Welcome to the group. Here's my input:

1. I'd say nuts and fruit will probably be the go-to "snack" item for kids (then again, I don't have any, so I may not be the best to ask). I'm also a sucker for Lärabars but they get a little pricey. I know folks have recipes for making their own if you look around on Google. You get the genuine article on Amazon but it's usually by the case (16 bars per).

2. Starting out around, or under, 100g carb/day is sensible enough. When I first started paleo/primal, I transitioned slowly over the course of a couple months, cutting out the worst stuff (soda, candy, sugar) completely, first. Then cutting down on grains heavily. I was probably still averaging around 150g/day (maybe more) for most of the first year-and-a-half or two years but since I was so huge, I still lost weight effortlessly.

3. I don't pack a lunch, so I'll leave that for someone else.


The first couple weeks, I'd say just focus on cutting the garbage and NOT cheating. Eat as much as you want of meat, veg, fruit, nuts and seeds. I used to keep an emergency-steak (or pack of bacon) in the fridge to cook when I craved something not paleo-friendly. I never regretted eating the steak instead of whatever garbage I had thought I wanted.

Hi - welcome to the journey! There are plenty of us here to help. You can add me if you wish - I follow a generic hunter/gatherer eating style (both primal and paleo are essentially hunter/gatherer with various wrinkles to sell their books). I'm all about keeping it simple and avoiding replicating the SAD way of eating (standard American diet) using 'safe' ingredients - meaning I don't bake (a post-agricultural cooking method) with nut flours or try to come up with 'paleo' versions of ice creams or other stuff. Keep it whole, and keep it simple.

I'm a retired programmer, and in my day we had the '80/20' rule: 80% of the processing is handled by 20% of the code. This rule of thumb applies in a lot of real life situations as well. Keep this in mind around here, because sometimes we wind up arguing over the little things that don't affect the lifestyle all that much.

The change that provides the greatest health benefits is: eliminate grains, legumes and pure sugars (any sugar which doesn't have a fruit around it - including honey and agave) from your diet. Stick to eating plants and animals.

Next: replace grain-fed animal products with grass-fed animal products. This can be pricey, but there are ways to do this on a budget if you read around.

After that, the tips we throw at you may have benefit IF you are already doing the above.

I do want to comment on one thing you said:

I'm not good in the kitchen at all. I don't enjoy cooking and I am not good at it. I might need some ideas on simple meals to make for my family - kid and husband friendly.

I hope you are open to learning how to cook - and like it! Since replacing processed foods with whole foods is a basic premise, there is no way to get around spending more time cooking. But that doesn't need to be daunting. I used to live on frozen entrees from Trader Joes - now I'm the cook in the family. I keep it simple and learned a few rules that can apply to a variety of foods.

My personal mantra is 'whole foods, organically grown and simply prepared'. Meats can be simply fried, roasted, braised or crockpotted with a variety of herbs and spices. Vegetables can be raw or sauteed in bacon fat or other fat of choice. Our favorite dessert is a bowl of berries with a dollop of goatmilk yogurt and a dusting of cinnamon.

A couple of cookbooks that seem to be very popular around here:

http://www.amazon.com/Paleo-Diet-Cookbook-Breakfasts-Beverages/dp/0470913045
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/everyday-paleo-family-cookbook-sarah-fragoso/1111348810

Happy hunting!

Hi Tanya,

You can add me if you like. I am fairly new - have been transitioning to Palio/primal since the 1st of the year. I actually have been on this journey and moving in the direction of whole foods for a long time, but leaning more in to the lifestyle. I started by eliminating most processed foods and in January locked things down by eliminating wheat and all refined sugars, I focus mostly on clean proteins and fruits/veggies. I allowed myself to have plain yogurt with honey and darck chocolate... I am just starting the a whole30 so no grains, no dairy, no sugar of any kind, no legumes, no alchohol, no preservitives, no processed foods... basically paleo.

to answer your question on lunches: I usually do a huge salad with some type of protein. Usually on Sunday I'll marinate a bunch of chicken and grill it, and make 10 individual salads (5 each for my husband & I) and I portion out the chicken (usually 4 oz for me and 6oz for my husband) to put over a salad during the week. the other thing we do frequently is make a big batch of chili or taco meat (watch the seasonings and marinades - many have sugar and preservitives added to them. I buy the penzeys spices, they are a little expensive, but I really like the mixes they have) and again portion it out in 1 cup pyrex to heat and put ofer the salad... it is like a taco salad... I really enjoy it.

