a group, perhaps we can get it going!