Strategy and Tricks for Losing Weight

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Strategy and Tricks for Losing Weight
Most people who switch to a low-carb diet, a paleo diet, or a low-carb paleo diet find excellent success in dropping weight. I, myself, have lost 120 pounds using these strategies (low-carb for the first 100 pounds and paleo for the last 20 pounds). But if your weight-loss seems stalled or too slow, there are some extra tricks that will help you drop weight faster and/or get beyond those natural set points that our bodies all seem to have.

1. Don't Eat for 3-4 Hours Before Bed: When you eat shortly before bed, you boost your metabolism and stimulate growth hormones, which makes it very difficult to drop weight.

2. Get Lots (and Lots and Lots!) Of Sleep: Getting plenty of sleep will help regulate your cortisol levels and give your body plenty of time to rest and repair. If you are prioritizing sleep but still not sleeping well, see my post Trouble Sleeping? for tips.

3. Manage Stress: Do whatever you can to keep your stress level in check. This is about the stress hormone cortisol, which profoundly affects the ease at which our bodies access stored energy, how we metabolize fat compared to sugar, our insulin sensitivity and our leptin (hunger hormone) sensitivity. For more tips on stress management, see my post Managing Stress.

4. Get Lots of Low-Strain Exercise: Things like walking, yoga, and swimming are wonderful for regulating your hormones and minimizing stress (exercise is not about burning calories, it's about regulating hormones). They also build muscle tone without stressing your body. Some light resistance training (yoga, pilates, lifting weights without going nuts) can be very helpful aswell. One of the key points here is that "over-training", by which I mean doing something that is too taxing for your body, ends up boosting cortisol and derailing your weight loss efforts.

5. Get Outside: Our bodies need sunlight. Sun exposure helps regulate our circadian rhythms and our adrenal glands (via the hypothalamus and pituitary gland), which affects cortisol requirement, as well as a whole host of other hormones. If getting outside just isn't possible for you, make sure you are taking a Vitamin D3 supplement (I recommend somewhere in the 2000-10,000 I.U. daily selection).


Most people who switch to a low-carb diet, a paleo diet, or a low-carb paleo diet find excellent success in losing weight. If your weight-loss seems stalled or too slow, there are some extra tricks that will help you lose weight faster and/or get beyond those natural set points that our bodies all seem to have.

Get Lots of Low-Strain Exercise: Things like walking, yoga, and swimming are wonderful for regulating your hormones and minimizing stress (exercise is not about burning calories, it's about regulating hormones). One of the key points here is that "over-training", by which I mean doing something that is too taxing for your body, ends up boosting cortisol and derailing your weight loss efforts.