The psychology of plateaus — what worked for you?

AmyNC_wife 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 213 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.

LarryQC_SD said:

Plateau breaking story with a stall: I stalled at 213 lbs for 6 weeks.

LarryQC_SD has the substance of this right. The condition it depends on is worth stating. 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.

AmyNC_wife 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…

Can confirm. Same sequence, different timescale. The detail I would add is minor and it is already implied above.

From the other side of the consultation, briefly. Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it. The narrow version usually has an answer; the broad version usually does not, and answering the broad one is how a thread stops being useful.