1. You think you’re eating healthy, but you’re not. Is your diet heavily comprised of “products”? Low-carb or not, you want to eat real food. Flags of diet soda, plates of net fiber in the shape of noodles, and loaves of 1 g net carb “bread” don’t make a primitive eating plan. You’re just feeding an addiction and eating empty calories – sound familiar? Ignore the labels and look inside for what you know to be true: This is not junk food, and you shouldn’t be eating it. It’s more than just low-carb.
2. You are under a lot of stress. The stress response system is subconscious; It responds to stimuli and nothing else. Emotional stress, physical stress, financial stress, relationship stress – I hesitate to even make these distinctions, because the body does not differentiate between sources of stress. They all cause the body to produce cortisol, the fight-or-flight hormone that catabolics muscle, worsens insulin resistance, and promotes fat storage. For 200,000 years, stress meant a life or death situation. It was intense and wacky, and the cortisol release was arresting and extreme enough to improve my chances of survival. Today, our bodies react to piles of paperwork the same way. Traffic jams are like rival war bands. An irritable boss is like a raging mastodon, only on a daily basis. Take a step back from your life and take stock of your stress levels – they can be holding you back.
3. You have to keep a watch on your carb intake. Carbs are as important as ever, especially when you want to lose weight. Veer closer to the bottom of the curve while taking care to avoid all processed food (hidden sugars). You can also try giving up fruit.
4. You’re adding muscle. I always tell people not to get so hung up on the scales. Those things are useful – don’t get me wrong – but they never tell the whole story, like whether or not you’re adding lean mass. PB will promote fat loss, but it also promotes muscle gain and improved bone density. If you’re feeling great but have failed to see any improvement register on the scale’s measurements, it’s likely extra muscle and stronger bone from resistance training. You wouldn’t know that just from a bathroom scale. If you need an objective record of your progress, get a body fat percentage test (though even these may not tell the whole story) or try measuring your waist.
5. You’re not active enough. Do you go for three to five hour slow walks every week? Remember: Near-daily low-level (between 55-75% max heart rate) pace should be the basis of your fitness regimen. It’s easy to do (because every speed counts) and it doesn’t tap into your glycogen stores (making it a pure fat burner, not a sugar burner). If you’re on the low end of the spectrum, bump it up to five weekly hours and beyond.
6. You’re chronically missing out on cardio. Of course, you can go too far with low-level movement—you can start to lapse into chronic cardio. When you stay above 75% of your maximum heart rate for an extended period of time, you are burning glycogen. Your body in turn craves even more sugar to replenish lost stores, so you polish off a pile of carbs, preferably simple and fast-acting. You can continue down this route if you want—I did, for a few decades—but you’ll gain weight, lose muscle, release more cortisol, and compromise any progress you’ve made.
7. You haven’t tried IF yet. Results vary, but if you’ve tried seemingly everything else, intermittent fasting can be a great means of breaking a weight loss plateau. Make sure you make a complete transition onto the Primal Eating Plan and start small. Skip breakfast and have late lunch. If it seems fine, skip breakfast and lunch next time. Take it slowly and pay attention to your appetite. Lastly, try exercising in a fasted state to maximize metabolic benefits. If all goes well, your appetite won’t necessarily go away, but it will change. A successful IF calms the appetite, making it less insistent and demanding.
8. You’re eating too much. Low-carb is not magic. It curbs wild appetites and regulates insulin, but calories still matter—especially after you reach your ideal weight. In fact, those last few pounds often aren’t the answer to the same stuff that worked so well to get you to this point. Eating a spoonful of nut butter and a slice of cheese can get you far, regardless of calorie content, but you’ve got to tighten things up if things aren’t working out. And that’s the real test, isn’t it? Eating has metabolic benefits, according to PB, but if weight loss isn’t happening, something is gaining—and may need to reduce calories.
9. You haven’t overcome bad habits or developed good ones. Be brutally honest with yourself. Are you indulging in bad habits? If so, identify them. Make tentative, loose plans to break free from their clutches and tell those close to you. Make it public, so you can’t back down without losing face. You have to develop good ones too. Follow roughly the same guidelines as when breaking a bad habit – identify, plan, publish – and you’ll be on your way.
