I was in the same boat as you a year ago. I'd "only" been vegetarian for 14 years, but I was well conditioned to just not at all want to eat meat. I had zero desire for it and some kinds completely put me off.

It took me some very small steps at first. I thought back to the two kinds of meat I did eat before I became vegetarian: chicken and fish. I started with a very small amount of fish. It was nice! I also had some bacon, at my husband's insistence, and it was nice too. Suddenly it got a lot easier and I started feeling a lot better overall, which helped continue the cycle. I tried vegetarian staples (caesar salad) with a bit of meat added. Sandwiches. etc. Yes, I wasn't paleo immediately on switching from vegetarianism; that would have been a bit much for me, but kudos if you can manage it.

You don't have to eat cow if you don't want to. I don't eat beef very much and I don't really like it. Pick grass-fed, pasture-raised animals and (if you can) talk to the farmer about how his livestock are kept, you can really get to appreciate where the food comes from. One of the reasons I went vegetarian was being traumatised by how badly these creatures were treated for the short period they were alive, and the fact they were only born in the first place to feed us. However, I've come to accept that this is the way nature works and that eating with nature, not against it, is the best route; plus, choosing only those animals that genuinely had a nice life and great treatment, even if I have to pay more.

It also helped me to really focus on understanding why these choices were healthy and visualise the difference between paleo and my unhealthy, high-carb high-soy vegetarian diet (what each does to my body and the key things missing from the vegetarian diet I was following). Looks like you're on the right track there.

One tip, I would remember all the vegetables that you eat and all of the wonderful ways to prepare and consume them, because vegetables are most definitely a cornerstone of the paleo diet. You hear a lot of people saying they eat 5 pounds of rib eye steak or something every day and call it paleo, but it isn't. Imagine hunter gatherers in a tribe and what they might eat, and they probably have prime cuts of meat once or twice a year, meanwhile their staples were probably things like readily available vegetables, tubers, and all parts of the animal, which probably means more soups and stews than hunks of meat.

Honestly, vegetables are where the variety in my diet comes from, so from a culinary and dietary perspective, they are essential. If you aren't too worried about carbs, your options are even wider.

The major benefit i got from paleo were from dropping ALL grains and sugars, and dropping all of the bad oils. I would focus on that primarily. Also, eggs, especially good eggs (pasture raised), are delicious and a great source of animal protien and nutrition that are very versatile and accessible. I personally would start there.

Good luck -- i think you are going to see a huge improvement in your overall health!

I also became a vegetarian w/ my family at age 12 and remained either veg or vegan until I was 25 years old. I'm 31 now, and all I can say is, make the effort! It is not easy at first, but stick with it. Try new things. I started out eating just canned tuna and canned chicken because it's what I remembered eating as a child before we went veg. I gradually tried new things, and now I couldn't be happier. It's awesome that you've made the first step! Also, increase your healthy fats, like coconut oil and red palm oil, I think that's almost more important than digging into meat right away.

Hi Luluandmrbear,

Here is some info on legumes you might find useful:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/beans-legumes-carbs/

What about fish or chicken? Bacon? Bacon's the gateway meat you know. :) If you can get past the "trauma" there's a whole new world that awaits! Report back, I'd love to hear your progress. Good luck!

There are many people who have a viscerally negative reaction to meat (I've never been one of them). Once you've convinced yourself intellectually that this is a good thing to do, you can use various methods for desensitizing yourself. I've known people who couldn't stand ground meat, but thought a steak was OK. I've also known people who couldn't stand a steak, but managed to think of ground meat as coming from the store, not an animal, and therefore OK. Many self-identified "vegetarians" eat meat sometimes. Everyone is different, so you might want to rank different kinds of meat-containing foods on your own scale of how much the thought of eating them bothers you.

It's possible you might find it OK to start with broth, or eggs, or fish, or shellfish (if you don't already eat some of those). You could try adding a bit of chicken breast to some soup. If preparing meat is hard for you, get it pre-cooked or go to a restaurant.

Any of these options may or may not work for you. Remember that you don't necessarily need to eat meat continuously to gain a lot of the benefits. Good luck!

Tip #1 : Get some recipes for home-made soup that includes some chicken, lamb or whatever. I think a mild soup or broth would be the easiest way to introduce your palate to meat.

