NOTE: I received a 2 week preview of the Real Plans meal planning system so that I could try it out and let you know what I think. I was not compensated monetarily for the opportunity or asked to share my experience, I am doing so of my own accord and all opinions are my own. However, links within the post and images may be affiliate links (and are labeled as such), which means that if you purchase the plan, I will get a percentage of the sale to support my blogging efforts. Thank you in advance!

I finally made a pot roast!

This is a big deal for someone who spent 13 years of my adult life a vegetarian and has just now learned to cook meat. My husband remembers pot roast fondly from childhood and has wistfully mentioned it several times in our marriage. I am sad to say that there have been many failed pot roasts in my past.

For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been on a Paleo-ish liver detox! The plan includes eating extremely cleanly and avoiding the following:

• all grains (including rice, corn, quinoa, oats)
• dairy
• added sugar (such as refined sugar, coconut sugar, honey, molasses – I still have fruit that contains natural sugars, such as dates)

Unlike my 30 day macrobiotic cleanse, I have been able to eat meat, fish, and all fruits and vegetables. I was also instructed to add sugar-free hemp protein (affiliate link) and raw greens powder (affiliate link) into smoothies and shakes several times a day to keep me full and help my body flush out.

Since I have been using a Classic version of another meal planning system for the past 2 years, I was a little overwhelmed attempting to plan Paleo-ish meals for myself and my family. It was just in time that Emily and Antony offered to let me try their new Real Plans real food meal planning system (affiliate link). I chose the Paleo plan (affiliate link), which is gluten-free and dairy-free. To my husband’s delight, this week contained pot roast!

Emily of Holistic Squid (a holistic blog) and her husband Antony designed this system and come up with the recipes. Real food means that everything is made from scratch, no prepackaged or processed foods. But, it’s actually not difficult at all!

I was surprised at how few ingredients the recipe required. It seems like the other recipes I’d tried were so much more complicated! I bought the chuck roast at Whole Foods, it was actually on sale for 50% off and was organic grass-fed!

A cool feature of the planning system – you can adjust the recipe for different serving sizes:

I was also very happy with how the shopping list and recipes were optimized for mobile. Does anyone else cook recipes straight from their iPhone? No? Well, I do! So it was nice to have the recipe formatted without clutter for easy countertop reference.

Overall, this is a super simple meal planning system that adds a fresh dose of flexibility (meal size, weekly menu). I would highly recommend it. In addition to the Paleo version, they also have a Vegetarian Plan and a Traditional Plan. If you do join, tell Emily and Antony that I sent you! Here’s the link again: RealPlans.com (affiliate link).