Download Definitive Guide to troubleshooting weight loss

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO TROUBLESHOOTING WEIGHT LOSS
Weight loss is easy, until it’s not.
Those first few weeks, months, and even years following a Primal eating plan can feel
effortless. The weight just flies off. And you don’t really need to do anything special besides eat fewer carbs, grains, and sugar and more (and better) fat and protein. But
you’ve heard all that. You’ve done all that and gotten pretty far.
Just not far enough, which is why you’re reading this eBook. You’re here because you’re
facing what every person who’s gone up against their suboptimal eating history has
eventually met: a weight loss plateau.
These are those last few, or few dozen, pounds that simply will not budge, even though
you might be eating a great diet and seemingly doing everything you thought you were
supposed to be doing. So now you want answers. You want solutions. At the very least,
you want to know what went wrong so that you can figure out how to fix it. There are many reasons why someone stops losing weight. The human body is a biological organism of immense complexity, after all. It’s an amazing, beautiful symphony
of hormones and muscle fibers and neurotransmitters and neurons, but a lot can go
wrong—especially given the toxic environment in which many of us live. So, assuming you’ve enjoyed previous weight loss following the Primal Blueprint, and
you’ve read both The Primal Blueprint (if not, go here) and Primal Blueprint Fitness (if not,
become a Mark’s Daily Apple subscriber here and gain instant access to this free 92page eBook), what are some common—and not so common but no less relevant to the
people they affect—stumbling blocks responsible for weight loss stalls?
When you read the next section, take each stumbling block as its own entity. Don’t read
all of them, freak out, and think you need to address each and every one. That’s impossible because many of them are contradictory. If not eating breakfast is stalling weight
loss, ignore the suggestion to skip breakfast. Choose the ones that apply to you (don’t
worry if you’re confused about this step; in a later section, I’ll include some of the most
common weight loss stall archetypes and my recommended prescriptions).
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Weight Loss Stalls Dissected
You eat too much.
There’s not much more to say here. Eating more food than you actually need will stall
weight loss, if not outright reverse it. Low carb isn’t magic. It reins in wild hunger and
tames insulin, but calories do still matter—especially once you approach your ideal
weight. In fact, those last few pounds often don’t respond to the same weight loss triggers that worked so well to get you to this point. Eating nut butter by the spoonful and
hunks of cheese without regard for caloric content may have gotten you this far, but
you’ve got to tighten things up if you’ve started to plateau. And that’s the real test, isn’t
it? Eating Primally tends to cause spontaneous calorie reduction, but if the weight isn’t
coming off, something’s up—and it might be the amount of food you’re eating.
You eat too little.
The worst way for most people to lose the last few bits of body fat is to lower calories
drastically and keep them that low for days, weeks, months on end. This is a great way
to destroy your will to live and train. This is a great way to lower levels of leptin and
thyroid hormone, the primary arbiters of energy expenditure and metabolic rate. This
is a great way to see your body fat losses slow to a trickle. You may not get any fatter
this way, but you’re not going to get any leaner either.
You don’t sleep enough.
Lack of sleep is big killer. It causes insulin resistance, which means insulin sticks around
in the blood and prevents fat burning for longer periods of time for a given carb load.
It increases cortisol, and when cortisol levels are chronically elevated fat is hard to
burn. And if we’re not sleeping, we’re not secreting an optimal level of growth hormone, which figures prominently in fat burning. Sleep deprivation also makes junk
food look and taste better, prompting its (over)consumption. And finally, if we’re not
getting enough sleep, we’re not going to have enough energy or willpower to sustain
healthy habits that support optimal weight, like exercising, making smart choices, or
cooking. 2
You consume too much artificial light at night and not enough natural light
during the day.
Circadian rhythm affects more than just sleep. You could be getting eight hours a
night, but if you’re stuck indoors during the day and blast the electronics at night, your
body will think it’s day at night and night at day. A big cause of disordered appetite is
circadian desynchrony. Numerous scientific studies have substantiated the link between
unnatural light cycles and obesity and metabolic syndrome. Research shows that too
much light at night (from room lighting, electronic screens, you name it) can increase
hunger and may actually regulate fat mass directly, increasing body fat in rodents (and
perhaps other mammals) without them eating any more food or moving any less. You’re not sprinting.
