During the first week of our Paleo experiment I did a lot of research. I’m talking tons. I read a couple books on going paleo, I read about a million blogs and I did a lot of soul searching. I found out that we can eat nuts as snacks (I love sunflower seads and cashews) and I also learned that we can eat semi-sweet chocolate chips (in moderation). I also found lot of recipes for different ways to cook vegetables that didn’t sound too disgusting. So on the second Saturday of our Paleo experiment we started making our grocery list and we headed out.
One of our concerns with going Paleo is that so many people talk about how expensive it is, so we knew that we needed to overcome this…. We hit the local fruit and vegetable stands… and we struck gold. The prices were about a 1/3 of what we had been paying in the grocery store. We also hit Costco and saved a ton more money there. All of our research told us that Costco gets its meat from the place that Whole Foods does…. This means grass fed beef as opposed to grain fed beef.
At the veggie market we bought onions, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peaches, squash, zucchini and bell pepper. At Costco we bought ground beef, roast beef, whole chicken, frozen tilapia, frozen chicken breasts and pork chops. We also bought mushrooms, eggs and sausage, sunflower seeds, almonds, cashews and semi-sweet chocolate chips. We still have a little bit of cereal and milk for the kids, because even though we are going completely paleo… we are trying to ease the kids into this.
You would think that with a list like that we would have spent a fortune. You would be wrong. Our grocery trip came in at somewhere around ½ of what we normally spend. I was shocked…. Totally and completely.
After the initial after shopping glow wore off I realized that I had a kitchen full of food that I had no idea what to do with. I have NEVER been one that cooks…. I grew up eating foods that came out of boxes. My mom cooked one fancy meal a year at Christmas, other than that we ate stuff that came out of boxes and required very little preparation. Mom always worked… this is what I thought was normal. Now I had all this raw… whole… un-processed food that I had to made edible for my family. I did it. Everything that I cooked tasted good and got eaten. At the end of the second week when I did my way in I had lost another 2.5 pounds! We were eating like kings and having yummy snacks and still losing weight! (and, as a bonus… it was fun).
** I will not say that this has been all easy or all roses. I have had several days where I thought that I was going to break down and run out to the store and buy junk. (Lots and lots of junk.) I am very proud to say though that I made it through and didn’t cheat. The only “bad” thing that I have done that even halfway “cheating” was to eat about a half box of cereal and during the first week I ate some bugles (both of which made me sick).