My other tip is to read every ingredient label!! I bought frozen cauliflower at trador joes that had a butter sauce and after I made it I read the package and it had wheat - I definitely wouldn't have guessed that!

I heartily agree with Monkeydharma - you will need to do more food prep to really embrace this life style... prepared foods have a LOT of hidden ingredients, that roticerie chicken your husbands coworker eats for lunch likely has some salty/brine injected in to it to make it moist and taste good. ... perhaps even MSG. I also agree with the 80/20! I am striving for 100% now because I am trying to identify if I have a particular food sensitivity, but overall you have to live in the world.

Hello :-) It was a fairly difficult transition for me as well, my parents own a little bakery and there is plenty of temptation there! Feel free to add me.

In response to your questions:

1. Cut up veggies and fruits, dried fruits (though sparingly), raw (not roasted) nuts preferably with no salt, pumpkin or sesame seeds. For drinks you could brew some fruity iced tea and put it in portable thermos'. Celery or other veggies and fruit with almond butter is pretty tasty. Also, Greek yogurt mixed with cut up fruits. Hope some of these are helpful.

2. I am currently tracking my calories and macros as I'm still fairly new to primal eating, but I don't plan on doing it forever. I have my macros set to 20% carbs (~70g), 25% protein, and 55% fat.

3. I haven't started packing lunches as of yet but most of what I eat for lunch is portable. I'd recommend salads, make bigger batches of suppers so you can take the leftovers in Tupperware, bringing a peel-open can of tuna that you could mix with something or eat alone. If you like wraps, just use lettuce instead of the usual grain based wrappers. Nuts and seeds are great additions to most meals and help to fill you up. Hmm.. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. Google is definitely your friend! Just searching primal _________, with the blank being a meal you normally like (sandwich, burger, soup) can usually turn up great results.

Hope this helps :flowerforyou:

Contemplating this as well so I need to read this later

Chicken drumsticks are a great portable lunch option. As are hard boiled eggs. I just had lettuce wraps today for lunch with some Applegate deli meat.

Our local butcher sells "Meat Boxes" and one of the choices is 5 lbs of drumsticks. This works out to around 24 drums. Just a simple olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder coating and into the oven for 40 minutes or so and I have plenty of snacks and/or meat for lunches. It helps that I love them cold also. On the rare times I get cravings now I can usually grab a drumstick and the craving is gone.

Big *kitten* salads also work. I'm lucky in that my employer has a cafeteria with a decent salad bar so if I don't have anything to take I'll grab a salad and some hard boiled eggs.

I've been trying to find some primal friendly beef jerky but haven't had luck yet (still haven't visited Whole Foods yet though).

I also throw a Larabar in my desk in case I get the munchies. I figure it's much better than going to the vending machines (which are almost 100% wheat based products). I get them at Target.

My kids are not 100% paleo, but their usual snacks are pepperoni sticks, fruit, veggies, homemade fruit popsicles, paleo muffins, dried fruit, hardboiled eggs, smoothies, applesauce, rice crackers/cakes (thats where the non paleo comes in) My oldest can have dairy and nuts, so she also eats lara bars and yogurt. All the kids are gluten, soy and corn free.

I don't track my food, so I have no answer there. I'm not trying to lose and have no issues maintaining without tracking, so I just don't.

And eating this way does require prep and cooking, theres just no way around it. Recipes are pretty easy to find though.

And depending on the age of your kids, "Eat Like A Dinosaur" might be a good book to get.

Cooking: Start simple. Build on what you already know. A lot of good food can be served uncooked -- salads, fruit.

If you can fry a hamburger and operate a crock pot, you can cook just about any meat.

Start with keeping spices and seasoning at a minimum. Work your way up as you get to know the spices you like. Don't worry about buying them fresh. Most grocery stores now have bulk spices available. They're usually in the spice aisle in big jars. If you have a recipe that calls for a spice that you don't have and you may not use again, go to the bulk spices and just buy enough for the recipe. That will usually cost way less than a dollar.

If you don't know how to prepare something... ask. There are plenty of people here who will be glad to help.

