1. You think you’re eating healthy, but you’re not. Does your diet consist of a large number of “products”? Low carb or no, you want to eat real food. Bottles of diet soda, pure fiber noodle dishes, and loaves of 1g net carb “bread” do not constitute a Primal eating plan. You’re just feeding an addiction and consuming empty calories, sound familiar? Ignore the labels and look inside for what you know to be true: this crap is not food and you shouldn’t be eating it. It is about much more than a low-carb diet.

2. You are under too much stress. The stress response system is subconscious; responds to stimuli and nothing else. Emotional stress, physical stress, financial stress, relationship stress—I hesitate to even make these distinctions, because the body doesn’t differentiate between sources of stress. They all cause the body to produce cortisol, the fight-or-flight hormone that catabolizes muscle, worsens insulin resistance, and promotes fat storage. For 200,000 years, stress was a life or death situation. It was intense and infrequent, and the cortisol release was intense and extreme enough to improve the chances of survival. Today, our bodies respond to a pile of paperwork in the same way. Traffic jams are like rival war gangs. A nagging boss is like a rampaging behemoth, only on a daily basis. He takes a step back in your life and take stock of your stress levels; they may be holding you back.

3. You must control your carbohydrate intake. Carbs are key, as always, especially when you have weight to lose. Veer closer to the bottom of the curve, being careful to avoid all processed foods (hidden sugars). You can also try skipping the fruit.

4. You are adding muscle. I always tell people not to get so hung up on the scale. Those things are helpful, don’t get me wrong, but they never tell the whole story, like whether or not you’re adding lean mass. PB will stimulate fat loss, but it also promotes muscle gain and better bone density. If you feel fine but don’t see any improvement in your scale measurements, it’s most likely extra muscle and stronger bones from resistance training. You wouldn’t know just from the bathroom scale. If you absolutely need objective records of your progress, get a body fat percentage test (although they may not even tell the whole story) or try measuring your waist.

5. You are not active enough. Do you frequently move at a slow pace for three to five hours each week? Remember: almost daily low-level movement (between 55-75% of maximum heart rate) should be the foundation of your exercise regimen. It’s easy to do (because every move counts) and it doesn’t dip into your glycogen stores (making it a pure fat burner, not a sugar burner). If you’re on the lower end of the spectrum, bump it up to five hours a week and higher.

6. You are falling into Chronic Cardio. Of course, you can go too far with low level movement – you can start to drop into Chronic Cardio. When you stay above 75% of your maximum heart rate for long periods of time, you are burning glycogen. In turn, your body craves even more sugar to replenish lost stores, so you end up with plenty of carbs, preferably simple, fast-acting ones. You can continue down this path if you want, I did for a couple of 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 seemingly tried everything else, intermittent fasting can be a great tool for breaking the weight loss plateau. Make sure you have fully transitioned to a Primal eating plan and start small. Skip breakfast and eat a late lunch. If you feel fine, skip breakfast and lunch next time. Just take it easy and pay attention to your hunger. Eventually, try exercising in a fast state to maximize your metabolic advantage. If all goes well, your hunger won’t necessarily go away, but it will change. A successful IF controls hunger, makes it less insistent and demanding.

8. You are eating too much. The low carb diet is not magic. It increases wild hunger and controls insulin, but calories are still important, especially once you get close to your goal weight. In fact, those last few pounds often don’t respond to the very things that worked so well to get you to this point. Eating nut butter by the spoonful and chunks of cheese without regard for calorie content may have gotten you this far, but you should adjust things if things don’t work out. And that’s the real test, right? There is a metabolic advantage to eating according to BP, but if the weight isn’t coming off, something is up and the calories may need to go down.

9. You have neither overcome bad habits nor developed good ones. Be brutally honest with yourself. Do you dedicate yourself to bad clothes? If so, identify them. Make an attempt, drop plans to free yourself from his clutches and tell those close to you about it. Make it public, so you can’t back out without losing face. You also have to develop good ones. Follow roughly similar guidelines to kicking a bad habit (identify, plan, post) and you’ll be on your way.

