On Thursday, July 1, 2004, at 04:39 AM, Judy Appelhanz wrote:

> How do you stay with these WOE when your family will not give up their
> junk and you don't always have time to prepare 2 separate meals?

Keep it simple, I think. I don't press my wife and kids to eat my way,
but when I cook I make the food that I think is best. Generally, just
by cutting out the big carb dishes like bread and potatoes you
automatically cut most of the non-paleo foods.

Who does the food shopping? If the kids or your husband want certain
foods they can buy them for themselves. When I shop I get lots of fruit
for the kids. They do want sweets, of course, but after filling up on
fruit they eat a lot less of them. My wife is a pretty healthy eater
anyway, even if not paleo, so the kids eat well most of the time.

It really comes down to a matter of how strict you want to be. If your
family has serious health problems, paleo might be a necessity. If you
just want to eat better, then don't sweat the details so much. Paleo
does not call for strict carb counting, food matching, balancing. It is
very easy compared to most other diets. Eat plenty of meats, veggies,
fruits and cut out the obvious junk. You can fine tune it as you go
along, if you need to.

When I started I ate very simple meals, but after a few months I
gradually figured out how to spice things up, so now my meals don't
LOOK much different from standard meals, but the ingredients are paleo.
My kids don't notice much.

One thing, for yourself, I suggest being quite strict the first few
weeks, or months even. I had a dramatic change in my day to day health,
and it happened very soon after starting paleo. That convinced me to
stick with it. Now, I will eat non-paleo foods, but because I was so
strict, I have a very good idea when something is not right. Eating
wheat a few days in a row almost guarantees me a migraine headache, for
example. A great incentive to stay with paleo, but if I had not been
strict from the first, I would not have made the connection.