How to sustain AIP during the quarantine

Many of us are wondering how can we sustain AIP during the current quarantine. Is it even possible? Can we do this? What should we buy? What if we don’t have enough food to eat? It does feel scary because we are not used to seeing empty shelves in stores! A natural reaction to this new scarcity is the tendency to stock up on whatever food we can find!

The way I see it, it is business as usual for us autoimmune warriors! We don’t eat any of those dry and canned foods everyone is stocking up on. So let’s not panic about it! Here is what I am focusing on during my shopping trips:

• fresh fruit and vegetables
• meat/seafood (fresh or frozen)

Since we don’t know for sure what we’ll find at the store in terms of proteins and veggies, it is harder than usual to follow recipes. My advice, if you are flying solo without a recipe, is to keep your meals extra simple.

My recommendations to build a basic nutritious AIP meal:

Fill up your plate with 3/4 of vegetables (aim for 2 vegetables: one high starch and one low starch), and 1/4 of protein (meat/seafood) + healthy fats.

Some examples of this would be:

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Nutritious AIP snacks:

Worried you are going to get hungry in between meals? Fair enough! Well, you can always shop online to have AIP-compliant snacks delivered to you. I recommend Amazon or Shop AIP for this.

I wrote a blog post recently about AIP snacks and convenience foods. Click here to view this post and access all my recommendations for sweet and savory AIP snacks.

To be honest I don’t stock up on AIP-compliant snacks. First I try to avoid snacking in between meals and second I prefer to get my nutrition from unprocessed foods. So here are my suggestions for easy snacks to ward off hunger in between meals:

• fruit, especially Granny Smith apples and berries
• olives
• avocadoes
• canned sardines or canned tuna mashed with an avocado
• cooked bacon or cooked sweet potatoes
• applesauce
• dates stuffed with coconut butter (or any other nut butter if you have reintroduced them)

What to buy at the store:

Here is what’s on my “essentials” shopping list at the moment:

1 – Shelf-stable fruit and vegetables such as:

• sweet potatoes
• winter squashes: butternut squash, kabocha squash, delicata squash, spaghetti squash, etc
• onions
• apples and oranges

2 – Fruit and veggies for the refrigerator such as:

• Whatever I can find at the store right now that is AIP-compliant (check out this list of yes/no AIP foods). I go for kale, chard, leeks, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, carrots, celery, avocados, etc. Lettuce is fine but won’t keep for a very long time in the fridge.

3 – Proteins (fresh or frozen)

• Meat: beef, pork, bison, especially ground meat for meatloaves and pork shoulders for pulled pork.
• Poultry
• Seafood: wild-caught salmon, cod, tilapia, etc.
• AIP-compliant bacon (I use the Beeler’s brand).

4 – Canned goods such as:

• Coconut milk
• Sardines and tuna
• Coconut butter (stuff a couple of dates with coconut butter for a delicious sweet snack!)
• Pumpkin puree (to make this yummy AIP breakfast cake!)
• Chicken broth for soups

Additional support to sustain AIP

If you need additional support to implement the Autoimmune Protocol into your life, I recommend these resources:

• The Autoimmune Protocol Made Simple Cookbook (which includes an intro with all you need to know to start the AIP diet)
• The Autoimmune Protocol Meal Prep Cookbook (10 weeks of done-for-you meal plans with shopping lists and batch cooking directions)
• AIP Made Simple: a membership program delivering monthly AIP meal plans, allergen-free desserts, tutorials, including online group coaching for live support.