Whenever someone complains about a weight loss stall, the first thing I ask is “Are you
sprinting?”
Sprinting turns muscle into fuel sponges that sop up any carbs you eat and store them
as glycogen instead of fat. Sprinting up-regulates fat metabolism. It boosts growth hormone. Fat burning stays elevated for hours after a good sprint session. Weight loss isn’t
just about eliminating any old kind of body mass. It’s about losing body fat while preserving or even gaining muscle and bone. Sprinting appears to be excellent at eliminating body fat without the negative impact on muscle mass commonly seen with excessive endurance training. A recent study found that a single sprint session can increase
post-exercise fat oxidation (burning) by 75%, while another found that sprinting improves body composition by reducing body fat.
And you don’t have to sprint all out on a flat track to get the benefits. You can sprint
anywhere: in a pool, up a hill, on a bike, on a rower. The possibilities are nearly endless, as long as you’re willing to move (about) as quickly as you can for a short burst of
time. You eat too frequently.
For decades, we’ve been told to “keep snacks handy.” We’ve been told to eat tiny meals
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throughout the day, never going more than a couple hours without food. This keeps
our metabolism “revved up,” we’re told, and it’s crucial for healthy weight loss.
Nonsense. The actual studies show that people who snack the most eat the most overall
calories. A 2014 analysis published in the medical journal Physiology & Behavior suggests
that the snack foods many consumers eat offer very little nutrition, particularly among
children and overweight snackers. And while to some degree these findings are confounded by the fact that many people snack on calorie-dense junk food, constant snacking on anything never gives your body the chance to burn body fat for energy. If food
is constantly streaming in, why start breaking down energy stores?
Don’t eat because “you’re supposed to” eat. Eat when truly hungry, not because “a
piece of candy sounds really good right now.” You eat too infrequently.
Another contradiction. What’s going on here, Sisson? Is it too frequently or too infrequently?
While I’ve often lambasted the canard of stoking one’s metabolic fire with frequent
meals, there’s some truth to it. Skipping meals works for some people, while in others it
depresses metabolism, triggers low blood sugar episodes and insatiable hunger, and
stalls weight loss. It can be either and both. Biology isn’t black and white. Your eating schedule is erratic.
Whatever eating schedule you want to follow, whether it’s skipping breakfast, eating six
meals a day, eating three, or skipping dinner, stick to it. In one study, healthy lean adults experienced a lower thermic effect of food—the extra
burst of energy required to process and digest the food we eat—when they ate according to a disordered, erratic schedule. The same effect happened in overweight women
trying to lose weight. Reduced thermic effect of food means lower energy expenditure.
The body likes schedules. Those schedules can change, but it’s best to do so gradually
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to allow the body to adapt. You engage in mindless eating.
If you asked most people what made them overweight in the first place, it was that
sneaky, tricky combination of eating and, well, doing everything else but focusing on
the food. Mindless eating is eating while watching TV. It’s eating while driving (I once
saw a man eat a bowl of cereal on the 405 freeway). It’s eating while cooking (not tasting to stay abreast of the dish but full-on eating). It’s popcorn at the movies. It’s beer
and wings and more beer during the game. In other words, mindless eating feels like
breathing, like something you just do. You take a few chews, rarely enough to qualify as
real mastication, and down the hatch it goes, with a follow-up handful close on its
heels. You never give your body a chance to realize it’s just taken in energy. Food is sacred stuff, made of plants and animals that died to provide nutrition and sustenance to your body. Show it—and the people around you—the respect deserved.
Practice mindful eating. Eat food with others, sit down to dinner, lunch, and breakfast,
and take the time to appreciate the food you’re eating. Pause with each bite to note the
flavors, textures, and satisfaction derived. Just because you’re scarfing down grass-fed
beef, pastured eggs, and leafy greens doesn’t mean you can get away with mindless consumption.
Your macronutrient ratios and training regimen are misaligned.
