How do you handle weight plateaus?

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kgoodman2018
kgoodman2018 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
How do you handle weight plataus?

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  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,164 Member
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    If I'm certain my eating and activity are where they need to be, I assume the scale stall is some kind of water retention weirdness, and wait it out. Usually, there'll be a scale drop at some point.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,394 Member
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    By accepting that weight is so much more than bodyfat. Your weight is made up of various fluids, their amount change due to variations in so many things like hydration, hormone cycle, what you ate, etc. Of waste in your digestive tract. Of the clothes you wear. Of when you've last eaten. Other things. Weight constantly fluctuates throughout the day and from day to day. Accept it. Sometimes, all these factors might hide fat loss for a while. At other times they might make it seem like you've lost a ton.
  • FibroHiker
    FibroHiker Posts: 342 Member
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    Sometimes a plateau isn't a plateau. When I was losing my post pregnancy weight 2006-2007, it took me six months to lose the last 10 lb. That's an average of only 1.6 pounds per month. At the time it certainly felt like I was plateauing. I decided to look at it another way and prevented myself from weighing more than once a month. That was really hard. I wanted reassurance more frequently that I was making progress. But only weighing once a month showed that while my progress was slow, I was still making progress. I could compare the weight between months and saw that I still moving in the right direction. Some months there would only be a 1 lb. difference.

    Another way to track the difference would be to take pictures. I read one website of a guy who did this and viewed his weekly pictures. He wasn't losing much weight each week but the results of his efforts over time were definitely visible.
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 1,624 Member
    edited April 7
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    It depends on how long the plateau is. 1-2 weeks no concern.

    3 weeks start getting a bit concerned. Womens cycles can interfere even longer.

    4-6 weeks something is going on so review your data. Calorie goals set too high? Are you measuring food and drinks accurately? Are you tracking daily or only certain days? Is your weekly average your daily target? If you're figuring exercise into the equation are you figuring your calorie burn too high? If you've lost a decent amount of weight have you lowered your calorie target?

    These are some of the questions to start asking and looking into.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,637 Member
    edited April 7
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    I find @tomcustombuilder 's new / now more complete answer to the question much more insightful!

    To the question.

    Are you SURE your weight is not changing? The first answer is almost always patience and expectations

    A slower weight loss can even have your month over month weight actually show an increase if you measure at the right=wrong time!

    Beyond that you will need to provide more data because the answers are similar but not universal and involve trouble shooting each individual situation.

    And I can think of situations where keep track better, eat less or move more or both, eat differently, move less, and even eat more could all come into play.... some WAY more often than others.

    Start by height, start weight, current weight, food intake, activity levels, logging habits, etc ...

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