What to Eat on the Paleo (Gluten-Free) Diet?

Somehow I managed to forget, until now, to tell you what we can eat on a Primal Diet. Most of what follows this paragraph is excerpted from and based on the notes that John and I made while planning this experiment (on an incredibly long drive through the desert). All of our notes came from what we’ve learned from reading the Mark’s Daily Apple blog and Marks’ book: The Primal Blueprint. We highly recommend both resources.

What Can You Eat on a Paleo Diet?

What We Can Eat On a Paleo Diet:

Luckily many of the foods that we already enjoy on a regular basis are perfecly okay on a primal diet. Here are a few of the foods that make a regular appearance on our primal shopping list –

greens, meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts and seeds, seasonal fruit, coconut oil, olives, butter, water, nut butters

Some days my grocery list really is that general. Like most of you, we too have a grocery budget, so I wait till we get to the store to see what is on sale and quickly plan the meals in my head. If I were really on top of things, I’d check the store circulars online ahead of time….but I’m just not that on top of things =)

If we were even more primal, we’d do most of our shopping at farmers’ markets and local farms and only buy local, organic and grass-fed. Due to the amount of traveling that we do, I haven’t managed that either. But, if we do find a farmers’ market or roadside stand, we shop their first.

What We Can’t Eat On A Paleo Diet:

The primal diet is naturally gluten free, but it goes further than that and excludes all grains. Eating no grains is probably the biggest mental and physical adjustment for most people. The carb withdrawals during the first few weeks are incredibly intense. But, I have to say that it’s completely worth it.

Once we got past the carb withdrawal stage (which we did many months ago while on the Slow Carb diet) John and I both noticed distinct, unpleasant physical symptoms whenever we ate gluten free grains. We’d never noticed these symptoms when we ate gluten free grains on a regular basis, so we were excited to be able to isolate how these gluten free foods affected our bodies.

Here’s the list of what we’re not eating during this Primal trial:

no grains, no legumes, no dairy (Mary and kids), no PUFAs, no soy, no sugars

PUFA is the abbreviation for poly-unsaturated fatty acids which includes, among others, soybean oil and canola oil. We have not successfully eliminated all PUFAs from our diet, but I’m not using canola oil for cooking anymore. The areas where we are slipping up are pretty well limited to mayonnaise, salad dressing and hummus. I could make all of these at home with primal-approved oils, but I’ve been putting that off until I can get my food processor or mixer out of storage.

Some dairy is okay on a primal diet, though raw and fermented dairy is recommended. The kids and I are not having any because our bodies do not seem to like cow dairy products other than butter. John is enjoying heavy whipping cream in his coffee each morning since he doesn’t seem to have any issues with it.

If you haven’t realized it already, this list of no-no’s pretty much excludes all processed, manufactured foods. That means that I cook all three meals every day. It is doable; it just takes some prioritizing of our schedule. David (our 6 yr old) is learning to cook and has taken over some of the breakfast egg-scrambling duties. This is a good thing because our 3 kids can easily eat 9 – 12 eggs in one meal!

Can Kids Eat A Paleo Diet ?

Our three children are eating primal, but their daily food intake differs from ours since they do not need to lose any weight at all. Basically, they eat what we do, but with unlimited access to the higher calorie, Primal options listed below.

more seasonal fruit, trail mix with dark chocolate and dried fruit, quinoa, starchy tubers, wild rice, more emphasis on fats, some legumes (e.g., hummus),

The kids eat the same supper that we do, but I generally add a side dish of potatoes or sweet potatoes for them. They also eat at least two snacks each day, which is where the extra fruit and trail mix come in. They are not yet big salad fans, so they’ll generally have hummus and veggies in addition to whatever meat we’re having for lunch. Nut butter and avocados are generally part of the lunch or snack routine too to make sure they get plenty of good fats. Breakfast is usually scrambled eggs or omelettes, but they have all tried my Chili Turkey this week =)

I think that’s it for what we can and cannot eat? Would this diet be doable for you? If you have any questions about what we’re eating or how we make it work on a daily basis, please let us know in the comments.

A Paleo Diet Trial: Days 1 & 2

Here is the first meal update for our 30-Day Primal Experiment. We won’t overwhelm you with daily meal updates, but we’ll keep track of what we’re eating and send it out every few days. I’m also planning to post the recipe for anything that I make that we love. If you’ve been wondering what to eat on a naturally gluten free diet, here’s how we do it. If you have any questions about any of it, leave a comment and we’ll either answer in the comments or write a post about it, if needed.

Primal Meals – Day One and Two

• Breakfast Day #1- J&M: omelettes with red bell pepper and portabella mushrooms; kids: omelettes with colby jack cheese
• Lunch Day #1- J&M: tuna salad in romaine lettuce boats; kids: jicama sticks, nut butter, black olives, tuna salad
• Kid’s snack Day #1: box of raisins, mixed nuts
• Supper Day #1 – J&M: Chicken with lemon mustard sauce, green beans with caramelized onions, sauteed summer squash; kids: the same with the addition of Cinnamon Pecan Sweet Potatoes
• Breakfast Day #2 – John: Chili Turkey with mustard; Mary: fasted; kids: scrambled eggs, raisins, nuts, leftover sweet potatoes from supper
• Lunch Day #2 – J&M: green and veggie salad topped with turkey burgers, sunflower seeds and Caesar dressing; kids: cucumber and bell pepper slices with hummus, turkey burgers
• Kid’s snack Day #2: apple slices with nut butter
• Supper Day #2 – same as the night before because it was so good we wanted to jot down the recipes for the blog!!

Observations

During the first two days, the kids ate more cheese and cream than I would like. They are not super happy with veggies or meat mixed into their eggs, so we’ve gotten into the habit of adding cheese. Once we get to San Antonio I’ll pick up some nutritional yeast which they LOVE and sprinkle that on the eggs instead.

We’ve also been using peanut butter instead of almond or cashew butters, which would be a better choice. This was primarily a monetary decision because we’re in a small town and the nut butters are overpriced.

Everything that we ate was delicious and i haven’t heard any complaints about being hungry or wanting non-primal foods. The kids did ask for non-primal foods at the grocery store, but that was mostly because David is trying to figurd out which foods are primal and which are not.