Tom and Anne Donlon wrote:

>--Did you gradually change your eating habits, or abruptly change everything
>at once?
>
I changed by groups: this week no grain, next week no potatoes, week
after no dairy, which was
pretty successful for me.  I also took digestive enzymes at first going
from a near-vegetarian grain-based
diet to one based on meat and vegetables.

>--Do the cravings go away, and when?
>
craving for sweets in a few days, certainly by 2 weeks sweets don't even
sound good, and chocolate
just looks like brown waxy stuff, not ambrosia.  But you MUST be strict
to get this effect.

>--Anyone here have diabetes and care to share if you've experienced any
>recovery? Were your docs on board? Mine are anti-low-carb.
>
A book to support you here is Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution.  It
only makes sense that if you
eat fewer carbs, your sugar lowers, duh! If you're on insulin, you'll
need less, and this is good.
If you're insulin-resistant (type II), lowering carbs increases your
insulin sensitivity, and this is good.

>--Also, where do you get your food? I don't want to eat grain-fed meat. But
>I also wanna be able to keep putting money in my son's college fund! Did
>your food bill go up when you started buying nuts and meats and lots of nut
>butters and flours and organic produce? I'm assuming that it'll even out
>since I won't be buying all the other stuff - ?
>
Good food does cost more, but all the extra medical care and
prescriptions you'll need due to bad
food is even more expensive.  I don't eat lots of nuts or nut flours
(even though I raved about the
chestnut flour lately).  I do buy good quality meat.  If you ask around
your area, you can probably
find somebody raising a few steers or pigs or chickens in a sane,
non-feedlot way.  For organic
produce, look for a CSA farm (buy a membership, get organic veggies
every week).

>--Is flax paleo?
>
well, sort of, you can certainly collect it without modern technology,
and sprinkle it on stuff.

>--Do you take supplements?
>
I do, but I've cut down recently.

>--Finally, anyone know of a paleo egg substitute? I'm allergic, and all of
>the replacers I know of are either soy or potato. I've tried bananas with
>somewhat mixed results.
>
Egg replacers for baking, right? (I don't know what else you'd do with
them).  Baking will definitely
decrease on a paleo diet.  Most modern paleo eaters just don't bother
with trying to recreate
cakes, breads, cookies, pancakes, etc.  Given that, and with the
definite warning that tapioca
is not exactly paleo by most people's opinion, a small proportion of
tapioca flour does very
well in holding together baked goods in the absence of gluten.  Add a
little coconut oil, olive oil,
almond flour, or pecan flour for richness. Xanthan gum is also used (in
teaspoon quantities) by
gluten-free bakers.  Overall, any baked goods should be a very
infrequent treat if you are to
see the true benefits of paleo eating.  Your staples should be
meat/poultry/fish, and fruits and
vegetables. Nuts or eggs for those that can tolerate them.

>Sorry to inundate you with all of these questions, but I'm just trying to
>get my bearings straight. I was a vegetarian, and a vegan for a while, and
>have really tried a bunch of low fat high carb diets/ways of eating - so
>this is a big change for me.
>
One of the biggest changes is just the change of mind.  You are flying
in the face of all the
vegetarian "received beliefs".  Low-fat to high-fat, high-grain to
no-grain, no-meat to high-meat.
I and others have found that our food cravings diminished very much, we
lost weight, and our
immune system improved remarkably (practically no more colds/flu, faster
healing, etc.) And we
have more strength and energy.  Lots of us on this list have had our
health damaged by
vegetarian and vegan diets.

If the ethical question still bothers you, you may want to pay a premium
for grass-fed beef, which
basically lives in cow-paradise until the day the truck comes, instead
of standing shoulder to shoulder
on a pile of their own manure being fed unnatural foods like corn and
soybeans.
Even more so for free-range chickens and eggs, instead of caged.

Good luck with your transition, and welcome to the cave!

    Lynnet