Starting AIP

Your first week on AIP

What to cook, what to skip, and what to ignore until week two.

Roast chicken with lemon and red onion in a glass dish

The first week gets a lot easier the moment you stop expecting it to look like a photographed meal plan.

You are learning a new routine. Give yourself enough of a plan that you are not cooking every meal from scratch, and enough slack that real life still fits. It comes down to four things.

Get three things ready before the week starts

A batch of protein, a tray of roasted vegetables, a pot of soup. That is not a Sunday lost, that is the pressure taken off the three busiest evenings.

A pot of broth with carrots and parsnip on the stove

Breakfast first

Nearly every breakfast we are used to leans on eggs, dairy or grains, and during elimination those are out. So breakfast is the meal to solve before anything else, and the answer is usually already in the fridge from last night. There is no rule saying breakfast has to look like breakfast.

Keep dinners boring

This is not the week to test seven new recipes. Five meals you already know, and repeat one if you need to. The best meals when you are starting out are the boring ones you will happily make again.

A bowl of roasted sweet potato with thyme

At the end of the week, four plain questions

Four questions at the end of week one: which meals were easiest, what ran out first, which recipe took too long, what did you buy and never touch

Those four answers will plan your second week better than any meal plan you download from somebody else's kitchen.

What to buy for that first week, what to cook on each day, and what to do when you feel wiped out on day three: that is the chapter this comes from, in The AIP Starter Guide.

The AIP Starter Guide

Short and practical. What AIP involves, what to buy, and what to cook in your first week. Start simply, one meal at a time.

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The free checklists

The Quick Start Checklist and the grocery list for your very first week, taken from the guide. Free to download.

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