What always works for me is more gentle moving.

Walking 1-2 hours. Gardening, house-cleaning--moving slowly, but for long periods of time.

If your cortisol levels are too high (mine would be if I did that much Crossfit!), then you may want to decrease your workouts to 2x/week and add in the gentle walking.

If you only made the changes a month ago, any changes you made may not be showing yet. Having pizza last weekend and ice cream this weekend means that in a month, you have "cheated" on 2 of the weeks. I would not expect to see results with that type of eating.

When I have been stuck on a plateau, it has taken as much as 12 weeks of being strict to see the results I wanted. You need to make the changes and stick with them for at least 4 full weeks, despite what the scale is telling you.

I would also recommend tracking your food intake, even if you are eating all healthy food it is possible to overeat. Once you know what your typical intake is, if you drop it my 10-15% you should see results.

It seems like you've already tried the low carb thing and its clearly not working. Personally I would go in the opposite direction and try a lower fat approach, still eat the meat and eggs but stop using added fat and add lightly salted tubers. Eat to appetite and do lots of walking preferably fasted.

I think in your situation the increase in nutrients and volume from tubers will help a lot to help you stay more satiated at a lower amount of cals.

Lot's of interesting advice here. I'd just add that as BaconHealsChic points out, 20% is already very lean. It's really hard to lose fat after that point for a woman. I'd even venture to say it's unnatural, and you probably won't get leaner just by eating healthily. You're already basically at the boundary of athletic (vs. just fit) fat levels, and going lower, if that's what you really want, is going to probably involve lots of intense exercise and calorie restriction.

http://everydaypaleo.com/2011/07/27/why-isnt-this-working/#more-2723

Great article on Sarah Fragoso's blog about this.

First, let me say, I know what you are feeling. I've been here too. Still am. Since starting Paleo, I've lost at most, 6-8 pounds. Disappointing because I was hoping to lose at least twice that. Many times I've been tempted to give up and eat crap too because it wasn't working. Funny thing though, my body started having other ideas. I tried to eat ice cream just last night. I figured, I'm on vacation, I can cheat a little right? I was nauseated. I didn't finish the ice cream because I felt sick. That has NEVER happened to me before.

My two cents to you- log all food. You may not be as compliant as you think. And second, find a more compelling reason to do this then just what the scale says. This is about your health. Your body deserves to be fed real, whole food and you deserve to be healthy. Focus on that instead of what the scale says. When you focus on just being healthy, the healthy weight will happen on it's own.

Good luck- hang in there!

Although we've not heard about your diet in great detail, it sounds like you're eating pretty well. Obviously one might suggest cutting the fruit out entirely, but you may already have done that when you tried cutting sugar.

You say your ratios are 60:25:15 or 50:25:25 (fat:protein:carbs). Given what you say about your diet, I'm surprised you manage to reach 15-25% calories from carbs. Assuming 2000 calories per day, that's still 75-125g per day, which is more than you'd get from a couple of servings of fruit. You may be one of these people for whom a very small amount of carbohydrate makes a great amount of difference, so you might try going strictly VLC. You could try experimenting with protein. 25% is a very reasonable amount, but eating more (without added fat calories) might allow you to eat less overall. Also if you don't have any digestive issues you could try adding lots of bulky low calorie vegetables, like brocolli, cabbage, spinach, crucifers etc.

As I say though, your diet doesn't sound unreasonable, so I'd probably try mixing up your exercise regime. I've never cross-fitted personally, but I would suggest trying some more intense and some longer, less intense exercise. Obviously properly intense weights or sprints, which require a couple of days rest afterwards are the cornerstone of a workout program, but personally I find that to lose weight I do best with quite long workouts at a low intensity. Were I able to walk around and keep active all day that would be idea, but since I'm at a desk virtually all the time, I try to compensate by doing an hour to an hour and a half low-moderate intensity cardio.

when did you start and how much do you have to lose? are you just going by the scale cos it may be that you are losing inches and are not even aware...pick a peice of clothing and use that as your guide a couple of times a week!

are you eating nuts? maybe cut back on those...

are you taking fish oil~? if so, start..

maybe switch to stevia instead of your 1/2 fruit and honey per day..

are you weight training? this helps

Hey, I know how you feel, I'm right there with you. I thought I had hit a plateau and felt really frustrated but then put on a pair of jeans I haven't fit into since 2000 (!) and they are a little loose now! So even though the scales weren't showing me what I wanted to see, my body has been shedding fat, and due to my workouts, building muscle.

YES, it's frustrating, but you have to remember that your body deserves to be fed the best food, and to feel the best it can feel - you WILL get to that number on the scales.

Personally I believe in the occasional cheat meal, and feel it actually helps me shed pounds because psychologically I don't feel like I'm 'on a diet'.

Paleo is a way of life, to prolong your life and to feel amazing whilst living it.

Hang in there.

My Naturopath always encourages me to go back to basics - the palm method 3 times a day. ( eat protein the size of your palm - thickness and length 3 times a day , 1/2 that volume again if doing exercise. Also cup your hands together and make a bowl - now eat that bowl of green veg at least 3 times a day more if hungry. NO white VEG just green!) Do this for a few wks you will start to lose weight right away ( its calorie poor too but you dont seem to be hungry) then start adding in more things like fat and color veg - a bit wk by wk till you put on a KG. At that point you will know what you should not be having cut it out till you have lost the weight and start adding in again till you stay stable.