For most people who stay reasonably active, doing lots of low-level movement as well
as some lifting, a low-carb Primal way of eating is generally the most effective way to
lose body fat. It tastes good, it’s easy to stick to, and, most importantly, it works. But
some people like to push the envelope. They like waking up early and going for a run,
then coming home at night and hitting the weights. They’re avid CrossFitters. They
like seeing how far their bodies can go. They’re concerned with performance, above all
else, and they want to maximize every last drop of physicality their bodies can muster.
In that case, more dietary carbs are probably called for—especially if you’re trying to
lose weight at the same time. Otherwise, your body will increase cortisol to spur gluconeogenesis, the creation of glucose from protein. This constant elevation of cortisol is
terrible for fat loss, and it can even precipitate the addition of abdominal fat, that most
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unsightly and dangerous kind. Certain activities just require glycogen, and your body is
going to get it if it needs it. It’s better to just eat the carbs and avoid the cortisol burden. I do plenty of activities that use up glycogen, but I’m not doing them day in, day
out, so I don’t need to eat a lot of carbs.
There are others, though, who rarely train hard enough to warrant carb loading. Yet
carbs they load because they read somewhere that starches can be safe. They can, but
if you want to start pounding potatoes and white rice and eating berries by the bushel
without stalling on your weight loss, you have to earn them in the gym (or track, or
beach, or backyard gym, or wherever else you train). If you are truly active, if you’re doing WODs every day and playing in a basketball
league on the weekends and doing jiu-jitsu twice a week, you’ll need to replenish those
glycogen stores more often or else risk that chronically stressed state that stops weight
loss. If you aren’t, you don’t need as many carbs, and they could be holding you back
from achieving weight loss.
You’re not eating enough vegetables.
People in modern societies have a funny tendency to be overweight but malnourished,
obese but starved of nutrients. That’s because we eat nutrient-poor food that’s high in
calories (and flavor), carbs, and unhealthy fats. Since much of human hunger is driven
by micronutrient requirements, we get hungry when we’re deficient in minerals—an
unfortunately common physiological state in many countries. And because our image of food is so skewed—the classic example of kindergarteners
being unable to identify a tomato comes to mind—the foods we crave when a deficiency is present are often unhealthy. So a sodium craving manifests as a potato chip
craving, a magnesium deficiency becomes a chocolate craving, and a protein craving
becomes a Big Mac craving. Veggies are among the most nutrient-dense and calorie-sparse foods around. You can
eat all the vegetables you pretty much want without adding a lot of calories to your
daily totals. And those vegetables provide the minerals your cravings are trying to motivate you to obtain, the antioxidants your body needs to counter low level oxidative
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stress, and the phytonutrients that protect against aging and disease and promote a
lean, toned figure.
You’re adding lean mass.
I see this time and time again. The Primal Blueprint spurs fat loss while promoting muscle gain and better bone density, and the scale stays the same. People freak out because
they aren’t losing weight, but isn’t less fat and more muscle exactly what we want? If
you’re feeling good but failing to see any improvements register on the scale’s measurements, it’s most likely extra muscle and stronger bone from resistance training. You
wouldn’t know that just from the bathroom scale. If you absolutely need objective records of your progress, get a body fat percentage test (although these might not even
tell the whole story) or try measuring your waist alongside the scale weight. And track
your progress; the trends tell the story.
This is why I don’t like relying solely on the scale: it can’t give an accurate picture of
what kind of weight you’re losing or gaining. It simply measures the amount of force
gravity exerts on you—your mass. But what kind of mass are we talking about here?
You’re not eating enough protein.
Of all the macronutrients, protein is the most satiating, and high-protein diets (which
are usually also low-carb) consistently result in the greatest inadvertent reduction in
calories. You don’t consciously stop eating. You’re not fighting your desire for food. You
simply don’t want it. That’s the perfect antidote to insatiable hunger.
Make a point of adding an extra 20 grams of protein each meal. A few ounces of steak
here, a chicken leg there, a piece of salmon, a few eggs…you’ll be fuller, faster, and
you’ll eat less of the other stuff as a result.
