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.

This is another book that I have gifted quite a bit to get some friends and family started on a better diet. It Starts with Food is based on the Whole30 protocol from the Whole9 website. The guidelines are very strict if following the Whole30 program but it is useful in given you a good basis for how to eat more so than exactly what to eat. It's also less of a recipe book although there are some base recipes in the back to help things along but they're fairly free form cooking in that you're given base ingredients and it's up to you to spice as needed.

This book is highly recommended when approaching the Paleo diet. It's less of a recipe book and more of a dynamic instruction manual for eating and maintaining a Paleo lifestyle. The first half is loaded with information regarding how to get started with things and some of the reasoning behind Paleo. It goes over what you should eat, what you should avoid, and why. This is an all encompassing book/manual/guide and well worth the money even if you're not pursuing the Paleo diet.

I'm sure the first few questions in mind are: What is the Paleo diet? Why should I pursue such a thing? The USDA outlines a solid diet, why should I change that?

The Paleo diet is eating as closely to what paleolithic man consumed but taking into consideration modern life. This includes the removal of the following items from your daily life:

• All Processed Foods
• All Grains (gluten especially)
• Legumes (including peanuts)
• Most dairy products (ghee, clarified butter, and some hard cheese are ok in moderation)
• Processed sweeteners (refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup etc.)
• Soy (it is a neurotoxin)
• Unsafe Oils (canola, peanut, or most plant based refined oils)

You would replace those items with whole foods (fresh vegetables), quality meats (grass fed and finished and/or pastured), animal fats, limited fruit and nuts.

The USDA pyramid should be banished and drawn up from scratch according to what our body needs and not mostly derived from grains and cereals or dairy.  Grains have been shown over and over to cause numerous issues within the body so why should that be the major category from which we get nutrients?  It shouldn't.  Any doctor that tells you that whole grains are highly nutritious should be ignored.  They obviously know little about how our body handles grains or the bio-availability of these nutrients.  Food should be our gateway to health and most doctors only have about 6 months of their entire time in medical school dedicated to nutrition.  Even so, the nutrition that they're given is the same tripe we've been handed for the past 50+ years.  We need to re-program not only ourselves but our medical professionals.

I am often confronted (yes nearly confrontational at times) with questions regarding the way I eat or why I choose to disregard a fluffy sugar-laden piece of cake or some fabulous crusty bread that is offered to me. I simply smile and say I don't eat that. It's not that I can not or would not; I just do not. I have chosen to only take in what I deem as beneficial to my system. People over the years have neglected the purpose of food. It is a fuel and only items worthy of being fuel should be acceptable for your body to run optimally.

I didn't begin this way magically, nor was I raised to consider this thinking toward food. I ate because I was hungry and I tended to eat what tasted good to me. I cared not what was actually going in me as long as that little nagging notion in my belly was satisfied with what I put in there and my mouth was happy for that nanosecond of pleasure for tasting good! This is where we all go downhill and quite quickly I might add.