The NoYoYo Protocol

Talk to your doctor before following this protocol.

Clients tell me how they lost a bunch of weight in the past, reached their goal, only to gain it all back again. 

Often they’ve done this round trip multiple times over years of struggling to get lean and stay lean.

This YoYo effect is pretty common.

People get amped to lose weight, adopt seemingly healthy but unsustainable diets for a while, and reach their goal or come close. But then, they begin gaining again at first gradually with small missteps and then quickly with the abandonment of discipline.

It’s frustrating and after multiple cycles of success then failure, it can foster a sense of hopelessness towards ever staying lean for the long term. 

Traditional Diets Are Unsustainable

The YoYo Effect occurs, in part, because popular approaches to weight loss are unsatisfactory.

Most notably, calorie restriction is unsustainable and willpower, as a long-term approach to healthy nutrition, is severely flawed.

We can only do things by fighting human nature for so long before we whiplash and reality sets back in.

People can eat less for a time. We can even reach a goal for an event like a wedding, but constant hunger gets the best of even the most disciplined.

So how do we approach getting lean so that we don’t experience the YoYo Effect?

The NoYo Protocol

The NoYo Protocol provides a blueprint for weight loss that avoids the frustrating YoYo weight loss > gain cycle described above.

There are two sections to the protocol.

Section One is called The Mechanics. This is the how-to. It is straightforward and not based on willpower or calorie restriction.

Section Two addresses the psychology of weight loss and provides a way to think about, cultivate, and identify with a permanently lean self-concept.

Section One: The Mechanics

The Mechanics or How-To are straightforward. They focus on specific behaviors while avoiding calorie restriction completely. 

They appear controversial only because the current culturally accepted norms are so out of whack.

Here is the How-To:

1. Eat foods with plenty of protein and fat and avoid foods with moderate to high carbohydrates. I recently published a Ketogenic Diet Cheat Sheet that details on one page the specific foods to eat and to avoid.

In brief, eat foods like beef, fish, chicken, eggs, and greens, and avoid foods like breads, rice, and pasta.

The more closely you follow the cheat sheet, the more efficiently your weight loss will proceed.

2. Do Not Restrict Calories in any way shape or form. 

Eat as much as you want until you are no longer hungry. 

This one takes getting used to, because we have been led to believe that proper nutrition requires willpower. It does not.

Eating the right foods until you are sate takes the consistent hunger that is the unsustainable part of calorie restriction diets out of the equation.

3. Eat between 12 PM and 8 PM only. Do not eat from 8 PM to 12 PM the next day. This is a basic Intermittent Fasting regiment. You can read more about getting started intermittent fasting here.

4. Move your body regularly. Walking daily or almost daily is great. Doing more than that is also great. Just get moving.

5. Fill your house with Wheelhouse Foods. Eggs, beef, chicken, plain greek yogurt etc. (See Keto Cheat Sheet linked above).

Rid your house of carbage.

6. Sleep more. If you are not getting enough sleep, here is a Sleep Hygiene Basics Guide that might help.

7. Never stop doing 1-6 above.

Section Two: The Psychology of NoYoYo

We can all change who we are. 

In fact, we are always changing whether we want to or not, so we might as well change with intention.

The Psychology of NoYoYo provides a simple framework for making healthy eating a part of who we are and what we do. 

1. Talk to yourself. 

When you eat a healthy meal of high quality protein and fat and low in carbohydrates, say to yourself, I am a healthy eater.

This might sound ridiculous, but it’s really just classical conditioning, like IvanPavlov, and it can have profound effects.

Every time you eat well and say to yourself, “I am a healthy eater,” you are pairing the statement with the action which is a powerful thing, especially as you repeat it. 

You are etching that statement deeper into your self-perception and pretty soon you will come to believe.

2. Close your eyes and imagine the future self you aspire to be. Go out one year or five or twenty and vividly imagine the person you would love to be at that time.

What do you look like? What do you do? How does your body move? What brings you joy? How do you feel? What are you wearing? Who are you with?

The more vividly you imagine this future person you want to be, the more you connect to that vision of yourself emotionally and spiritually.

Go write this vision of your future self out in detail and revise it as you think of new details. Then, go back and read it often.

3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 over and over again. The more you repeat these, the deeper they will etch themselves into how you think about yourself, who you believe you are, and where you are heading.

How we think about ourselves influences our thoughts and actions.

I recently launched The Pearl Institute where I work with professionals who want to get healthy and stay healthy for the rest of their lives. If you are interested, shoot me an email at [email protected].