Eating Paleo: Tips for Converting

I've had several friends ask me in the past few weeks about the Paleo Diet because they or their husbands are considering switching to it.  I've even recommended it to friends for its health benefits.

Everyone seems to have the same initial struggle: "Where do I begin?!  It seems like such a hard diet to follow!"

Let me tell you, it's not that hard.  Really.

The first step is making the decision that you (and your family hopefully) will be eating this way for whatever reason is motivating you to want to try it.  Mine was making my baby happy and trying to curb my daughter's monster temper tantrums, as well as making myself feel better overall.  A couple months later I learned I also have medical reasons to eat Paleo (see posts here and here for background).  You may be in the same boat, trying to get your kids to have more even tempers, have medical reasons to try it out, or simply just want to eat healthier so you can live life, not just survive it.  Keep this reason in the back of your mind at all times when you get discouraged or hit resistance with your family.  I told my kids we were going to try it for 30 days to see if it helped us feel better.

So once you've made that big decision, what's the next step?!?

There are two options:  go cold-turkey or a slow conversion.  They both have their pros and cons, so you will have to decide which will work best for you and your family.  My approach was cold-turkey, mixed a little with a slow conversion.  What happened was I decided to switch the day after I had gone grocery shopping, so my fridge was full of yogurt, cheese, wheat for making bread, etc, etc.  I let the kids eat all of that until it was gone, and then I just never bought it again.  For the pantry, I did a lot of purging from the pantry (yes, lots of $$ in the trash, but knowing we weren't going to eat it again, I knew there was no reason to keep it).  I will make full disclosure here that before switching to Paleo, we were already eating a fairly healthy diet.  My kids ate organic cereal, greek yogurt (or any yogurt without corn syrup or food coloring), homemade 100% whole wheat bread, real cheese (never any Kraft singles; they devoured goat cheese), whole wheat pasta, organic spaghetti sauce (if I didn't make it from scratch myself with organic ingredients), etc.   You get the picture.  With that said though, it was still an adjustment.  If your pantry doesn't include items like that, the adjustment will be greater, especially for the kids.  But don't lose hope: your kids can only refuse eating for so long.  At some point they will be hungry enough to eat what you offer. :)  For my kids, I initially let them eat as much fruit as they wanted, while I encouraged them to eat meat and veggies too.  As their taste buds have changed, getting them to eat a wider variety of food hasn't been an issue, but now I have to limit their fruit intake so they don't eat everything in one day.  They are like little monkeys and will devour 4 bunches of bananas in two days.  No lie.

Meal Time Adjustments

My biggest adjustment was breakfast.  Prior to eating Paleo, we ate cereal and toast for breakfast, or yogurt.  Occasionally eggs, but rarely meat.  So I did some research, downloaded some e-books for my Kindle off Amazon (there were a few $0.99 books for Paleo recipes that helped me get started), and surfed the internet. (see below for some good resources).  We ended up eating a lot of eggs those first couple of weeks, but as I adjusted to waking up and making breakfast every morning, we slowly started eating other things. 

Lunch was also a learning experience.  Similar to breakfast, where I was used to offering something fast and easy to prepare, lunch was a time for sandwiches, mac and cheese or occasionally hot dogs (if I could find any without all of the nasty preservatives).  It took some getting used to, and I tried many different bread recipes to help convert the kids, but found that the endless baking wasn't worth it because the kids didn't like any of the bread.  So I stopped making it.  Now we typically eat leftovers from dinner, if there are any, or I make something new.  The best part is that I now sit down and eat a nice lunch with my kids everyday!  (That will change next year when they are both in school over lunch time, but for now, I love it).

The next step was getting a dinner meal plan that fit our lifestyle.  As I've mentioned in a past post, I was already using E-Meals Paleo meal plan and that made a huge difference.  There is typically 1-2 slow cooker meals per week, so on our days that we're out late for the kids' activities, I use those slow cooker recipes or we have our one night at Panera (they get a salad with chicken or salmon and I make my own salad at home).  The other nights, I prepare a meal and it never takes more than 45 min from start to on the table, ready to eat.  In reality, dinner was the easiest transition for us.

The weekly grocery trip goes hand in hand with the meal time adjustments.  The first couple of weeks was rough; I didn't buy nearly enough fresh produce and our fridge was bare by day 5.  My schedule is so packed, I typically can not run to the store to get anything else until my next grocery shopping day, so we had a couple days each week that I was scrambling to find school snacks and lunch.  By week 3, I went overboard and bought enough to last 9-10 days.  Then I didn't buy enough in week 4 because I thought I had enough left over from week 3.  Point is, that it will take some time figuring out how much produce will be enough for your family, and also figuring out what you need to stock up on more.  The picture here is what my counters look like after my grocery store trip.  The fridge is full too.

