How long does a weight plateau usually last?

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teachfanelli45
teachfanelli45 Posts: 4 Member
in MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions
I have plateaued for two weeks. Am I doing something wrong? I'm following my plan and walking every day...I feel great but have 15 pounds to go

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  • sarabushby
    sarabushby Posts: 784 Member
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    Without knowing your stats for height, weight, daily intake & deficit plus activity levels and weight loss to date timescales etc it’s hard to know if you’re genuinely eating at maintenance or you’re about to see a shift.

    Have you done the obvious like check the batteries in your scale? Have you tried weighing in, hop off, grab something heavy, get bank on, get off and weigh again without the heavy object? Some scales seem to falsely self calibrate to the last value.

    Once you let us know your stats then you may find it be beneficial to invite feedback on your diary for logging as the more experienced folk have been there made that mistake themselves so can quickly recognise areas that might be tripping you up.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,111 Member
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    2 weeks isn't that long. If after 6-8 weeks or (if applicable) 1 or 2 menstrual cycles (comparing the same relative points in your cycle) you haven't lost weight, then you can start to wonder if you need to adapt your plan.
    I once had a 3 week long plateau (actually seemed like a weight increase even) when I increased my step count.
    You might want to use a weight trending app like Libra or Happyscale, sometimes weight fluctuations can obscure your real weight trend.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,081 Member
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    Not a for sure thing, but if weight loss tapered off slowly over a period of a couple of months, without a noticeable change in your food look or daily life/exercise activity levels, it's a little more likely that you've reached maintenance calories. If, on the other hand, you'd been losing at a reasonable pace but then suddenly stopped losing scale weight, and none of eating, daily life activity or exercise changed, it's probably just a water retention effect of some kind.

    Probabilities only, though - not guarantees.

    Potentially useful information in these threads, in case you haven't already seen them:

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1
    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1
  • Sandie2102
    Sandie2102 Posts: 60 Member
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    I'm currently sitting on a stupid plateau as well. And I'm not really concerned (well for now anyway). Right now it's more of a battle with the scale not giving me the .3lbs that I need to get to Onderland. Plus I set a goal of 30lbs by my vacation (set that at 25lbs down and 6 weeks to go so a very realistic goal based on my weigh loss pattern) so now I figure the scale is just screwing with me. Well, I'm having the last laugh, because this stupid plateau has forced me to up my water intake and really focus on healthy food choices. Win for me!!!!

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