Getting Started with the Paleo Diet : PrimalPaleo.com

Getting Started with the Paleo Diet

If you’re reading this, then I’m guessing you already have a reasonably good idea what the Paleo diet is. But if you’re a total newbie, a good place to start would be our lists of foods you can eat and foods you can’t eat. The basic premise is fairly simple: avoid sugar, grains, legumes, dairy and bad fats. Replace these with good fats, protein, whole vegetables and fruit. But here’s the thing.

While it’s simple in theory, it can be a lot harder in practice. It’s convenient to just have a bowl of cereal in the morning. Having something other than a sandwich for lunch can seem difficult. Plus, it’s easy to grab a microwave meal or burger when you’ve had a busy day.

How do you break the cycle? By making it easy for yourself and making changes gradually. So what does that mean in tangible terms? Generally the worst meal of people’s day is breakfast. If you want an easy way to get started with Paleo, this is the first thing you should try and change. (See our delicious, simple Paleo breakfast recipes here.)

BUT, you’re not going to suddenly get up and have the willpower to make omelettes every morning. It’s longer and more difficult than just pouring a bowl of cereal.

So, here’s the plan: cook one breakfast meal on Sunday’s that you can quickly grab on the way out of the door. We have several delicious frittatas that make an excellent Paleo breakfast (here’s one!); pair these up with an inexpensive set of silicone baking cups and you will be able to create individual portions for the week. (Winning!)

For dinners, we have a whole list of meals that take 25 minutes or less. (In fact, we’ve got a whole FREE recipe book full of them!) We recommend these for meals that you don’t want to batch prepare. We also have a number of batch meals you can create, these are great if you want to have some reserves in the fridge or freezer to use at a later date.

We always recommend creating meals that are at least 2 servings! Why get everything dirty for one meal?

But as well as that, you can use the second serving to store for lunch the next day. We recommend using this set of plastic food containers to start off with.

If that doesn’t appeal to you for lunch, then we also have a great selection of salads for lunch, simply prepare one large portion of “base salad” early in the week and add different toppings throughout the week.

In summary we have a few guiding principles to help get you started:

Breakfast: Batch prepare early in the week. Sunday is my preferred day.
Lunch: Use leftovers from dinner or create batch salads.
Dinner: Always make more than you need. Start out with our 20 minute recipes first off!

For even more Paleo tips, tricks and shortcuts, we recommend reading our article: 10 Tricks To Make Paleo Undeniably Easy.