I agree with Laura, you just have to start out simple. I just made baked haddok (really it steamed int eh oven) for the first time last night and it was super easy and delicious! I laid out foil on a cookie sheet, sprinkled some olive oil on the foil, placed the frozen haddock fillets on the foil, sprinkled S&P and the juice from 1/2 a lemon and then folded up the foil and baked at 425 for maybe 15-20 minutes... until the fish was opaque and flaky ... it was excellent! I have always leaned away form cooking fish because it intimidates me, but it couldn't have been easier!

I enjoy cooking salmon and tuna steaks. I pan fry it in either butter or refined coocnut oil (I am worried about overheating olive oil and causing rancidity, so I don't cook with it often). Place the pan on the stove over medium heat. Allow pan to get hot. If using oil, brush the fish with oil on both sides and salt/pepper it. Place in hot pan. If using butter (Kerrygold is AMAZING on salmon!!), place butter in pan and melt. Season fish on both sides with salt and pepper. Place in hot butter.

Tuna: when fish has turned grey halfway through the filet, flip and finish cooking til entire filet is grey.
Salmon: stays pink for the most part, but the intensity of the pink dulls upon cooking. Cook on one side until the bottom half of the filet is no longer bright pink (dull, almosts greys). Flip and continue cooking until uniform in color.

The best part of the salmon filet is the crispy edge that occurs when panfrying in butter.

A lot of cooking is trial and error, but this can be avoided by using cookbooks that have a lot of good reviews. I would highly recommend Practical Paleo, Eat Like a Dinosaur, any recipe by Mark Sisson (marksdailyapple.com), NomNomPaleo, OMPaleo, I Breathe, I'm Hungry (gotta watch... some of her stuff has unapproved ingredients, but most is ok) for starters.

Thanks for all the feedback and tips and such!!!

I'm definitely going to have to do the 80/20 rule. Otherwise I know that failure is inevitable, and if eating this way makes such a big difference for me, then I don’t want to fail.

I’m open to learning how to cook, I just don’t know that I’ll ever enjoy it because I am so bad at it. I don’t know what to do with anything….. And I hate buying a bunch of supplies only to not enjoy what I make (because it doesn’t taste good) and then they sit and go to waste. It seems like you have to buy so much stuff to cook with fresh, whole ingredients, and that kind of stuff goes bad so fast. It’s such a waste when that happens. Like fresh herbs and spices. I’ve tried that, and most of the time the taste isn’t as expected, and then I don’t use the stuff again for so long and I end up having to throw it out. I don’t know how to plan meals that are going to use the same things so it gets used up (and tastes good) because I don’t know what to do with the stuff!! I hope to find some truly simple, but tasty reciepes to get me started. Plus, I don’t have a ton of time to spend cooking, etc. between two kids and a husband and work. But I’m definitely on board with trying to figure it out. I just hope I can find simple stuff and not get overwhelmed and then get disappointed. Luckily, my husband is onboard and supportive, so that will be a big help! Prepping food on the weekends sounds like a very good idea – I just have to get used to planning ahead, and blocking out some time. I hate spending so much time in the kitchen, but maybe I’ll learn to enjoy it and it will become a habit.

I’ve ordered “It starts with Food” and “Eat Like a Dinosaur” from the library. Hopefully they get here soon!

I would say, keep it simple. Baked/broiled/grilled meats or fish with a steamed or roasted veggie is really hard to screw up. Basic seasonings - my favorite is plain ole salt, pepper and garlic powder. Make extras for lunch.

As for the kiddos - still trying to figure that one out for my 9 year old (since dad isn't on Paleo and has his cr@p in the house. Ugh)

I haven't been doing this very long, but the one thing that has helped me is to have a very basic menu plan that is only changed by the ingredients on hand. It can be boring, but it's working well for my family. We know what we're eating and my son can help if I'm running a little short on time or energy. Each day we have fried eggs, bacon, spinach, and coffee for breakfast. Lunch is a huge salad with spinach as the base, then whatever other veggies I have lying around, some sort of protein and olive oil and apple cider vinegar for the dressing. Dinner is usually meat, veggie(s) and a green smoothie. Of course this changes as schedules and needs for the day change, but it has really helped us have a foundation to go back to for our meals and stay on track.

