Take a look at some of the Canadian diabetes diet recomendations for some ideas. I believe from some reading of various levels of science based research to others and my own annecdotal evidence that eating a low glycemic index diet is an effective way to feel full, and lose weight.
Some of the general concepts are no refined sugars. For me this includes limiting bread, pasta, intake making sure it is whole wheat and switching to Quinoa instead of rice based dishes.
I also cranked up my fruit intake if I want carbs because of something I read in some book. (can't remember which one). But it was an anti sugar book, and included refined carbs in bread as things that would cause weight gain but it really push fruit. The logic being that although fruit is high in carbohydrates it is also high in fiber. And the sweeter a fruit is generally the more fiber it contains. Looking at sugar cane it is practically all fiber but very sweet.
One other rule I have is no liquid calories (aside from beer or wine occasionally). This was based on various studies I had read which showed that liquid calories don't lead to any satiation of appetite. Meaning that if you drink a glass of orange juice for breakfast you will eat the same about as if you didn't drink the glass of orange juice. So the Orange Juice is purely additional calories. From what I have read this was true for Pop, Smoothies, Juice, Milk etc. It didn't matter the source of the liquid calories, none of them made you feel full.
My issue with the Paleo logic is that evolution does not select the best diet. It only selects a diet which was successful at getting those who ate it to child rearing age. In humans this was a high flexible system that could eat and get calories from almost anything. This system was able to take advantage of being a hunter gatherer and take advantage of the invention of agriculture. It makes us fat when we have an abundance of food and allows us to store calories for when food is scarace. So trying to argue what we ate at 1 point in time is the best because that is how we evolved misses the entire point of evolution. The best or strongest spieces didn't survive, the ones that could adapt to change the best did. That said I perfer a low refined carb diet becasue I found them a source of many calories that did not add much nutrition and were quite easy to cut out.
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