Back to basic ! you should drop about 2kg a wk on this method. Nevertheless good to do every other month to keep you on track.

Its early days for you - but if you struggle go to a professional who is up with Paleo or ketogenic diet to help you well worth it.

I can relate to that. You sound pretty lean at 20% bodyfat however so bodyfat loss may be slower. I am doing The Quilt's Leptin reset protocol right now and I'm finding it helpful. I did not gain much weight on my ice cream/pizza cheats but I found myself in carb crave hell and knew which direction it was heading. I just started but if you want something structured you can find the protocol and paleohacks link here

I agree with honey badger, log all your food. There's an iphone app called pic healthy that is great for that. Since you just take photos rather than writing things down it's easy to do it for everything you eat. After I started using it I realised I wasn't nearly as compliant as I thought and began to lose weight again.

Also I suggest reading a book such as 'In defense of food', something that will make you not want to put bad food in your body. If you need will power to stay paleo you won't be able to keep at it indefinitely, you need to change your mindset so there's no effort involved.

I had exactly the same issues. Infact i was getting less fit and losing strength from being too strict Paleo. Grains and legumes are still out, period.

I've had to play about with the macronutrient ratio, total kcals etc but am starting to get it right and see good results. the starting place should always be total Kcals. In my case i've found that I need at least 3000 kcals per day. Then comes protein intake. I'm 210lbs so 210g of protein a day. each gram of protein works out as 4 kcals so thats 840 of my daily calorific requirements. that leaves 2160 i need to get from Carbs and Fat. and that is where the tinkering comes in. the protein should always stay the same. start with carbs making up 25% and fats 75% see how you feel then try 30/70, 40/60 until it's right for you.

On training days take on more carbs than you would on rest days but remember to reduce fats and total kcals. also on training days try to take in at least 50% of your total carbs and 25% protein within an hour of your WOD. I do this by having a smoothie of 500ml fruit juice 1x banana,100grams frozen fruit, dried egg white powder and bcaas. then a handful of raisins. this is within 30 mins. then within an hour I will have eaten some strarchy veggies usually sweet potatoes or mashed white potatoes (not strictly paleo, but as you've found strict paleo and crossfit improvement don't mix) along with oily fish to make up the rest of my Post wod nutrition. again this can vary the harder/longer the wod the more Kcals from protein and carbs you wanna be taking on board.

There are just way too many variables but getting post wod nutrition, macronutient% break down and total kcals right is a good starting point.

Hope this helps

If you haven’t really lost much weight to begin with, then I don’t know if I would call it a plateau. In this case you probably need to eat less food or do more fasted exercise. Fasted, long duration, light to moderate cardio seems to work really well.

If you have lost (non-water) weight then stalled, then it is more complicated. Maybe you just need less food now that you are carrying around less weight. Or maybe your body has adapted to your diet and you need to change things up. Sometimes you have to eat more to get your body out of diet mode for a while, then restart the diet.

In my opinion, I would talk to your CrossFit coaches and explain how you're feeling and your frustration in addition to the advice that's given in your post. They're probably Paleo and can work with you. Also, does your box have a nutritionist? I find it helpful to talk to my coaches face to face. I had difficulties in the beginning keeping the weight on and worked with them on my lifting and other sporto activities, and it's been a steady gain ever since. It took several months but I'm happily on track. I'm good with my food so I knew what I had to do there to keep the build steady and feed my muscles, but it's hard if you're new at it.

At least for me, when I would plateau racing, I took a couple of weeks off then went back into the pool. Kind of like my body was saying "heeyyy you need to stop it right now please, I'm tired." Still intense workouts when I got back in but not doubles 6 days a week. Now with CF I'm really conscience about mixing things up so 3 days lift, 1 day METCON, just added 1-day Bikram, and I cycle 20-30 miles a week on my bike - instead of the 100+. And on off days some light body work in my apartment.

Could you maybe update your post with some more information? How many calories are you taking in, what does your day of food look like, how many days were you working out, etc.

Be patient.. as frustrating as it is. Plateaus blow but I've seen success and it will come to you soon.

What I would try:

1) Remove milk. In my understanding, drinking calories is helpful when you want to gain weight.

2) Instead of crossfit, try long walks (at least 10 miles per week), and optionally do strength training: more muscles will increase your Basal metabolic rate, so you will be burning more calories during the rest.

I've been going through the same thing for awhile too. My diet is similar to yours with less dairy.

Started at a pretty unfit 151 and I'm now down to a much more fit 141 but I'd really like to lose more fat and scale weight. I certainly look better, pretty good in fact, but could be better. Been about 9 months.

I try not to weigh myself too much because I can go up and down 5 pounds pretty easily, I can have one day when I'm under 140 and be very excited and then 2 days later I'm up to 145, so I've learned to pretty much ignore the scale and just use it as a guideline.

I've tried everything too, drastically lowered carbs, cut out fruit, added dairy, taken dairy away, my diet is very strict at this point and I still see no change in weight loss.

I've been doing workouts from this website for 4 months, very short intense sessions and I've seen results (more muscles) from that, and I like that they are short and I can knock them out quickly. It's free which is great.

www.bodyrock.tv

Don't know what else to do at this point, good luck and tell us how you're progressing!

I've had success with absolutely no alcohol for a month, 2 large meals with no snacking, lots more starchy carbs, and weight lifting with plenty of rest. Now, this is just my experience, but they're some things to try