Hi and welcome to the group. My kids are 5 and 3.5, so very similar to yours. I do not force them to eat Primal and still make rice/pasta/bread for them. However, they are VERY AWARE of how differently I eat, and they know that what I eat is healthy and what they eat is sometimes not. They have become very good at distinguishing between healthy and not healthy foods, which I feel is an important lesson. They also see that this is a CHOICE that their caveman mom is making (somehow I'm not a cavewoman, but a caveman mom). When I serve dinner, I always make sure there's plenty of veg and I take double serving of veg instead of whatever carb they're having. Hubby has been making a small effort to eat fewer carbs, lately. But he's not very consistent. It will be easier for you if your hubby is on board.

I pack my lunch at the same time that I pack the kids'. I use lunch boxes from www.planetbox.com. My boys love them because they pick their magnets everyday and they get some say in what goes into each section. I like them for portion control and variety and no trash. I don't really like salads much, but I'm happy to munch on sliced carrots, celery, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, etc. So I often make a few ounces of each plus some sort of leftover meat from dinner. Today we had no leftovers, so I had a can of sardines in marinara, grape tomatoes, strawberries and raspberries, and fermented beet salad. That was kind of a weird lunch. Sometimes I make meat/cheese roll-ups. Sometimes I pack a brat or sausage, although that's when I'm super lazy. Oh... and homemade soups! Make big batches and freeze.

I tend to snack on trail mix, which I think is keeping me from losing more weight but I'm slightly addicted. I also eat a little bite of dark chocolate almost every day. For snacks and as part of their lunches, my kids (and me too) love carrots, celery with cream cheese or hummus (not Paleo), sliced cucumbers, apples (kids dip in honey), berries, cheese, applesauce, cottage cheese, yogurt (kids mix with honey), pears, grapes, etc. You can add an ice pack to the lunch box, but I don't bother in the winter. They eat lunch at school at around 10:30am, so I figure it will be fine until then.

My kids drink water or milk. They heard their dentist say no more juice, so that was easy. We just said "The dentist says no" and placed the blame on him. They don't miss it. I send them to school with a water bottle. Their preschool doesn't like juice boxes anyway because of the extra trash and spills.

I used to think I hated cooking and was terrible at it. I have since discovered that I totally LOVE it. Books like Well Fed by Melissa Joulwan and nomnompaleo.com have made me look like a star in the kitchen. I almost always cook from a recipe and still have failures about once a week. I just learn and move on. In the Well Fed book there's a section on how to prepare meals for the week... basically take an hour on Sunday to chop up a bunch of veggies and saute meat. Then at dinner time you can combine them in a zillion ways with different sauces and spices.

I do count calories because I'm short and I don't work out every day, so I don't have a huge calorie budget. I just try to eat good whole foods, log it at the end of the day, and see where I'm at and how to adjust for the future. My carbs generally fall well below 100. But you don't have to be super low carb and Primal... you will still mostly likely be much lower carb than you were before. Give yourself a few weeks and see how you feel.

Some big changes I've made:
- cooking with coconut oil. It's awesome. Nothing burns!
- eating lots of eggs. I buy pastured ones from a local farm. Making eggs for breakfast takes 2 min.
- trying to make sure there's always some meat/seafood defrosting in the fridge.
- buying 1/4 grass-fed cow - much cheaper than buying at the store
- saving my veggie trimmings every day into a freezer bag to use for chicken or beef bone broth/stock
- saving chicken and beef bones for broth/stock
- freezing broth/stock into ice cubes and storing in freezer. Use with everything.
- saving bacon grease if it's a good quality bacon. Using that grease on roasted broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts.
- keeping some flax crackers around for when you really want something crunchy or for soft cheeses
- ordering from a weekly organic grocery delivery service until summer CSAs start again.
- meatza
- miso soup for breakfast (no tofu, just broth, miso paste, wakame flakes... yum!)
- bought a pressure cooker... love it!!!
- experimenting with new herbs and spices
- switching from diet coke to coconut water or kombucha (I'm not 100% free of DC yet)
- buying lots of dark chocolate bars, eat only a square or two at a time
- saying no to things that are not Primal if they're not "the best" version.
- keeping jerky in my purse
- befriending butchers
- getting better knives
- actually using my food processor
- using fish sauce in recipes
- using nomnompaleo's magic mushroom powder in place of salt - makes anything bland taste great and has saved several dishes
- coconut aminos instead of soy sauce or tamari
- almond flour instead of regular flour to bread chicken or meat
- arrowroot instead of corn starch
- checking labels on EVERYTHING

Good luck!