How Much Weight Loss Can You Expect On The Paleo Diet?

There are many good reasons for adopting a paleo diet plan – to alleviate allergies and autoimmune symptoms, for general good health – but it can also be an effective way to lose excess weight.

So just how much weight can you expect to lose with a paleo/primal diet?

It’s different for everyone…

The answer is it’s going to be different for each individual. One person might lose 14 pounds in the first two weeks, for another it might take six months to a year to lose the same amount.

There are many reasons why weight loss will be different for everyone including your age, gender, current state of health and how much weight you need to lose in the first place.

How many diets you’ve tried in the past, lack of sleep, stress and how insulin resistant your body is are also factors in how quickly and how much weight you will lose.

In any case, it’s far more desirable to concentrate on gaining optimal health and watch your body get leaner and stronger as a consequence rather than concentrating just on weight loss.

The problem with crash diets…

Crash diets for example may be effective for losing weight quickly but they also play havoc with your body’s hormonal balance.  Crash diets elicit the body’s natural starvation response which only works to eventually screw up your metabolism.

The other undesirable effect is you lose lean muscle mass as well as stored fat.  Once you go back to your old eating habits the weight will only pile back on, plus some, and will be mostly all fat rather than regaining any lean muscle back.

How the easy paleo diet plan can help…

By concentrating on nutrient dense, natural whole foods you will be able to maintain and even add to your lean muscle while effortlessly losing excess stored body fat.  And you won’t feel hungry and miserable like you would on a low-fat, low-calorie diet.

You’ll also reduce systemic inflammation in your body as well as remove the toxic foods which are the culprits in fat gain in the first place.

Here are my top tips for fat loss success on the paleo diet plan:-

• Remove gluten containing grains, sugar and omega-6 rich seed oils from your diet (these are the toxic foods that lead to systemic inflammation and fat gain).
• Eat three meals a day and eat a minimum 30g of protein with every meal.  This is especially important at breakfast time.
• Your main protein sources should be from red meat, eggs, oily fish, other seafood and poultry.
• Eat between 30g – 100g of carbs a day depending on your activity levels.  Reduce to the lower end if you’re not losing any weight, increase if you’re losing too quickly or feeling a lack of energy.
• Your main sources of carbs should be from starchy vegetables such as sweet potato, yams and white potatoes.  A little white rice is OK.  Fruit is OK in moderation (1-2 servings a day)
• Over half of your calories should come from healthy fats and oils such as avocado, olive oil, coconut oil and butter/ghee and from what you get from meat, eggs and fish.
• Fill your plate up with plenty of multi-coloured vegetables either raw, steamed or gently sautéed.
• Eat until your hunger is fully satisfied. No more, no less.
• Go for a 30 minute walk every day and do some resistance/weight bearing exercise a couple of times a week.
• Get a good night’s sleep.

By lowering your carb intake from what you eat normally, you may see a fairly rapid weight loss of 7lbs to 10lbs in the first couple of weeks.

This should normalize to about 2lbs to 3lbs per week thereafter.  Any faster and you may be losing lean muscle as well as fat and you are not eating enough according to the guidelines above.