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I follow a paleo-style diet and eat 3 big meals a day with occasional snacking on fruits or nuts. In addition, I exercise both cardio and weight-lifting 5 days a week. Ever since getting on paleo, my body fat levels have fluctuated between 8-12%. Anytime I drop below about 10%, I experience a lack of energy and often get drowsy throughout the day. How common is this lack of energy and drowsiness for people with low body fat percentages, and what do they do to avoid it?

Additional Details:

Measurements

I measure my body fat with calipers and the 7 skin fold measurements. I know that calipers typically underestimate body fat, so I add 3-4% to my results.

Diet

I typically eat around 3000-3500 calories per day. Although I do not calorie count regularly, so my numbers may vary from meal to meal and day to day.

Breakfast: 500-1000 calories.

Lunch: 500-1000 calories.

Dinner: 1000-1500 calories.

Snacks (usually 2x daily): 300-500 calories.

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  • Your idea of what a "big" meal is may vastly differ from others, can you clarify how much you eat in a day using calories? Can you also clarify how you measured your bodyfat% ?
    – John
    Jul 7, 2016 at 6:45
  • @ThanksInAdvance are you male, or female? Also, are you measuring 8% and adding 4% to get to 12, or are you measuring 4%. It may be that you are attempting to get to a body fat that is too low for you.
    – michael
    Jul 8, 2016 at 19:29

1 Answer 1

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Potentially your issue could be water weight. The more dehydrated you are the more lethargic you can be, not sure how calliper's reflect this but the handheld composition devices are heavily skewed by water level, more dehydrated means lower bodyfat numbers on those devices.

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