Interesting discussion. It's almost like religion or politics for some people. A few meandering thoughts...

I have been on Weightwatchers again for the last 2 1/2 years. My "base diet" is pretty healthy with a lot of fruits, veggies, lean meat and whole grains, but I am definitely not on the paleo track. Luckily I don't have any allergies or other problems. And I am prone to give in to sweets- almost never tempted by salty/greasy snacks, but give in to chocolate, cookies and weird things like saltwater taffy...

That said, at home, it is never a problem to figure out good choices and exercise portion control (if I am not straying from staying on the WW program). However, when I first got back on WW, the band I was in was traveling to a number of out of town gigs. One of the guys, who usually did the driving, was inclined to stop for pizza, hamburgers etc, or visit Circle K for a coke, chocolate milk or a Hershey bar. It's really hard to find something healthy / WW friendly at McDonalds and Circle K! But I couldn't really rock the boat and complain too much- there was already a fair amount of tension under the surface for other reasons, and he's an alpha male kind of guy. And I would get definitely get "vibed" by the other woman in the band for discussing food choices! The sad thing is, the guy I was describing is overweight and on medication for type 2 diabetes, and gets almost no exercise

In an interesting turn of events, the other man in the band moved to a completely raw food diet. That initially struck me as extreme- sometimes it's hard not to be hypocritical! After he shared his reasons, that he felt much less tired etc, that was pretty much the end of it. He would bring his own food with him for most of the trips, and rarely eat in a restaurant unless it was a salad bar. But when we were staying in private homes, our hosts would often be quite disconcerted in trying to figure out what he would eat.

One last thought- I think it is really a challenge for people to visualize or accept other people's food choices when they are really different from their own. They can't imagine giving up the foods they love, substituting new foods for what they are familiar with, or just finding enough to eat if they can't have ____________. When my DH experimented with a modified paleo diet, I was frustrated because I didn't want to shift my diet to accommodate him. It irritated me because it seemed like it was more expensive to keep buying him all that meat, avocados, nuts etc, and planning meals that we could both enjoy was challenging. I also could not really see the logic that determined which foods were okay or not. In the end, he started losing weight (which he didn't need to do) and could not get enough carbs to support his running and cycling activities, even when he supplemented with non-paleo foods before big events. So he's moved away from the paleo diet.