My parents are about to try this Paleo thing out. Only they’re calling it something like blood sugar/sugar busters diabetes something-or-other.

Yesterday, my sister called me from the grocery store, asking about my diet.

“I want to eat like you so I can tell Mom and Dad how to do it.”

Well, hot damn!

Keeping mum about my diet, and eating differently, but quietly, has seemed to work out swimmingly.

Nobody wants to hear from their daughter/sister that they should change their diet.

But when they get to that realization all on their own, they turn to me for advice, and I’m always willing to lend an ear, or a helping hand.

“What else should I buy at the store?” Bacon.

“How long do I cook my pork roast?” Oh, I love you!

Yes, be nice. Be nice to yourself, and your body. If you’ve decided to give this a shot, go ahead and weigh yourself.

And then put the scale away. Preferably to Goodwill, but if you’re not quite ready for that, then the tippy top shelf of your closet.

Paleo/Primal/Cave person eating is not a weight loss plan. It’s a gut health plan, and you want to heal yourself. Weight loss might come, and it might not. But in order for it to work, you have to step away from the scale, and while you’re at it, you should be stepping away from the critical mirror. You know, the one that makes you squint at yourself and pinch yourself here or there and otherwise make you miserable.

You shouldn’t be miserable. Life is ever so short, and you want to be happy and healthy as long as you’re able.

So, let’s start slowly. Decide to cut wheat, corn, rice, and potatoes. Cut legumes (they give everybody tummy trauma anyway) and cut soy. Ditch the scale.

And just breathe.

jumping in, via the creative commons

Figuring out why you should consider cutting grains is a very good first start. One, humans may have a hard time digesting processed food. Two, and this one really applied to me after rapidly gaining eleven pounds, eating fat is a really good way to burn fat. So, I thought, okay. I’ll try this.

I couldn’t really bring myself to do all that the Whole 9 recommends, so I modified it. Hey, it’s my body, I can do what I want, right?

So, at first, I cut:

• wheat and all things that contain gluten
• corn
• rice
• potatoes
• legumes
• beer

And that was pretty much all I cut. I am a lover of dairy so I didn’t want to cut it out of my diet. I also like sugar. And booze. So, I thought, if I’m going to do this, then I need to allow myself a few vices, because otherwise if I try to cut everything, then I’ll end up with two days of going for it, and a meltdown on day three, dreaming of chocolate covered bread pudding made with cornmeal or something equally crazy.

You have to know your limitations. To this day, I still drink wine, I still eat ice cream, and I still eat cheese, though not nearly as often as I used to (turns out that meat is expensive and I have a hard time buying meat and cheese at the grocery store without going over budget!).

You’ll see, elsewhere in the paleo community, that most people who write about this lifestyle are really gung-ho, and they go out hunting wild boars or hiking with jerky bars, or otherwise acting like cavemen.

If that’s your thing, awesome. But if you want to learn how to begin this diet without alienating all your friends, stick with me. I’ll show you the ropes.

The Paleo diet is, at its core, very simple. Eat meat. Eat vegetables. Drink water. There is a lot more emphasis on what not to eat than what should be eaten.

So, here is a short list of what not to consume on a traditional Paleo diet:

• wheat/gluten
• oats, barley, rye, spelt
• just about all dairy
• soy
• corn
• rice
• white potatoes
• legumes, including peanuts
• quinoa
• sugar
• sugar-like substances
• fake sugar
• alcohol

So, pretty much everything you have ever eaten, ever. It’s a whole new world, and it’s one people usually come to after something is going wrong in their system. Something doctors can’t pinpoint. Maybe that describes you. You’ve been to a bunch of doctors to help explain away some of your ailments that aren’t easily explained. Or you’re not to that point yet but you don’t feel as good as you should.

When you see a list like this that prohibits just about everything in your kitchen, your gut reaction (pardon the pun) is to either turn and run in the other direction, or think, “what about ____?” and you then find yourself down a wormhole of if this then that else statements that make it all seem like too much and you’re again tempted to run the other direction.

Don’t run! Stay awhile and you’ll see that it’s not so bad, it’s not so complicated, and you’ll feel better once you stop eating things that are hurting you.