You’re eating too much fat.
A cornerstone of the Primal eating plan is becoming an efficient fat burner and shifting away from total reliance on exogenous sugar for energy. This helps you access
stored body fat in between meals and helps you avoid the sugar crashes that commonly
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spur mindless snacking. And one important step along the path to reconfiguring your
fat-burning machinery is higher fat consumption. It improves satiation and, by reducing carbs, you end up eating fewer calories in the process. But too much fat is still too
much fat, and excess fat—the fat we eat that isn’t burned or metabolized into ketones
(the end-product of fat burning)—becomes body fat.
Some people eat more fat and lose more weight. Others eat more fat and gain more
fat. Calories aren’t all equal, but they all contribute to your energy requirements and
stores. If what previously worked no longer does, you might try reducing your fat intake while
keeping protein and carbs (which are already fairly low, remember) relatively constant.
Any fat requirements, beyond the long-chain polyunsaturated fats that we can’t manufacture ourselves, will be met by liberation of adipose tissue (body fat). And wouldn’t
you know: liberation of adipose tissue tends to cause weight loss!
You’re not eating enough carbs.
Wait, wait, wait: eating more carbs can help beat stubborn weight loss plateaus? I
thought the premise of the Primal Blueprint was that reducing our reliance on carbs
improves our ability to access and burn stored body fat for energy. If that’s true, how
do we reconcile that statement?
It all comes down to leptin. Leptin is the hormone secreted by adipose tissue as an indicator of energy status. Lots of leptin means lots of stored body fat—plenty of available
energy—and this lowers the appetite and increases energy expenditure. Low leptin levels increase appetite and lower energy expenditure, both of which are obviously undesirable physiological states for people trying to get over the fat loss hump. Low body fat
levels aren’t the only regulator of leptin, however; extended diet in general, but especially extended very low-carb dieting tends to depress leptin levels.
You’re a woman.
Before you pillory me, allow me to explain: women and men respond differently to
macronutrients, exercise, and calorie restriction. 8
Women tend to not respond as well to fasting as men do. Thus, you might need to eat
more frequently, or at least not skip as many meals. Women tend to burn more fat and fewer carbohydrates during exercise. This means
that for a given intensity of exercise, you burn more fat and less glycogen than a man
does. So, while a guy might get away with large carb loads because he’s filling up depleted glycogen burned during exercise, you might not need as many carbs because
you burned more fat than glycogen during the same workout. Women tend to store more fat in the lower body, and this may actually be a marker of
good health and fertility. Lower body fat, particularly in the hips and butt, is repository
of long-chain omega-3s, which are diverted toward building healthier and smarter babies in the womb. That’s why women tend to have “stubborn” fat down there: they’re
saving it for babies. So even if you’re not pregnant and never plan on becoming pregnant, the fact that you’re storing fat in your hips and butt is a sign of good health, not a
cause to worry and feel like a failure.
You sit too much.
You can’t counter a sedentary life with a couple bouts of exercise each week. That certainly helps, but it can’t undo all the sitting—in the office, in the car, on the couch—
most people do on a daily basis. Humans are mobile walking creatures, and reneging
on that ages-old tradition means lower energy expenditure, poor metabolic response to
food, and weight gain.
You need to start counting calories.
I designed the Primal eating plan around the concept of “effortless” weight loss because the idea that weight loss requires counting every calorie that enters (and leaves)
your body just never made sense to me. I mean, I got that some people need those objective road markers to ensure they’re on the right path toward fat loss, but everyone? No
way. But there’s a point where weight loss stops being effortless and many people, particularly those trying to reach single digit body fat percentages and not getting anywhere,
simply must track calories. That’s okay, and it’s not a sign that you’ve failed.
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You’re overdoing it with healthy foods.
