I did neither. Or both. Or...well you decide...
You must understand my motto...I've raised 7 of my own children, and added in 3 more...I am not a short order cook. I refuse to make multiple meals. You will eat what's served, within reason. I also have children (and now a grandchild) with multiple food allergies. No one is ever forced to eat something they are allergic to. Actually, they aren't even forced to eat foods they hate. We have a traditional "no thank you" bite that must be taken of any tolerable food, ie: no allergy to said food. After that, it's up to you. We always had PBJ or lunch meat sandwiches available, but I wasn't making them. So until you were old enough to spread your own PB, you ate what mom made, period.
When we started Advocare, I set forth the rule that everyone would eat the same thing for dinner. Breakfast was on your own (had been for years), lunch you made yourself for school, but dinner, would remain the family meal and everyone would eat the same. So that's where we started. Dinner.
After about a week or so, I had stopped buying cereal and poptarts (staples in our home) so when those ran out, it was time to work on breakfast. I was now sleeping at night, and getting up early in the morning without feeling like a Mac truck had hit me (another post), so I started making everyone's breakfast and that too was converted to paleolithic.
It was a couple more weeks, I had quit buying bread, so I had to really work hard to figure out just how "lunch" was going to work. Our traditional sack lunch for the kids had been a sandwich (lunch meat or PBJ), a bag of chips (I bought the individual bags by the case!), two processed snacks and a juice bag. Everything they were eating on a daily basis had to go!! But we did it!! We are now 100% paleo, most of the time.
Most advocates of the paleolithic lifestyle follow the 80/20 rule. If you eat true paleo 80% of the time, you will still see 100% of the benefits. (Unless you're AIP, autoimmune protocol, which is much stricter and a route I may be taking at some point.) So when I say we are 100% paleo, it means that we eat on average 80% paleo 100% of the time.
I did this whole transition in less than 4 weeks. I would not say this was a "rip the band-aid off" type approach, but we certainly didn't take a lot of baby steps and get used to those before we did something else. My biggest strategy was to just quit buying anything that didn't fit our new life. In a family this large (6 of us here daily, 8 or more frequently...could be 14 on any given weekend!) we go through food pretty quickly so it disappeared fast. My oldest son had also recently moved into his own place and I was pretty willing to "share" some of our "extras" with him. I sent him home with grocery bags of staples, sugar, rice, flour, corn, bread, seasoning packets, canned goods, lentils, etc. He shares an apartment with another 20 year old, I knew they could take care of it for me easily enough. If you don't have a starving college student to feed, send extras to a food pantry. I didn't want food to go bad, I had spent money on it!! But I also knew that we were not going to eat it. Once the cereal, bread and poptarts were gone, it was gone. The things we used for "meals" was no longer needed. During this time, I was already paleo for breakfast and lunch. The challenge came about making sure we had enough food and staples for the whole crew to eat this way. I spent a lot of time on-line, on Pinterest, reading and making lists.
My suggestion is if you are doing this for yourself, start NOW. Don't wait. If you are doing it for your family, give them warning, wait for the meltdowns and then move forward. From this day forward, don't buy anymore processed junk, no more sugar, no flour, no rice, no corn, no legumes, nothing packed in soy (it's in everything!). Your next trip to the grocery store should stay to the perimeter of the store:
- Produce (lots of it)
- Meat (lots of that too)
- Nuts or seeds (minimal)
- Eggs (I buy 6 dozen at a time.)
- Olive oil
- Coconut oil
- Spices (A variety, if you don't have a decent collection start adding to it. Clean out your spices....HOW old is that tumeric??
When it's not in your home, you don't use it, cook with it, eat it. This goes for the JUNK as well as the MEAT and VEGGIES! If it isn't there you won't eat it. So put the good stuff in the cabinets and leave the junk on the store shelves!
A warning about the grocery store while I'm here: Don't get sucked into the "organic", "gluten free" and "healthy" labeling!! Almost always they are marketing ploys!! Check all ingredient labels of anything you buy that is not right out of the ground or off the tree. This includes any kind of packaged meat products. Sausage, bacon, ham, turkey, lunch meat, etc. Bacon and other meats should be nitrate and nitrite free. Uncured bacon is more expensive but worth it to not have the fillers (and sugar!) in your body.
If possible, and your budget allows, look for grass-fed beef, free range chicken (and eggs) and turkey. We cannot afford to buy those products all the time. We have a lot of mouths to feed! But when we can, we do. I'm still looking for a local grass-fed beef source that I can buy half a cow at a time. I'd also love a local egg source, but we eat a LOT of eggs (see above) and I'm not sure anyone could keep us in eggs! But these are plans for the future.
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