Recommended Gadgets for the Kitchen

I highly recommend making an investment in a nice blender.  Many Paleo recipes assume you have one and in the end, it really is a good investment, even if you decide to not eat Paleo 100% of the time.  We bought a Blendtec (mainly because I liked the flat panel for easy cleaning and preset cycles to take the guess work out of making a smoothy) and we use it daily.  Even my hubby, who is not a big fan of us eating Paleo, uses it to make smoothies before working out or for breakfast when he's in a hurry to get to work.  The kids love the smoothies too and I put things in them they never would eat normally, like kale, ginger, limes, spinach, and homemade coconut milk.  I've even used it to puree the baby food and it works so much faster than the immersion blender, as well as makes the texture just right.  The selling point to my hubby was that I got rid of the old blender, the bread maker, the waffle maker, the panini grill, the juicer, and the small crock pot. And it has a 7 year warranty. 

I also recommend investing in a single food container storage system.  I converted all of our old mismatched containers with OXO Pop Top ones (also available at my local Sam's Club for a little less than Amazon right now).  They really come in hand because if you plan to bake much, the least expensive way to buy ingredients is in bulk online. Not only that, they are great at keeping food fresh and provide a very easy way to see everything you have (or if you need to stock up).  I keep our snacks in them too, and with the pop tops, my kids have easy access to them.

It's taken me a few months to get my pantry and kitchen converted over like this, because eating Paleo is a little more expensive, but only if you bake a lot.  As I've backed off on baking and have stocked the pantry pretty well, the regular grocery trip isn't any more expensive than before we made the switch.  Instead of cereal and pasta, I buy more fruits and veggies.

Below are some good resources and tips/ideas that I have learned as I stumbled through our transition to eating Paleo.  It's by no means all-inclusive, but hopefully it will get you off on the right foot.  If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to post a comment!

Good luck!!

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Helpful Reading & Recipes*

• The Paleo Diet (book by Loren Cordain about the health benefits of eating Paleo)

• The Paleo Mom (blogger, great advice for converting family and family friendly recipes)
• Pancakes (I add cinnamon and frozen wild blueberries - the kids devour them)

• The Spunky Coconut (blogger, she's not Paleo, but has many delicious recipes that are Paleo, and she has a few recipe books for yummy treats)
• Chocolate Chip cookies (a huge hit in our house!)

• E-Meals Paleo Meal Plan

Breakfast ideas

• Eggs or crustless quiche
• Homemade sausage patties 
• Buy ground pork and/or turkey, add in spices and form into patties or links.  Cook in a pan with about 1/4" deep water until cooked completely.  Store extras in the fridge or the freezer.  Be sure to eat the unfrozen ones within a couple days (that's never an issue in our house).
• Smoothies
• Homemade cereal with coconut milk or almond milk
• The Paleo Mom's plantain pancakes (see link above)

Lunch ideas

• Salad (spring mix with Cuties, strawberries, some pecans, and homemade dressing from olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a little honey).  I try to keep turkey breast chops or filets on hand to sauté in the pan to add to our salads.
• Stuffed acorn squash
• Cook 1 lb ground turkey or lean beef with italian seasoning
• Cut two acorn squash in half, remove seeds, and slice off tops and bottoms so they lay flat on a baking sheet.  
• Mist baking sheet and squash with olive oil, fill empty centers with cooked meat.  Pop in the oven for about 35-45 min at 425 deg.  
• Let cool for about 10 min before serving.
• Soup - if I cook a roasting chicken, I save the bones and skin to make broth in my slow cooker overnight (just add water).  Using a fine mesh strainer, I separate the bones/skin from the broth and then make a soup with leftover chicken, carrots, kale and some spices.  Kids eat it right up!

Dinner Ideas

• A Favorite Dinner : 
• 1-2 lb of ground turkey (avoid Jenni-O, and make sure there aren't added flavorings or salt), 
• 1 white onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 2 tsp of dried cilantro
• salt and pepper, to taste
• Sauté the onion and bell pepper until soft.  Add in the ground turkey and cook it thoroughly.  Add in the cilantro, salt and pepper.  Serves 2-4.   
• Can serve by itself or with some fruit or veggie salad
• Salad with a meat/fish (same type of meal that we eat at lunch sometimes)

Snack Ideas

• Nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans, cashews)
• Dried fruits (try to buy organic if you can.  I have a hard time, so I do end up getting ones with the added sugar, but I don't let my kids eat too much of them.  They are used to make trail mix, mixed with everything else).
• Homemade trail mix (grab handfuls of nuts, seeds, dried fruit and even some dairy free chocolate chips and put into a container)
• Organic baby carrots, celery and apples.  They go great with almond butter.
• Applesauce

Shopping Resources*

• Amazon Prime 
• Coconut Flakes (great for making your own milk, baking, etc)
• Baking ingredients (arrowroot flour, tapioca flour, coconut flour, etc)
• OXO Containers
• Tropical Traditions 
• Coconut oil and palm butter (order when they have free shipping)
• Sam's Club
• Big bags of nuts, almond butter, OXO containers
• Bulk fruits and veggies
• Almond milk
• Walmart/Target
• Silk Coconut milk (if you don't want to make your own, or can't because you don't have the right blender)
• Almond milk

*Note: I am not in anyway sponsored or paid to make recommendations for specific companies, reading material or products.  They are simply what I have been using and found successful.