Eager Newbie page 2

**batty** · 06-08-2010, 07:32 AM

if you think about it, what do you usually do with pasta, rice, and bread? put tasty things on them like sauces and butter. very rarely are they eaten plain. they are tasteless vehicles for the good stuff. skip it and just go for the tasty stuff

**Meadow** · 06-08-2010, 12:28 PM

Nice to meet another Erin

I can second the taco salad thing.....they are delish. Avocado or guacamole, salsa, meat with homemade seasonings and green chiles and onions, maybe some tomato or cheese if you are into that....YUM. Sometimes we do them fajita style with sliced beef or chicken and sauteed onions and peppers.

Good luck on your transition. It will be a big transition, mentally, physically, but at some point you will look back and go WOW...look how far I came and how well I feel

**tfarny** · 06-08-2010, 01:03 PM

Free your mind from grains, and honestly, cooking this way is really delicious. The last two days I ate "Mexican" for lunch: A whole avocado sliced up, toped with grilled beef, topped with salsa. Yesterday i put cheese on all that - chipless nachos. Totally delicious, totally primal, very filling and full of goodness. Just get used to having more of the "luxury" items as main parts of your meal - a whole avocado is pretty darn great to eat with grilled skirt steak I have to say.

Paleonu is a nice blog for some things, his "Getting started" page is pretty much just what you are looking for - a simple set of "rules" - http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/

**naiadknight** · 06-08-2010, 01:41 PM

The way I turned my mind was to start looking at grains for what they were: filler material, stuff to make you full before you eat the real goodness. Now, I'd no more eat grains (with the exception of trying a new culture's desserts or food) that eat packing peanuts, because that's just what it seems like to me.
I'd say that first big step, while two fold and one hell of a doozy, once mastered takes care of a HUGE chunk of primal: Ditch the grains and sugar (still working on sugar but eat maybe 10% of what I once did) and up the fat.

**PrairieProf** · 06-08-2010, 01:56 PM

Try whatever you'd put on pasta on spaghetti squash. Very yummy.

**Kira** · 06-09-2010, 12:44 AM

i'm a couple of months in and i tricked my brain into accepting the change by staggering my quitting times.

i gave myself two weeks to adjust to going grain-free, with permission to eat sugar normally. i just told myself that quitting grains was enough for those two weeks and no sweating the sugar. then, after those two weeks were up, i cut out the sugar. by that time i had gotten through the harder parts of quitting the grain, and wasn't tempted to substitute grains for sugars.

now i don't eat any of either, aside from what might be added to a salad dressing in a restaurant or something.

just for some context, i was an overall healthy eater, in the sense that i ate "whole" foods and didn't eat tons of junk food or anything, but i was a total bread monster. sandwiches, rice pasta, pizza now and then...oh man, grains, i love you so hard. and sugar is really easy for me to go too far on. i've never been successful with any diets or restrictions before, so the fact that i've gone 2 months without them, with maybe 4 full on cheats, is remarkable for me. i credit my little mind trick with my early success. even when i've tried doing fasts, i've never made it past the first couple of days.

i've found that i can't look for tricks to enjoy the foods i loved before. i can't do alternative pancakes or sweets. i feel like the powerful yearnings i feel for those foods need to be slain, and i can't substitute other versions. mourning the loss of pasta, bread, rice, etc. was important, and i don't want to open the door even a crack.

good luck! it gets so much easier!