The psychology of plateaus — anyone have experience?

Dr.ObesityMed said:

Thirteen weeks at the same dose with no change on the scale, and I have gone from assuming it was the drug to assuming it was me and back several…

Plateau breaking story with a stall: I stalled at 204 lbs for 6 weeks. Tried everything — calorie cycling, increased exercise, more water. Nothing worked.

What finally broke the plateau: increasing protein to 150g/day. Lost 5 lbs in the next 2 weeks. Plateaus are temporary — they always break if you stay consistent.

Dr.SportsMedIN said:

Plateau breaking story with a stall: I stalled at 204 lbs for 6 weeks.

That is correct as far as it goes, and here is where it stops going. Most reported plateaus are not plateaus. Weight is a noisy signal — daily variation of one to two kilograms from glycogen, sodium and gut contents — so a fortnight of flat readings is well inside the noise band. Before concluding anything, look at a rolling weekly average over at least four weeks and at a tape measure, because recomposition shows up in circumference before it shows up in weight. Then track intake honestly for a week: appetite suppression fades unevenly, and intake creeping back up is the single commonest cause.

Dr.ObesityMed said:

Thirteen weeks at the same dose with no change on the scale, and I have gone from assuming it was the drug to assuming it was me and back several…

This matches mine closely enough to be worth saying so out loud.

From the other side of the consultation, briefly. The useful move here is to separate what is established from what is widely repeated. Those two sets overlap less than the confident tone of most write-ups suggests, and the second set is where nearly all the disagreement on this board comes from.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.