Lots of foods that get the Primal stamp of approval are also calorie-dense, delicious,
and dangerously easy to overeat. I’m talking about your 85% dark chocolates, high in
phytochemicals and minerals and healthy fats, but half a bar later and you’re 350 calories deep without even realizing it. Or your nuts, which are consistently associated with
improved health outcomes but also taste really good with salt and disappear into your
gullet by the handful. Or how about honey, the antioxidant-rich sweetener that even
diabetics can usually eat without incurring the adverse effects seen with sugar consumption? It’s also one of the most calorie-dense foods on the planet, and it’s easy to drizzle
a few tablespoons on your bowl of Greek yogurt in a second. Foods add up. Too much healthy, nutrient-dense food is still too much food, and it can
and will make you gain weight or stop losing it. Plus, many of these foods are delicious,
packed with calories as well as nutrients, and can be overeaten, particularly because
they have the reputation as “health foods.” No foods are “free.”
You’ve forgotten that Primal isn’t just a diet.
You get your produce exclusively from farmers markets. You have two chest freezers in
the garage full of pastured boar and grass-fed auroch. Any dairy you consume must
have been in an udder no more than 12 hours prior. You can glance at a plate of food
and rattle off its contribution to the RDI for every micronutrient recognized by the
USDA. Your diet is solid. You eat more Primally than I do, and yet the weight remains.
What gives?
Primal isn’t just a diet, folks. It’s a set of lifestyle guidelines, each of which is arguably
as important as the stuff you put in your mouth. Are you spending time out in nature? Are you moving frequently at a slow pace, lifting
heavy things, and sprinting once in awhile? Are you spending time with friends and
family and cultivating your tribe? How often do you play?
The small stuff isn’t small stuff.
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You need to relax.
Primal eating isn’t a religion. It’s not a cult. It’s just a helpful, easy-to-follow guideline
for making dietary choices. While adhering to a framework that has proven its worth in
days past is understandable and usually works, sometimes you just need to let your hair
down and, provided you’re not a full-blown celiac, stop freaking out about the gluten in
your soy sauce. Just dip the hamachi, even if the sushi joint has run out of GF tamari.
You need to eat breakfast.
This doesn’t apply to everyone. Some people thrive when skipping breakfast; I’m one
of them. Others need that early morning meal. There is some evidence, albeit mostly
anecdotal and epidemiological, that eating breakfast on a regular basis can help with
leaning out. Eating breakfast can improve satiety and reduce caloric intake the rest of
the day, particularly if the meal is high in protein. Many women benefit from breakfast,
or at least not waiting so long to eat the first meal of the day. Breakfast also seems to establish a healthy, natural circadian rhythm, which can help regulate appetite and sleep.
You need to move more.
I hate the “eat less, move more” advice as much as anything. While technically true, it’s
overly simplistic and tries to force something that should come naturally—eating less
food and being more physically active in your day-to-day life. Time and time again, the
forced approach fails. People move more and then eat more because they get really hungry. Or people tank their calorie intake so much that they can’t muster the will or
strength to exercise. The fact remains, however, that maintaining a high level of constant daily activity
seems to be the recipe for overcoming stubborn weight loss. Think about how many
people vacation in Europe, eat way more food (and carbs) than they would normally
eat, and then come back home at a lower weight than when they left. They might say
it’s the quality of food over there, the red wine they drink, the way they make their
bread and grind their grains, the lack of GMOs, or maybe even the midday naps. And
it might be some or all of those things. But I think the primary reason people come
back to the States leaner is the sheer power of moving more. When you’re vacationing
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in a new city, you walk a lot more. You explore. You’re constantly moving. You eat a big
lunch and then go sightseeing for several hours. You eat dinner and have dessert, then
stroll along the river with an espresso and enjoy the nighttime lights. You can’t rely on vacation, though, so you’ll need to modify your habits at home. Go
for a walk or two each day. Garden and putter around the house. Do housework. Hike.
Play with your kids. Use a standing or walking workstation. It’s the integration of lowlevel physical activity into your everyday (that’s every single day) life that pays the most
dividends and can slowly but sustainably spur fat loss. What Archetype Are You?
Identifying the factors that cause weight loss plateaus is a great start, but you also have
to apply them to your life. Let’s explore some of the most common weight loss plateau
archetypes and the factors that apply most directly to them.
1. You’re a CrossFitter pounding out WODs like a champ, but you aren’t
losing weight.