10. You haven’t cleaned and primed your pantry. Out of sight, out of mind; Out of reach, out of reach. Keep unsavory junk food out of your pantry, if not out of your house entirely. Go down the list and toss the stuff that doesn’t apply. For the rest of your kitchen, check out fridge interiors and the grocery lists of some other Primal people for inspiration.
11. You have reached a healthy homeostasis. Your body may have reached its “ideal” weight—its effective, genetic set point. Getting to this level is usually painless and effortless, but it won’t necessarily correspond to your desired level of leanness. Women, in particular, tend to achieve healthier homeostasis at higher levels of body fat. Breaking plateaus can be difficult enough, but plateaus set by the body itself can be nearly impossible. It’s probably going to take some serious tinkering with carbs, calories, activity levels, sleep, and stress. If everything else is on point and accounted for, you may be looking at healthy homeostasis. Then, the question becomes: do you want to mess with a good thing?
12. You have less willpower. Willpower is like a muscle. It must be used or it will weather away. You also have to fuel your desire – take small wins to get you started. If you can’t muster up the willpower to go to the gym, go for a walk. Note that willpower, or the lack thereof, can be an indicator of what your body actually needs. If you really can’t muster the willpower to hit the gym, maybe your body just needs to recover. When this is the case, over-training is a greater danger than a lack of willpower.
13. You are full of excuses. If you find yourself getting into little self-contained internal arguments throughout the day (and you lose), or (worse) lying to yourself about what you’re eating and doing, If so, you’re probably too full of excuses. Read it twice, then get on with it.
14. You haven’t actually been to Primal! We regularly get a good number of new readers, and not all of them take to Primal concepts right away. And yet they come back. They read archives, comments. Something draws them closer, while at the same time keeping them at arm’s length. Why so? What’s stopping them? If that describes you, what are you waiting for? To decide. Try Primal for 30 days and see how you like it. I assure you; Many enthusiastic community members are here because it works.
15. You’re not getting enough sleep. Chronic levels of sleep deprivation cause the release of cortisol, our old fat-storing friend. The greatest increase in (fat burning, anabolic) growth hormone plasma levels occurs in deep sleep. And a recent sleep study showed that poor sleep patterns are associated with weight gain. Get seven to eight hours of sleep at night.
16. You haven’t given it enough time. The Primal Blueprint is undoubtedly a fat loss hack, but it’s not always a shortcut. Some people get instant results from giving up carbs, grains, sugar and vegetable oils, while others take a month to get used to and only then start losing weight. Either way, though, it’s a lifestyle. You are in this for the long run. Approach it with the right mindset and you won’t be disappointed.
17. You’re eating too much dairy. Some people just react badly to dairy. We see this listed time and again in forums; Dairy just causes major stalls in fat loss for a good number of people. There are some speculative reasons for this. One, people coming from a strict Paleo background may not be attuned to Primal’s more relaxed stance on dairy. Re-introducing any food into the diet after a period of restriction can have unintended consequences on body composition. Two, dairy is insulinogenic, which is why it’s a popular post-workout refueling tool for athletes. Does a non-strength training PBer need to drink a few glasses of milk a day? Probably (definitely) not.
Bonus reason: Sprinting doesn’t have to be part of your fitness routine. I’ve found that many people believe they are getting all they need from their workouts with a very low level of aerobic activity and a few strength training sessions each week. Sprinting is often overlooked, but it is one of the Primal Blueprint Laws for a reason. Nothing bites you faster than running. If you’ve never done them or you’re in great shape or overweight, I’d ease into sprints. That is, I recommend that you do some measure of fitness before jumping into the routine. But once you’re ready, do 6-8 all-out sprints (with short breaks in between) once a week to break a weight loss plateau when all else has failed.
Consult with Tanya via Skype, email, FaceTime or phone. http://www.tanyaevans.com
Source by Tanya Norris
