My story so far...

     So here's how it began.  My dad is... a capricious extremist.  He'll always 100% gung ho about anything he does, until he suddenly changes his mind.  I swear we ate at this one chinese restaurant, Pan Tao(now under new ownership :(), three or four times a week for a whole month.  Then just stopped going because my dad decided the food wasn't "clean." Anyways, he was this way about diet too. 
     It started with vegetarianism.  This lasted on and off for a few months.  I wasn't convinced.  He would try to go all veg but get extremely sick after a week or so, even when taking the B12 supplements and such.  After multiple tries at that, he switched off to vegetarian raw foodism.  Why eating vegetables raw instead of cooked would be a game changer was a mystery to me, but I was intrigued.  Long explanation short, cooking destroys enzymes and nutrients that help you body process the food you are eating.  Of course, your body is capable of producing those enzymes, but that requires resources and energy.  By eating raw, you are eating efficiently.  Back to the story, we would often have raw adventures.  Kombucha, fermented tea, was a crowd favorite.  I even got a friend hooked on it.  Green Smoothies were definitely ill received at first, but were soon adopted by the whole family.  Unfortunately, staying full raw for over a week or so would have exhausting side effects on my dad, but using the raw mentality in our diets was improving my family's health overall.
     Next, I left to college.  I had learned a lot from my dad up to that point, more than I would care to divulge to most people, and now had to start learning through my own experiences.  For the first two quarters of my freshman year, I would eat like any student would, till I was stuffed.  I drank... a lot.  More than I should have, as my mom would constantly remind me.  I still went to the gym quite a bit, (I lead an active lifestyle.  Its fun.) but I was continuing to gain weight.  One day I looked down at the scale and BOOM.  195.  That's huge for me.  My regular weight is 180.  I had to do something about it, so I just thought about what to do.  I didn't look on the internet or consult help.  I just thought, what is my best course of action?  I have allergies (or hayfever) and in my youth my family told me (and I experienced) that wheat, sugar, and dairy aggravate allergies.  In relation to this, I thought to myself, "If these things make you weaker in the spring, why would it be any different in the other 3 seasons?".  From there, I decided to remove wheat from my diet because it was the most significant part of my diet at that time.  In place, I would try to follow more to the raw foodist's diet with lots of raw fruits and veggies. 
     My actual plan was to eat only one serving of a wheat based product per week.  This meant almost no flour tortillas, bread, pasta, cereal, or pastries. I would even limit rice in my diet.  When I told my friend at the time of my plan, they said, "Are you ****** crazy? Wheat is good for you.  Why else would it be the large part of the pyramid? You don't even have any solid evidence to do this."  I guess he was right about this being more or less a baseless claim, so while I was sticking to my plan, I researched.  I found some interesting results.  Gluten allergies in 1 of 4 people.  Acidity caused by grains.  This acidity theory interested me, so I looked further into it.  Turns out our bodies are slightly basic and foods that we eat are either basic or acidic in our body.  If we eat overly acidic food, like wheat, our body has to work to bring our body acidity back into balance.  Inefficient, no?  So, in addition to not eating wheat, I decided to also try to eat more basic foods, as acidic foods are prevalent in our society.  It was frickin' magic.  In the first week, I had lost around 8 pounds.  I lost somewhere around 5 in the second.  In a matter of two weeks, with a new, not necessarily intense, exercise regimen, I was almost back at my natural weight, and feeling much stronger and healthier.  Of course it was hard to stick to the diet for more than a few months, but it has forever changed my take on diet. 
     Coincidentally, my dad came to the same conclusion upon different paths at around the same time.  He found the paleo diet.  And it actually works for him and the rest of my family.  Me as well.  Paleo diet is basically eating as a caveman would.  Whole foods(Foods which are whole, not the store).  Fat based diet.  The way I looked at it was this: In order to have a sustainable( in the sense that I could sustain it for a long time.  Not "green") diet, I would need a primary source of calories.  For calorie heavy nutrients, that left fat and carbs.  I believe fat, not carbs, is the right choice to make.  Not most fats that we use today though. Olive oil is cool, but the kind of fats I started consuming were generally animal fats(including butter).  The paleo diet was definitley a worthy venture.  (A side note: a two or three years before that, I saw something about the paleo diet in school and told my dad, thinking it was a good idea.  He said it was stupid... capricious)
     So, to sum it all up.  I am a rawpaleoist, with a mind for acidity, trying to optimize my diet even further.  I enjoy cooking and eating, and like to think that I'm darn good at it too(both cooking and eating).  I hope people read this and that I can keep it up.  Thanks.