Eat more carbs: CrossFit (and any suitably high-intensity, high-volume athletic endeavor) burns through a ton of glycogen. The best, easiest way to replenish glycogen is
to eat more carbs. You can stay low carb and get your glycogen through protein, but
it’s not easy, often doesn’t work, and usually increases cortisol, which stalls weight loss
when chronically elevated. Try titrating your carb intake up 20 grams at a time, preferably taken post workout, until you arrive at a dose that allows muscle recovery and glycogen replenishment, doesn’t skyrocket cortisol, and enables resumption of weight loss.
Get more sleep: It’s probable you aren’t recovering enough, and sleep is when our
muscles grow and energy replenishes. Training hard increases sleep requirements.
Maybe it’s time to move from the 5 am class to the 6 pm one. Train less: You don’t really need to train hard five days a week, and as your results
are showing, you probably can’t. 12
Track your body fat: You might simply be gaining enough muscle to offset the fat
you’re losing, and the result is a weight plateau. To figure out, track your body fat. Taking skin fold measurements using calipers and measuring your waist circumference using tape (or belt notches) are the simplest methods. Hydrostatic weighing and DEXAScan are more involved and costly methods. What matters is the trend, whatever
method you use.
2. You’re the perfect picture of low-carb eating, yet the weight has stopped
coming off.
Moderately increase carbs: Ad libitum low-carb Primal is a great way to lose lots
of weight fast, especially if you have a lot to lose. Low-carb eating curbs hunger, thus
prompting inadvertent calorie reduction, and up-regulates fat-burning machinery and
stops your reliance on sugar burning (and the concomitant constant sugar infusions),
thus improving your ability to access stored body fat for energy. But to get those last
few pounds off, some people find they need to reintroduce more carbs back into their
diets to kickstart lagging leptin levels and replenish glycogen lost during training. This
could be an overall daily increase of 50-100 grams from starchy vegetables and fruit. Watch the “pleasure foods”: Slow down on the mac nuts. Eat a square of 85%
dark chocolate, not the entire bar. Save the coconut butter for special occasions rather
than weekday afternoons. Try a carb refeed: If amping up daily carb intake doesn’t work for you, do a twiceweekly carb refeed of 150-200 grams. Both scenarios will boost your leptin levels,
which sometimes get too low on extended very low carbing. Since low leptin means
lower energy expenditure and increased appetite, a moderate or acute and intermittent
increase in carbs can be the stimulus your body needs to kickstart fat burning. Eat less fat: As I mentioned earlier, excessive fat intake can hamper fat loss. If it’s
coming from the diet in large amounts, why turn to the adipose tissue? Reduce your fat
intake to stimulate weight loss.
Eat more protein: The knowledge that fat isn’t the enemy, even confers health benefits, and helps speed rapid early weight loss leads to some people forgetting to eat their
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protein. Don’t; protein is highly satiating and helps you lose body fat while retaining
lean mass. Aim for 1.6 grams of protein for each kilogram of bodyweight (or 0.7 g/lb.).
Try counting calories: This might be the time to start counting calories if ad libitum low carb is no longer working. Use calorie-tracking tools like DailyBurn, FitDay,
myfitnesspal, and My Plate to make calorie counting easier (and more accurate).
Stop micromanaging your diet: Obviously, being “perfect” isn’t working for you,
so take a big deep breath and relax. Maybe throw in a cheat day. Just make sure the
foods you choose to cheat with are really worth it. Eat your vegetables: Fresh, organic produce provides micronutrients vital for proper
metabolic function. Don’t skimp on your leafy greens.
3. You’ve got stubborn belly fat that just isn’t disappearing (and it might
even be growing).
Try sprinting: Sprinting is a potent, efficient up-regulator of fat oxidation. When
you really, truly sprint all out, fat burning is elevated for hours afterward. Sprints are
also a reliable way to increase growth hormone release, another fat-burner. And finally,
sprinting depletes glycogen like little else, opening up space for dietary carbs without
the suppression of fat burning.
