The Slow Transition to Paleo

Hi. My name is Kate Simpson. I’m the health coach here at Arizona Wellness Medicine. And today, I’m going to be sharing on the topic of making the slow transition to the paleo way of eating. So, we’re going to look at this through the lens that you’ve been given a recommendation to follow a 30-day paleo reset, also known as the 30-day paleo elimination diet. And maybe, you’re the personality type that is just going to jump in with both feet, do a little bit of preparing, and tackle the reset straight away. I encourage you to take the path that works for you.

Today, I’m going to be actually focusing on the individual that is more interested in taking a slow approach. They want to build a foundation leading up to that reset so that they have their best chance of being successful. You know yourself better than I know you, so pick the approach that works for you. But hopefully, I’ll give you some tips today that might make things a little bit easier.

We renew our health making habit changes one habit change at a time, so we want to look at this in terms of micro change. So, the finish line is what’s important. Whether you jump in with both feet or you take a slow approach, we just want to keep our eye on the prize. The eye on the prize is that we successfully complete this elimination diet, we move into our food reintroductions, and we might discover the foods that don’t work for us, that we like them, but they don’t necessarily like us. So, with that slow approach, we wonder, “Where do we start?” A good place to start would be if an individual already knows a food that doesn’t work for them. Let’s say you have an issue with gluten, dairy, or soy. That would be a great food to eliminate right off the bat.

Another approach, if you want to be a little bit more aggressive, let’s use gluten, again, as an example. So, gluten doesn’t work for you. Instead of just eliminating gluten, why don’t we go ahead and eliminate all grains. We’ll just eliminate the whole grain family in the reset. We eliminate all grains, all dairy, and all legumes. So, just pick a family of food, eliminate it, and we’re just going to continue to move down the path. One recommendation that I have for my health coaching clients, it’s just a little trick, is we don’t want to waste food in our refrigerator. So, we sometimes will have food that isn’t reset-compliant. We just finish that food, and then, we don’t purchase it again. Maybe you can eliminate it entirely or maybe you need to come up with a paleo compliant substitute, but it’s just one little trick. It’s this two-pronged approach that, again, it’s a little bit more aggressive, but it’s still not an extreme change.

Another way that we can tackle this is by making a habit change. It’s not necessarily eliminating a particular food, but if you know, for example, that you eat out a little bit more frequently and you recognize that during the reset, that’s going to be a bit of an issue, you can choose to change that habit early on and just make the commitment to make your meals at home. So, by the time, again, you’re building that foundation, by the time you get to the reset, you’ll already be in the habit of making those meals at home.

We’ve talked a lot about the fact that we need to eliminate food. We also need to address the fact that we need to know what to eat. When you’re thinking about what… Again, we want to be thinking about these things as we’re making some changes, some elimination changes. When we’re dialed in, and that change that we’ve made becomes effortless, we can move on to the next change. But we do want to be thinking about, what is my plate going to look like now that I’m eating paleo?

Well, it’s going to have a generous portion of non-starchy vegetables. It can certainly have a starchy vegetable on there if that falls in line with the health goals that you have. We want to have a clean source of protein on there, and we want to have a healthy fat. That is my encouragement. Don’t skimp on the fat. Fat is going to give us energy, and it’s very instrumental in the satiety that we feel when we’re done eating.

So, now, we know a few places that we can start. We know how to build our plate. I hope you have a path that is going to be useful for you as you move into your reset. Don’t hesitate to reach out and book a health coaching session if you want some support on the paleo way of eating or, maybe, the auto-immune protocol or low FODMAP. You have resources that are available to you. Again, don’t hesitate to reach out. Thanks so much.