Organized Paleo

Eating 100% primal requires a certain degree of planning and organization, especially in the beginning. I have been asked on several occasions how I manage to make all of my meals and snacks paleo and only go to the grocery store once per week. Now that my kitchen is fully stocked with essential ingredients it isn't as hard, but I still follow a weekly routine for planning, grocery shopping, and cooking.

Step One: Recipes.

I bought a really cute pink spiral notebook to write down recipe ideas (this is the way cavepeople did it, but if you want to use Microsoft Word that's cool too). By now I have a collection of recipes I want to make and am constantly adding new ones, but at first I was just keeping track of the recipes I wanted to make in the upcoming week.

Step Two: Meal Planning.

I meal plan two days at at time (so I plan to make one breakfast, lunch, and dinner recipe for Sunday and Monday, something else for Tuesday and Wednesday, and so on). Most recipes make about 4 servings so this is really easy since there are two people in my household. On weeks where I will be really busy I make extra at dinner and take leftovers for lunch so I don't have to make an additional salad or protein dish. My partner only eats Paleo at dinner, so I usually get the leftovers all to myself :-D

Step Three. Grocery List.

Based on the above two steps, I then make a detailed grocery list.. on pink paper of course. I'm sure the caveperson's list looked more like "hunt animal, gather fruits and vegetables, make last whole week". It sounds easy but it probably wasn't.

*The planning process takes me between 20 and 30 minutes per week, depending on whether or not I'm creating my own recipes or making something easy. Am I crazy? Eh maybe a little. Is it worth is? Yeah definitely. If you catch some of my crazy I guarantee you will be eating a well balanced diet and you won't fall victim to ordering pizza after a busy day or eating oreos as an afternoon snack.