Steve’s Paleo for Life Story: Losing Weight and Lowering Cholesterol

This story is an excerpt adapted with permission from the book Paleo for Life: Superfoods to Slow Aging, Boost Longevity, and Enhance Your Well-Being by Dr. Loren Cordain, Trevor Connor, and Dr. Mark J. Smith. In this groundbreaking guide, the leaders of the Paleo nutrition movement reveal the longevity superfoods that can help you live longer and better, starting today.

Steve first learned about The Paleo Diet® when his wife showed him an article about it. He had exercised all his life and thought of himself as healthy, he says, but “over the years, I became increasingly aware of how the food we eat can impact our health.” In addition, he had developed an interest in evolution. “The Paleo Diet made so much sense to me; I went into it 100%.” 

Before choosing a Paleo lifestyle, Steve, who immigrated to Canada from Greece at age 12, had been eating “mostly Mediterranean,” with an emphasis on potatoes, rice, and macaroni. On The Paleo Diet, he began losing weight “rather quickly,” dropping from 180 pounds to 150. 

“I became concerned about that because I lift weights and didn’t want to compromise my lifting capacity,” says Steve, who’s 5 feet 7 inches tall. “To my complete surprise, I need not have worried; I still lifted the same weight a few months later at 135 pounds. I was shocked.” 

Now 69 years old, Steve says he’s about 90% Paleo and typically eats 4 ounces of meat, chicken, or fish at each meal with about 10 ounces of vegetables. Snacks are predominantly fruit, nuts, and seeds. The main benefits of his new lifestyle haven’t been weight loss, he adds, but his improved lipid profile. “My triglycerides practically disappeared, my HDL started going up, and my LDL went down,” he says. 

As a lab technician who was employed by a hospital for 14 years, Steve is surprised that nobody he worked with seemed motivated to change their own eating habits, “even though quite a few people I knew talked about diet and weight loss.”

His advice to anyone who wants to try Paleo is simple: “The Paleo Diet isn’t written in stone. Pick some ideas you can make changes with and apply them to your lifestyle. Take it step by step and you’ll see a lasting difference for the better in how you look and feel.”