Tip #2 : As somebody has already mentioned, add a little bit of meat to dishes you already eat - salads, sandwiches, curries, etc.

Tip #3 : Take yourself out to a really nice restaurant, the best you can afford. The French are the best (imo) at cooking steak. This adventure should demonstrate how nice meat can taste when cooked with a high level of skill. Something to aspire to when you start experimenting in your own kitchen!

Lastly, take it easy on yourself. If you don't fall in love with the taste of meat immediately, don't force feed yourself, know that it will come with time and experimentation.

Ok, after rereading the initial post, I now get that you haven't had meat of any kind in 24 years. Your body is going to freak out if you go out tonight and decide to have a 24-oz Prime Rib dinner...

Ease back into animal proteins. Beef, lamb, bison, boar and, potentially pork, are going to challenge your digestive system. Commercial pork, since it's mild and essentially neutral-to-bad protein might be ok for a while. Commercial and free-range chicken is going to be your mainstay for quite a while. Turkey will be a potentially pain-inducing treat (it's worth it!)

I'd recommend starting out with "bland" animal proteins: chicken and "blah" fish like tilapia, cod, Ono or the like. Build a tolerance for those, then build the necessary digestive enzymes over time. A rich, delicious ribeye steak may not be within the target region for over a year, but a wild Alaskan salmon filet could be...

I've never been in this position, but I suspect thst the leaner more "challenging" proteins (elk, boar, bison, etc.) are more likely to cause distress as you transition to a more "predatory" diet.

Keep trying good, high quality proteins (grass fed ground beef, Scottish wild rabbit, elk, etc.) until your gut catches up with you.

Good luck, and MOAR BACON!!!! :)

I would start with Salmon. Costco has Copper Run Salmon currently. (At least ours does.) I would eat it once or twice a week. Then pick another meat and eggs...

was vegetarian for 10 years, don't want to think what kind of blood sugar i would have had by now if I hadn't changed. go slowly, mix up a lot of veggies in with the meat. cut meat into small pieces, it takes a while to get used to the texture again.

I became a vegetarian at 12, too - I spent 18 years as a vegetarian/vegan. I felt my health begin to break down but it took a lot of internal struggle before I went back to meat (actually, fish first). I loved animals but I decided I loved myself more. Meat has done AMAZING things for my health, no regrets. But I didn't know the first thing about cooking meat. At first I relied on restaurants but I wanted to buy locally-sourced grass-fed meat so I had to figure out the cooking thing eventually. (I see in your comments you want to eat red meat specifically) My advice would be to look up some recipes for brisket or various roasts - yummy and hard to mess up, whether you use a crock pot or your oven. I STILL don't know much about cooking meat (1.5 years since I gave up vegetarianism) so I rely on briskets and roasts quite a lot. Here's one of my favorite recipes: http://www.jewishfood-list.com/recipes/beef_veal/brisket/brisketcider01.html I make it with the Five Spice Carrots that are linked on the page. So comforting, and totally easy for meat-novices like us! :)

Also I fell in love with LAMB, a meat I never had pre-veg. So maybe trying something completely new would help, if you're having a hard time with the whole idea.

Good luck to you!

I was vegetarian for over 25 years and I started with things I thought I could handle. This ended up being, as was suggested, homemade chicken broth based soup. Then I went to fish, which I see you don't care for. I live on the seashore so it seemed a shame NOT to eat fish. :)

I've now managed small bits of beef, which shocks me. I did not have adverse reaction to it. Several years ago I ate what I thought was a vegetarian casserole that made me ill...later I learned it had crumbled beef in it...so I was afraid of beef, but now I find I can tolerate it. I haven't been able to progress to actually eating chicken or pork yet but that's a mental thing.

This is what I want to tell you. I FEEL AMAZING. Absolutely amazing. Even people in my neighborhood who don't really know me well have stopped me to tell me they've noticed I am looking much healthier and happier. I never knew this level of "feel-good" was possible.

Go slow, go for it, and enjoy. :)

Well, bacon is the quintessential Gateway Meat.

I personally found sausage to be mind-blowingly delicious after 20 years of vegetarianism.

