Just as our shiny new New Year’s resolutions are beginning to lose some of their luster (exercise more, eat less, save money – yeah, yeah, yeah), here’s a pop health micro-trend that might ring your bell. The New York Times reports that some people are looking to our Paleolithic ancestors as the exemplars of health. Referred to as the “caveman lifestyle,” “paleo diet” and simply “hunter-gatherers,” adherents stick to meat-heavy diets and exercises that attempt to mimic the Stone Age way of life.

Quoth the Times:

Andrew Sanocki, 38, a former Navy officer, explained that he preferred working out on an empty stomach near the end of a fast, and then following up with a large meal. This is a common caveman schedule, intended to reflect the exertion that ancient humans put into finding food. It is as if, Mr. Sanocki explained, “we’ve gone out and killed something, and now we have to eat it.

The “paleo diet” and “evolutionary fitness” routines have actually been around for a while, although I’m betting they’re about to enjoy a nice NYT Bump in the coming weeks. The Origin Diet, for instance, was published in 2001 and advocates eating 3 to 4 pounds of produce every day and substituting wild game for more conventional meats. Arthur Devany, one of the best known promoters of paleo-living and evolutionary fitness similarly advocates a vegetable-rich diet with limited carbs and nothing that comes prepackaged. As for exercise, it’s all about military style routines of pull-ups, squats and weight lifting.

Personally, steering away from processed foods and burning calories with exercise sounds like a pretty good plan to me. A Sunday Times columnist apparently lost 14 pounds on the caveman regimen in only 3 weeks (which doesn’t actually sounds like healthy weight loss, but the writer conceded up front that he’s a once-a-year binge dieter). As for eating raw ground beef like one of the guys profiled in the NYT article, I’ll pass on that, thanks.