Tips to Transition to the Paleo Way of Eating

[EJ]

Sarah has fantastic information about this. Look in the "Resources From Sarah" thread pinned to the top of The Paleo Diet board.

This caught my eye today (and she works for Sarah's The Paleo Mom Consulting!) and had some great tips: primaldocs.com/opinion/transition-successfully-to-a-special-diet/

Did she miss anything?

[Karin]

For me, a step by step plan would be easiest to follow. I know you can't just make a general plan to fit everybody, but for me, the changes I had to make were so many and it was overwhelming.
I have autism too, so changing is hard to do and I just love strict rules and steps. Over the past months I've transitioned more and more, but the amount of changes and not being sure where to start has made me very insecure and stressed at times.

[TamarE]

It can certainly be overwhelming.

Sarah has a start here section: www.thepaleomom.com/start-here

I believe the new e-book by Paleo Parents discusess "phases" of transitioning to a Paleo diet. Sarah's review is here: www.thepaleomom.com/2014/01/book-review-3-phase-paleo-paleo-parents.html

And for anyone that is new to Paleo and may be reading this, I recommend Sarah's Quick Start Guide which is a free gift for newsletter subscribers. (subscribe here: eepurl.com/ALYUb )

[EJ]

Apr 12, 2014 10:53:53 GMT -5 Karin said:

For me, a step by step plan would be easiest to follow.

I totally agree, Karin. Tamar posted some great resources that fit that idea. I think most people who come across Paleo know to start with a 30-day challenge of sorts, whether through one of those resources or through Robb Wolf's The Paleo Solution (how I got started) or the Whole30 (both of which tell you exactly what you can and cannot eat). The recommendations in the article above were just meant to prepare you for the change

For anyone just getting started, you can always Google "Paleo challenge" to find a more structured way to start.

[elleneliza]

I made a mental list of all my favorite foods that are also paleo-friendly, and I made efforts to find recipes that incorporated those foods.

I transitioned from a near-vegan diet, so I was adding new foods (meat and eggs) as I cut out others, which made it fun. I knew I planned to transition to AIP eventually, but I added in eggs anyways to help me get through the initial transition to paleo.

[greystorms]

We started with a real food diet - sticking to as many natural and non-processed foods as possible, which included me making naan at home quite often instead of buying store breads or anything. After a bit of that, my wife convinced me to give primal a try, and we've never looked back.

[sarahinparis]

When I was contemplating starting AIP (from years of Primal) what helped me were 2 things

1) I categorized everything that I needed to do to get to AIP into "very hard" "hard" "moderate" and "easy" - once I saw that there weren't all that many "very hard" things (for me, personally, given my tastes & where I was already) I was able to start

2) I figured out the biggest stumbling blocks would be breakfast and what to make for dinners. So I identified a plan of what to have for dinners (a specific recipe of beef/cabbage that I like and that freezes well) and bought 2 cookbooks that work for AIP plus found several good-looking recipes online.

I've recently transitioned to Wahls Paleo Plus, which is similar to AIP but has more structure and rules. I used the same construct of "very hard" to "easy" - since I was already AIP the things in "very hard" were very hard to me, and I've decided to only focus on ONE of them my first month (no snacking) because there are lots of "hard" items too (seaweed, intermittent fasting). So in future months I hope to tackle some of the other "very hard" items (organ meat) but I'm not trying to do everything perfectly right away - this structure helped me to see that both of these challenging diets were do-able, even if in the case of WPP I'm not doing it perfectly.

[alicia99]

Thanks for the quick start link. I had no idea.....

[mapoptart]

Apr 14, 2014 5:24:56 GMT -5 sarahinparis said:

When I was contemplating starting AIP (from years of Primal) what helped me were 2 things

1) I categorized everything that I needed to do to get to AIP into "very hard" "hard" "moderate" and "easy" - once I saw that there weren't all that many "very hard" things (for me, personally, given my tastes & where I was already) I was able to start

2) I figured out the biggest stumbling blocks would be breakfast and what to make for dinners. So I identified a plan of what to have for dinners (a specific recipe of beef/cabbage that I like and that freezes well) and bought 2 cookbooks that work for AIP plus found several good-looking recipes online.

I've recently transitioned to Wahls Paleo Plus, which is similar to AIP but has more structure and rules. I used the same construct of "very hard" to "easy" - since I was already AIP the things in "very hard" were very hard to me, and I've decided to only focus on ONE of them my first month (no snacking) because there are lots of "hard" items too (seaweed, intermittent fasting). So in future months I hope to tackle some of the other "very hard" items (organ meat) but I'm not trying to do everything perfectly right away - this structure helped me to see that both of these challenging diets were do-able, even if in the case of WPP I'm not doing it perfectly.