Stalls are broken by time and staying the course. They aren't broken by quick tricks.

Also, as was said, you aren't even on a stall. I was just showing someone how I had 5 consecutive weigh ins where my weight was up, but I was losing the whole time. Ignore the scale.

I was just having this conversation with someone who is going keto and had three weekly weigh-ins where his scale didn't move. He was worried about it being a stall. I urged him to change nothing and explained that he didn't have nearly enough data-points to draw a conclusion. Let's not even talk about the fact that three weigh-ins (the last one which was a day early) are only 13 days worth of time.

How many data points, and how often do you need them, to know your weight is stalled?

Way more than you think!

If three weekly ones are not enough, how about four? five?

During my initial keto/carnivore weight loss, I tracked every day. I went and picked some weights that were [about] a week apart. In order, they were:

1. 76.5 kg
2. 77.3 kg
3. 77.6 kg
4. 76.8 kg
5. 76.6 kg

These are actually six days apart, first because I would always weigh in a day early. Second, because I did cherry pick a little for a "week-ish" timeframe that was misleadingly high. I did keep the gaps the same size. So, I didn't just pick the highest days. Still, it is FIVE weigh-ins and a time period of 24 days (almost a month) of weights. And I was up the whole time, and still up at the end! It is completely possible for you to have a similar thing happen where your weigh-ins happen to correspond to high-points on the scale by chance alone.

Those five weekly data points should be enough, right?

Not really, here is the graph of the weights for that time period.


Does it look like the graph is going up or down? It looks slanted down to me. More frequent data points certainly changed what the graph looks like. Now, look at the whole year.



Unless you're looking at the dates and comparing the graphs, it's hard to even notice the "stall" period. That month that looks like mediocre weight loss is invisible when you look at the whole year. It is just part of a downward line towards my goal weight. From October 13th to June 1st, I dropped 20.6 kg / 45.4 lbs at a rate of -0.63 kg/week / 1.4 lbs/week. That's a really respectable average weight loss. But, if I had only been weighing in weekly and you asked me what was going on in March, I would have told you that the scale wasn't moving and was going up.

How many data points? Way more than you think! Dozens, at least. Over how long of a time? Way longer than you think! Months.

BTW: That bump at the end of the graph (June) is a whole month of self-experimentation with including artificial sweeteners into my normal ad libitum way of eating (the whole year I ate to hunger and never restricted calories). That's a story for another time. But, once I cut them back out, the weight went right back into the normal slope it was on until I slid into the weight that was right for my body.