I can only offer my experience with Paleo, which has been filled with some fits and starts along the way. The hardest adjustment for me has been the idea of eating fat and having that be okay.

In my experience adequate fat consumption is essential to making Paleo work. What I did not realize is how difficult it is to fight against all the years of programming that tells us that fat is bad and enjoying really good food must be unhealthy.

Now in my third attempt at Paleo, I am learning to be patient with myself and to be open to trusting that my body feels good on Paleo for a reason other than just bacon. ;-)

So be patient, research and read a lot and stick with it. (And eat plenty of fat!)

Hope this helps!

They both have generally the same goals, though from what I've seen Primal has more emphasis on weight loss and dealing with metabolic disorder/diabetes/pre-diabetes. Primal is also on the less-strict end of the Primal/Paleo spectrum, while Autoimmune Protocol is on the more strict end. It all comes down to your own health and lifestyle needs.

How to go about the change depends on the type of person you are. You can go the "whole-hog, cold turkey" way and start off with a Whole 30 challenge, if that type of thing would work for you. Or, you can do something not quite so drastic, but still go cold-turkey on non-Primal or non-Paleo stuff (Paleo-approved does not equate to Whole 30 approved), or you can phase out stuff by just not buying it as you use up your existing stock, and/or start buying alternatives to things.

The phase out methods often work if you have a family to feed, especially if they're not really keen on the idea. As they start eating more and more in the Primal/Paleo way, they often find themselves naturally avoiding the old crap. It also eases them into it and trains their tastebuds and bodies slowly, instead of having a shock to the system.

It's as simple as starting out with something like replacing the spaghetti in your spaghetti dinner nights with spaghetti squash (a new favorite around my house). Swapping white potatoes for sweet potatoes occasionally (there's some disagreement as to the role of white potatoes in a Paleo diet, but there's no question that sweet potatoes are loaded with nutrients and should at least be added to one's diet), and maybe swapping out potatoes altogether for low-starch veggies like grilled asparagus.

If you do dairy, switch to raw (in ME, raw milk can be sold legally, but you might still have to find a farm or co-op) and, if you can, try to find milk from A2/A2 cows (A2/A2 cows don't have the mutation that creates milk proteins that most milk-sensitive people are allergic to). Note to those that live in a state where raw milk sales are illegal or sketchy, the next best thing is non-homogenized (preserves the size and shape of the fat molecules, keeping them better-tolerated by the body) and low-heat pasteurized (keeping more of the enzymes that make milk such a good food). Grass-fed, of course.

As far as other animal products go, look for pastured and animals raised on a biologically appropriate diet. Don't let the "vegetarian diet" fool you, though - pigs and chickens are omnivores, so if they're fed a vegetarian diet and aren't pastured (and therefore able to forage for their protein), they're likely being fed soy. Wild game is always a good option for land animals. Seafood is a bit sketchy due to mercury concerns, but you probably know more about the details of that than I do, given that you live in Maine (and really, anyone that eats seafood would know more, I'm not a fan).

If you have any questions about a given food item, you can pretty much plug "{food item} paleo" into a search engine and get recent information on whether it's generally considered compliant and why or why not. For the most part, though, you can generally figure it out in flowchart fashion - http://visual.ly/paleo-diet-flowchart

As for exercise, there's a lot of crossover between Paleo and Crossfit for some reason unbeknownst to me, but it's by no means required. I personally like Mark Sisson's guidelines - move frequently at a slow pace (go for walks, strive for 10,000+ steps a day, etc), sprint occasionally (once a week, if you're feeling up for it), lift heavy stuff every few days, and play. How, exactly, you do this is up to you. I personally do it with old fashioned barbell lifting, coupled with martial arts, and some yoga thrown in sometimes. The "lift stuff" part doesn't have to be barbells, or even dumbbells, you can do bodyweight training or "Grok training" (lift logs, climb trees, throw boulders, etc., I think Sisson's got a Grok workout of the day thing on his site). At the end of the day, though, the best routine is the one that you can stick with (that incorporates at least low-level cardio and some kind of strength). And, on the off-chance you're worried, no, you won't get all big and bulky from lifting weights. Women don't build muscle mass like men do, and even men can't do it by accident.

Finally (as if I haven't carried on enough), it's probably a good idea to track your food for a while, until you get used to eating fat. Eating higher fat makes it feel like you've eaten a ton of food, when really, you've hardly eaten anything. Many people end up way undereating if they're not careful.