10. You haven’t purged and primalized your pantry. Out of sight, out of mind; out of reach, out of mouth. Keep shitty junk food out of your pantry, if not out of your house altogether. Go through the list and discard the things that don’t apply. As for the rest of your kitchen, take a look at other Primal’s refrigerator interiors and shopping lists for inspiration.

11. You have achieved a healthy homeostasis. It may be that your body has reached its “ideal” weight, its effective genetic set point. Reaching this level is generally painless and effortless, but it will not necessarily correspond to the desired level of leanness. Women, especially, tend to achieve healthy homeostasis with higher levels of body fat. Breaking through plateaus can be quite difficult, but plateaus ordered by the body itself can be next to impossible. Some serious adjustments with carbs, calories, activity levels, sleep, and stress are likely to be needed. If all else is in order and taken into account, you may be looking for healthy homeostasis. So the question is: do you want to mess with something good?

12. You have little willpower. Willpower is like a muscle. It must be used or it will atrophy. It must also provide fuel for your will – small victories to start with. Take a walk if you can’t muster the will to go to the gym. Keep in mind that willpower, or lack thereof, could actually be an indicator of your body’s needs. If you really can’t muster the will to go to the gym, your body may need to recover. When that’s the case, overtraining is a greater danger than a lack of will.

13. You are full of excuses. If you find yourself having little independent internal arguments throughout the day (and losing) or (worse yet) lying to yourself about what you’re eating and doing, you’re probably full of excuses too. Read this, maybe twice, then get on with this.

14. You haven’t actually gone Primal! We get a good number of new readers on a regular basis, and not all of them instantly adapt to the concepts of Primal. And yet they come back. They read the files, the comments. Something brings them closer, while at the same time keeping them at a distance. Why is that? What stops them? If that describes you, what are you waiting for? Take the decisive step. Go Primal for 30 days and see how you like it. I assure; the many enthusiastic members of the community are here because it works.

15. You are not getting enough sleep. Chronic levels of sleep deprivation trigger the release of cortisol, our old fat-storing friend. The greatest peak in plasma levels of growth hormone (fat burning, anabolic) occurs during deep sleep. And a recent sleep study showed that truncated sleep patterns are linked to weight gain. Get seven to eight hours of sleep a night.

16. You haven’t given him enough time. The Primal Blueprint is a fat loss trick, to be sure, but it’s not always a shortcut. Some people get instant results by cutting out carbs, grains, sugar, and vegetable oils, while others need a month to acclimatize, and only then does the weight begin to drop. Either way though, this is a lifestyle. You’re in this for the long haul. Approach with the right mindset and you won’t be discouraged.

17. You are eating too much dairy. Some people just react badly to dairy. We see this over and over again on the forums; dairy products seem to cause big plateaus in fat loss for a good number of people. There are a couple of speculative reasons for this. One, people who come from a strict paleo background may not be acclimated to the more relaxed Primal stance on dairy. The reintroduction of any food into the diet after a period of restriction may have unintended consequences on body composition. Two, dairy is insulinogenic, which is why it’s a popular post-workout fueling tool for athletes. Does a Pber without strength training need to drink a few glasses of milk every day? Probably (definitely) not.

Bonus reason: Running isn’t part of your exercise routine. I’ve found that many assume they’re getting all they need from their workouts with lots of low-level aerobic activity and a couple strength training sessions each week. Running is often overlooked, but it is one of the primary laws of the model for a reason. Nothing tears you apart faster than running. I’d like to do sprints if you’ve never done them before or if you’re extremely out of shape or overweight. That is, I recommend that you have some measure of physical fitness before starting a routine. But once you’re ready, do 6-8 sprints (with short breaks in between) once a week to break through a weight-loss plateau when all other attempts have failed.

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