Furthermore, I had no trouble transitioning -- my body did not "rebel". I did not experience any digestive trouble whatsoever. If you have adequate stomach acid - and most people do - you shouldn't have any problem. I was ready and grateful to re-enter the food-chain, right near the top where I belong. I think acceptance of this truth was 90% of the battle for me. I dove right in and haven't looked back.

After talking to numerous vegetarian and vegan friends, the one constant "I miss this food" item has been: bacon.

Maybe try adding delicious bacon to otherwise vegetarian dishes?

Some people are meat averse because they have low stomach acid. You might want to supplement with HCL betaine for a few weeks to help your stomach be better prepared to break down the animal protein.

I was raised 99% vegetarian (except for some medicinal liver and cod liver oil), and didn't have any weird negative reaction when I started eating meat, even though I was convinced it wasn't good for me. Moving to Germany for an exchange program kind of put an end to it. I had some little sausages in a sweet sauce after several cups of Gluhwein and the rest was history. Alcohol...equal parts social lubricant and liquid courage helps with those first few bites, drink up. I think getting completely out of my comfort zone, and trying a meat that I had no way of anticipating what it would taste like, but came highly recommended by locals helped.

If you have any Ethiopian restaurants near you, try the chicken tibs, they have an amazing exotic flavor that is worth sampling at least once in a lifetime regardless of meat eating status. And the injera used to scoop it and mop up the juices, is made from teff flour, and is about as awesome as grain products get, both gluten free and fermented.

Sashimi is also an exotic and tasty place to start if you want to dare yourself into trying some fun flavors. Again, booze helps with first time.

Thai fresh spring rolls with prawns could be a good first bite too.

You can cook rice (if you haven't gone completely grain free) with chicken broth for a tasty side dish to get used to the umami flavor of meat without having to stare down any direct meatiness. You can also use broth to mix up mashed potatoes with a similar result.

Get some friends together and have some fun with this.

Some good news for you! You don't really have to eat meat to be paleo! or at least not in large quantities.

Before you start crushing T-bones why not re-learn how to be a vegetarian in a paleo context... tackle that first and then consider adding meats later. You are already comfortable eating veg so it just makes sense to start there.

Start by purging your house of non-paleo items. I put everything in big bins and took them to the food bank.

Now go on over to localharvest.org and get signed up for a good vegetable and/or egg CSA

Focus on eating a lots of raw whole foods. Ditch the grains. Swap out your cooking oils for grass fed ghee and coconut oil, and of course olive oil raw is great too.

Eat lots of avocados! Also avocados are on the clean 15.. i always just get huge bags of them at costco.

You should invest in a vitamix if you are used to eating a lot of grains, this will help you eat a massive amount of raw vegetables in a smoothie.

I always start my day with a nice raw smoothie, typically I toss in weeds from my yard (dandelion, lambs quarters, plantain herb) coconut oil, raw eggs, a bit of ginger root, whey protein and some frozen fruit, a banana, coconut oil (3 or 4 tablespoons) and a bunch of chia seeds, water and ice cubes.... A great power breakfast and easy to down. I also use Kale and spinach in place of the weeds sometimes.

Eat lots of eggs, supplement with a very high quality omega-3 (making sure DHA is 1:1 with EPA would be my advice and get a soy free one).

Once you make all of these changes start incorporating some fish into your diet, you can certainly thrive as a paleo -pescatarian. Mark Sisson's wife is a pescatarian (the primal blueprint dude)

If you can get raw milk in your area this is also something that could help you out.

If you do these things and your ready to venture into meat try first getting a bit of grass fed beef with the bones in it and making some bone broth. It's basically just a soup. Look up "Pho" as a preparation idea.

Anyway lots of people go way too meat heavy on paleo... let's give veg some credit here folks. "eat your spinach" popeye!

I hope this gives you a few ideas. You don't have to eat meat to eat paleo. Paleo is just as much about what you are not eating as what you are eating. You can easily eat the correct macro-nutrient ratios while being a lacto-vegetarian. You just need to relearn a healthy vegetarian diet, and if you are eating lots of raw vegetables you should be good to go on your micro nutrients too.

Also worth noting that Denise Minger (who was mentioned) eats very little meat. At least according to her blog.

Good luck.