Try getting more sleep: Poor sleep in general increases our desire for junk food
(and the resultant hedonic hit of bliss we get upon consumption of those foods), but epidemiological evidence also finds a correlation between inadequate sleep and belly fat in
particular among those 40 years or younger. Although everyone’s sleep needs (and optimal bedtimes) are different, shooting for a solid 7-9 hours of sleep per night is ideal.
Try fasting: Once a week, go 16-24 hours without food. Alternately, you could skip
breakfast or dinner each day and follow a shortened eating window.
Try cyclical low carb: Low carb on rest days, higher carb (and lower fat) on training
days, eaten right around your workouts.
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Focus on stress reduction: Stress, and the resultant cortisol cascade, is a big promoter of belly fat. Whether it’s walks in the woods, meditation, anti-stress herbs and
supplements…just find something that helps you reduce or mitigate stress.
4. You can’t exercise because of injuries, bed rest, lack of free time, or
whatever else.
Eat more protein: This will keep your hunger from getting out of control, plus it
helps prevent lean mass loss (which is a form of weight loss we don’t want). Eat generous servings of vegetables at every meal: Since you won’t be eating
as many calories as your active self once did, you need to optimize your nutrient-tocalories ratio. Vegetables, particularly leafy greens, are extremely calorie sparse and nutrient dense. Spinach even has appetite suppressant effects, if hunger is an issue. Move: Make excuses to move. Walk the stairs. Park far away. Heck, even fidget. Nonessential movement is essential when you’re not exercising. Plenty of people maintain a
healthy body composition without outright exercise, but they aren’t completely sedentary. They still move.
5. You’re not sleeping well.
Keep your training load light: Chronic sleep deprivation is a major stressor that
increases cortisol and stalls weight loss in its own right. Introducing another major stressor—intense, protracted, high-frequency exercise—will only compound the damage
and make losing body fat even harder. Stick to walking, low-volume strength training,
and low-intensity movement, until you can get your sleep patterns under control.
Get more light during the day and less (or none) at night: Your circadian
rhythm is all out of whack, and this is probably perturbing your sleep quality and duration. Consider a weeklong camping trip without any artificial light after dark to reset
your clock and get back on track, or take early morning walks upon waking for some
morning light therapy. 6. You’re always hungry.
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Eat more protein: Protein is the most satiating macronutrient, and diets high in protein consistently produce the least hunger and the greatest weight loss gains.
Eat breakfast and make it higher in protein and fat: A lot of people do very
well eating according to a truncated eating window that eliminates breakfast, but some
don’t. A number of observational studies find that people in the general (read: not Primal) population who skip breakfast tend to be hungrier and consume more overall calories throughout the day, while habitual breakfast eaters are more satiated and eat fewer
calories. Breakfasts higher in protein and fat seem to promote greater all-day satiety
than do higher carb breakfasts. Make sure you’re sleeping enough: Lack of sleep increases hunger, especially for
unhealthy junk foods. And when we give in to the cravings (as most people do) and eat
junk foods, we crave them even more when we haven’t slept.
Get more natural light early in the day and less artificial light after dark:
Remember that a major cause of appetite dysregulation is circadian desynchrony. So
read a print book in bed rather than an eBook on your iPad. Light candles, not LEDs.
Take your lunches outside when possible. Greet the morning light with open eyes. Eat larger meals less frequently: Snacking doesn’t really fill most people up. It
just makes us eat even more food. Eat bigger meals, solid ones that actually sate your
hunger, so that you can go without eating for more than four hours at a time (and dip
into adipose tissue). 7. You’re a new parent.
Invent a time machine and travel back to your pre-child days: I’m kidding,
but part of being a new parent are the unavoidable lack of sleep, which disturbs your
metabolism and appetite, and of free time, which prevents you from engaging in
healthy activities like cooking nutritious food and exercising regularly. You have to accept this crazy time in your life and know that it will pass. Stressing out about your immutable circumstances will only make the problem worse. 16
Sprint more: Sprinting is the best bang for your buck exercise I know, and it just so
happens to be a great fat burner. Take a day or two out of the week to get in a good
sprint session. It doesn’t take much time to start feeling and seeing the amazing benefits.
