How long was your weight loss plateau?

MrsPinterest34

I know weight loss is not linear. For those who have been losing weight successfully how long was your weight loss plateau before you saw a drop? How much did you lose after the plateau? Did you make any changes to stop the plateau or did you continue with your current fitness plan as long as you maintained a caloric deficit?

cathipa

A true plateau is no change (physical or scale) longer than 6 weeks. If no change then I drop 100 cal and alter my carb and fat macros.

Mycophilia

Never had any unplanned stops in my weight loss the first time around. Lost 41kg over the span of 16ish months.

T1DCarnivoreRunner

I have had more than 1 plateau, but the longest true plateau was almost 6 months. After 2 months of frustration because I was eating at a deficit and not losing, I made some changes. This was a compromise over quitting entirely... but the change was that I ate almost nothing every other day and then would allow as much as I wanted on other days. It was an unusual version of IF, but of course I was eating at more than double maintenance overall (around 10K calories every other day). I did that for 6 weeks and was still in a plateau, meaning I didn't gain any weight or lose any weight overall. Day-to-day fluctuations became much larger during this plan, but there was still no weight change overall... because of course, that is what a true plateau means, by definition.

After 6 weeks of that, I returned to a small daily deficit knowing that I was definitely in a true plateau (as evidenced by the fact that I didn't gain despite eating way over TDEE) and it would eventually end. After 2 more months, it did end with about 9 lbs. loss in less than 1 week. Afterwards, I went back to losing more consistently until the next plateau. I'm sure that the whoosh would have been larger if I had not eaten at such a high calorie level for those 6 weeks.

There isn't anything I can say I've done during any of my plateaus that has forced the 'whoosh.' It just had to come on its own.

kommodevaran

I've never had a weight loss plateau and I'm not really sure what it means or if they really exist.