Every Paleo kitchen needs the following items to give an extra helping hand.

1. Crock Pot

How else are you going to create that lovely batch of bone broth to heal your gut? Crock Pots are definitely making a come back in the kitchen especially with those eating Paleo. We consume large chunks of meat and slurp up bone broths but you can cook other items in there as well.

I personally own the Hamilton Beach 6-Quart.  It's programmable and comes with a meat thermometer (which I rarely use)

2. Cast Iron Skillet

A well seasoned Iron Skillet is probably the most essential item used in the kitchen, at least for me. I cook pretty much everything in it. I tossed out my various teflon, calphalon, whatever other kind of -on coated cooking materials in favor of stainless and cast iron. It takes a little skill and care to get used to cooking on cast iron but is well worth it for the flavor imbued and the avoidance of harmful chemicals flaking off into your food. You also get the added bonus of adding iron to your meals.

I prefer Lodge as that was what we always used in my time as a Boy Scout.  I now own and use for everything, the Deep 10.25" variety.

The term diet has been spun into something that it is not.  More often than not if one says 'Diet' it is seen as a temporary or fad like thing in order to lose weight or augment your lifestyle for temporary gain.  Diet in its definition means the continual eating habits of a creature.  So, we know cows mostly eat grass and that is their diet.  Predators are carnivores and subsist mostly on meats.  Somehow a diet has become misconstrued over the years as something else.  It is now a marketable term and not true to its meaning.  So, with trepidation, I often say I am on the Paleo diet and it is misunderstood as something akin to the Atkins diet for meat eaters or that I only consume what cavemen ate which is wholly untrue and often leads to crooked eyebrows or being told I don't need to be on a diet, that eating red meats will kill me, or some other myth perpetuated by misguided information.  This mental programming of the word diet along with the 'diets' in question is part of the problem with health and nutrition.  Diet is part of your lifestyle and what you can handle ingesting on a continual basis and what your body should be fed habitually.

We as humans don't really have a solidified diet per se according to nature.  There are things which we should and should not eat but we have a very robust system that allows us both meats and vegetables and some in-between items.  There are a lot of things that we cannot adapt to though and should be removed from the body altogether in order to achieve optimal energy levels and ease digestion.  We can eat and pass pennies but that doesn't mean it is good for our body and you may or may not have adverse affects from doing so.   The same can be said for gluten, legumes, dairy, sugar etc. all of which can have adverse affects, hidden or visible.

There's a bit of a stigma with Paleo in that it is expensive to eat this way. My retort is: “What is more costly, medical bills or a better diet?”. Once you give up on boxed foods and start buying whole foods you should begin to see a difference in meal costs for the better. You can easily put together a meal for four for about 15 dollars which is a lot cheaper than eating out. Speaking of eating out, you'll likely reduce that considerably since it is somewhat difficult to source a restaurant that is conducive to your eating habits.

The initial costs can be a bit off-putting and a lot of times I recommend starting slow in replacing items. Eat down what you may have stocked up as you build up new supplies, or if you have long term storage, give it away or keep it stashed for emergencies.  I went the cold turkey route and tossed out everything in favor of my new lifestyle.  The choice is yours if you can afford it or if your health can hold out for a little while longer as you make the transition.  Some people are in dire straights with obesity or metabolic issues and need to shock the system as far as I am concerned.  If the temptation is there then they'll never achieve their goal.

There's a certain misconception around that fat equals fat on the body.  The notion, upon closer examination, is illogical ,however; I was certainly under this spell for the longest time of my life.  Eating fat does not equal fat.  Growing up in the 80's everything was low fat and Jazzercise or aerobics with colorful leg warmers was the way to fitness godliness.  As I have learned, both couldn't be further from the truth.

Further hang ups tend be with the types of fats.  Everyone knows that we need more Omega 3's and less Omega 6's but at the same time we're told to use "healthy" fats and oils like vegetable oil which is loaded with polyunsaturated fatty acids and Omega 6.  So, if you take away nothing else from this then understand that you need to dispose of all those corn, canola, peanut, soy, and grape seed oils.  Yeah I thought grape seed was ok too for a while but it's no better than the others.  Canola is used so heavily now it is disconcerting.  Canola was originally designed as an industrial lubricant and even a lot of olive oils sneak in a portion of canola to round out the rest of the bottle and cut the cost.  Canola is, as I understand, a product of Rapeseed and not exactly good for our systems.  Another terrible "fat" is the alternative butters.  Margarine is one molecule away from being plastic not to mention all the other so-called butters which are nothing more than chemical compounds made to taste like butter.  Thanks, but I'll take my chances with something natural and something my body knows how to process. So, toss them out and don't look back.  If you're serious about reversing your health, start here.