Eat actual meals: Mindless eating is easy to slip into when you’re short on sleep and
there’s an infant vying for your attention. You just cram into your mouth what you can
when you can. But if you can eat real meals with your spouse/partner, your body
might actually realize it’s eating and you might actually get full for once. Consider it a
brief respite from the ceaseless grind of new parenthood.
8. You’re a woman.
Reign in stress: Women are more likely than men to turn to food in stressful situations, and this kind of stress eating is linked to obesity in women but not in men. That’s
a roundabout way of saying women may be more susceptible to the inhibitory effects
of stress on fat loss. Try a carb refeed: Women often do better on slightly higher carb intakes than men,
and a refeed is an easy (and fun) way to reintroduce more carbs. Once or twice a week,
eat 150-200 additional grams of carbs. Stop skipping meals; don’t fast: All else being equal, women respond more
poorly to intermittent fasting than men do. It can work for some, but if you’re trying to
lose weight and it’s not working, eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Don’t eat too few calories: Avoid precipitous and sustained drops in calorie intake
(500-1000 calorie deficits) and embrace more gradual reductions. If you decide to drastically reduce calories, incorporate the occasional high-calorie (or “cheat”) day to keep
your metabolism healthy and vibrant. You want to hit that sweet spot, where you’re eating enough food to provide the energy and micronutrients you need to support a strong
metabolism and regular physical activity but not so much that you start gaining. 17
Putting It All Together
You’ve read the previous sections, probably nodding along to some of the content. The
next step—the most important step—is entirely up to you. It’s time to put it into practice. It’s time to self-experiment.
First, state a goal: I want to resume losing weight. That’s why you’re reading this, right?
Second, choose an intervention. Either find the archetype that most resembles your plateau or pick out the plateau factors that sound like they apply to you. Come up with a hypothesis. Let’s say you most identify with the “Always Hungry” archetype and the intervention you’re trying is to “Eat More Protein.” Your hypothesis
might look like this:
Increasing dietary protein will curb hunger, inadvertently reduce calorie intake, and reduce bodyweight
while preserving lean mass.
Choose what to measure:
1. Subjective hunger.
2. Calorie intake (although without a run-in period of normal caloric intake, it’s hard
to know if the protein is making a difference).
3. Bodyweight.
4. Body fat percentage.
Consider variables to tweak:
1. Protein dosage (25% of calories? 30%?).
2. Protein timing (eating a rib eye with 100 grams of steak in a single sitting or eating
smaller amounts throughout the day).
3. Protein type (plant vs. animal vs. powders).
4. To conduct a truly science-based self-experiment, stick to one single interven18
tion—maybe increasing protein or sprinting twice a week, or incorporating a carb refeed, but not all at once. That would muddle the results and you’d never really know
what helped.
On the flip side, you’re not trying to pass peer review. You just want to lose some stubborn weight. And if trying two, three, even five interventions at once gets you closer to
that goal than trying just one, then go with the multi-pronged attack. Why wouldn’t
you? That’s what real life is: a wildly uncontrolled self-experiment with thousands of
interventions and confounding variables and biases and placebos whizzing in and out. All that matters is what works.
That said, figuring out what definitely doesn’t and what does seem to work requires logging your journey, and there’s no better tool for that than the Primal Blueprint 90-Day
Journal. Notepaper works okay, but I really do like the Journal for streamlining and organizing the experiment’s results. If this is something you want to learn from, keeping
a well-organized journal is very helpful. So go forth and figure out just why the heck you haven’t lost weight in awhile. Go
throw several things at the wall at once, if that helps, or take it one step at a time if you
tend toward the more systematic. Just use your judgment and the evidence presented in
this eBook to guide you in choosing the proper projectiles. I'd wish you good luck, but I don't think you'll need it because you have science, your
willpower, and your strong, efficient body supporting you every step of the way!
For more help losing weight, visit PrimalBlueprint.com
There you'll find instructive books, the 21-Day Transformation Program, the Primal
Fuel weight loss shake, and other supplements to that will assist you in burning excess
body fat.
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