Let’s get one thing out there right away: Plateaus are a totally normal part of any weight-loss journey. They happen to even the most arduous and motivated health warriors. So don’t beat yourself up if the scale is no longer budging, ya hear? You’re not doomed!
Here’s the thing—some estimates suggest that a large share of people who diet will hit a plateau at some point. That’s the vast majority of us! So if you’re feeling frustrated right now, just know you’re in very good company. The scale stalling doesn’t mean you’ve failed or that your body is somehow broken. It just means your body is doing what bodies do: adapting.
In order to turn things around, your weight-loss strategy most likely needs a few tweaks. Read on to find out the most common exercise and diet traps, and what you can do to bust out of them.
Exercise Culprits
On the fitness side of the equation, there are two main reasons your results may be tapering off. The first: You’re doing the same thing day after day. The second: You’re doing too many different things each week, according to Craig Ballantyne, C.S.C.S., professional trainer, and author of The Great Cardio Myth.
Here’s the issue with too much consistency: “If you do the same exercise program over and over again without increasing your weight, reps, or intensity, you’re no longer stimulating your body to adapt and change,” he says.
On the other hand, if you’re doing too many different types of workouts—for example, lifting weights on Monday, going to spin class on Tuesday, taking a bootcamp class on Wednesday, running intervals on Thursday, and then hitting up CrossFit on Friday, your body can’t make sense of everything that’s happening, says Ballantyne. “You need to give your body time to recover and adapt to what you’re doing,” he says. “It’s not about doing more, more, more; it’s about doing the right things and then letting your body recover.”
Why Your Daily Movement Matters More Than You Think
Here’s something that might surprise you: The calories you burn throughout your regular daily activities—walking to grab coffee, taking the stairs, fidgeting at your desk, even standing while you cook dinner—can actually vary by up to 2,000 calories between different people. Researchers call this NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis), which is just a fancy way of saying “all the movement you do that isn’t a formal workout.”
When you’re in a calorie deficit and losing weight, your body naturally starts conserving energy by making you move around less without you even realizing it. You might:
- Take the elevator instead of the stairs
- Sit down more often
- Fidget less
- Move slower in general
This sneaky slowdown can actually have a bigger impact on your plateau than whether or not you made it to the gym. So pay attention to your everyday movement—not just your scheduled workouts.
To avoid both of these potential pitfalls, Ballantyne recommends picking a lane and making it your primary focus. Since building muscle is the best way to ramp up your fat burn, lifting weights is your most advantageous option, he says.
If you’re going to make strength-training your go-to grind, it should make up the majority of your week’s workouts. But that doesn’t mean you’re bound for boredom. You can switch up what you’re doing by adding days of muscle-building-friendly activities like bootcamp classes between straight lifting days, Ballantyne suggests.
The Muscle-Metabolism Connection
Here’s why strength training is such a game-changer when you’re stuck: Muscle is what keeps your metabolism humming along. When you lose weight through diet alone, you don’t just lose fat—you can lose muscle too. And less muscle means your body needs fewer calories to function, which makes continued weight loss even harder. It’s like a frustrating cycle that feeds itself.
The good news? You can fight back by:
- Prioritizing resistance training 2-3 times per week
- Making sure you’re getting enough protein (around 0.7-1.0 grams per pound of body weight daily)
- Giving your muscles proper rest between workouts
The key: “Don’t let more than three weeks go by without ramping up your intensity,” he says. Whether that means picking up more weight, adding more reps, or performing exercises faster for a bigger heart-rate boost, you have to keep challenging yourself. “As soon as your workout starts to feel easy, make a change,” he says.
Related: The Best Rep Range If You’re Strength Training For Fat Loss
Diet Culprits
If you’re watching what you eat to lose weight, you’ll have to adjust your approach as your body adapts over time, especially when it comes to cutting calories, says Mike Israetel, Ph.D., sports physiologist and co-founder of Renaissance Periodization.
You want to aim to lose around one percent of your bodyweight per week (three pounds for someone who weighs 300 pounds, and a pound and a half for someone who weighs 150 pounds), so the number of calories you may need to cut varies depending on your starting point. In that first month of dieting, a smaller person (say somewhere around 150 pounds) should start by reducing their caloric intake by 250 calories. A larger person (say somewhere around 300 pounds) should start by cutting 500.
The Water Weight Trick
One thing worth knowing: If you lost a bunch of weight really quickly in the first week or two and then everything suddenly stopped, that’s actually completely normal. About 65% of your body weight is water, and when you first cut calories, your body releases stored glycogen (basically energy reserves), which happens to hold onto a lot of water. So that initial rapid drop? A good chunk of it was water weight, not fat.
This is why a healthy, sustainable rate of weight loss is typically 1-2 pounds per week after those first couple of weeks. If you were expecting that initial rapid pace to continue, the “slowdown” you’re experiencing might actually just be what normal, healthy fat loss looks like.
You’ll notice that after a few months, though, this approach will stop working. “As you diet successfully, your body starts to shrink in size,” explains Israetel. “And because fewer calories are required to maintain a lower body weight, your metabolism slows down.” After you make that initial progress, your body needs fewer calories than it did when you started, so your initial nutrition plan becomes less effective.
Related: 6 Possible Reasons Why You’re Still Not Seeing Results From Working Out
Why does this happen? Since our more primitive ancestors’ primary struggle was finding food, not over-consuming it, we’re wired with natural coping mechanisms that kick in when our bodies think food is scarce (a.k.a. when we’re cutting calories).
What’s Happening Inside Your Body
When you cut calories for an extended period, your body responds with some pretty powerful hormonal shifts:
- Leptin (your “I’m full” hormone) decreases, making it harder to feel satisfied
- Ghrelin (your “I’m hungry” hormone) increases, making you feel hungrier than usual
- Thyroid hormones can slow down, affecting your metabolic rate
These changes aren’t a sign that something’s wrong with you—they’re actually your body’s built-in survival system trying to protect you. Pretty remarkable, really, even if it is frustrating when you’re trying to lose weight.
You may start to feel fatigued as your body starts to subconsciously conserve energy, burn fewer calories at the gym and throughout the day, and even start to feel hungrier, says Israetel. So unfortunately, your success has brought about the exact one-two punch that will push you straight onto a plateau.
“No amount of willpower and motivation will help you overcome this,” says Israetel. It’s just not realistic. Your body is physically reacting to what you’re doing, so you have to treat the problem physically. And in order to do this, you need to shift your diet into a ‘maintenance phase.’
Related: Check out an assortment of supplements to support your weight-management efforts.
During a ‘maintenance phase,’ you gradually increase your caloric intake to reengage your metabolism, explains Israetel. Here’s what you do: Add back either the 250 or 500 calories you cut from your diet slowly over the course of about two months. As long as you’re diligent and patient, this should help your metabolism speed back up without you gaining much weight back, says Israetel. If you gain more than a few pounds in that window, you’re adding too many calories too quickly.
Watch Out for “Calorie Creep”
Here’s something that catches a lot of people off guard: Studies show that most of us underestimate how much we’re actually eating—sometimes by hundreds of calories a day. Even nutrition pros can be off by a couple hundred calories a day!
This “calorie creep” can happen in sneaky ways:
- An extra splash of creamer in your morning coffee
- Finishing the last few bites off your kid’s plate
- That handful of nuts you grabbed while cooking dinner
- Weekend meals that are a bit more generous than weekday ones
- Condiments, cooking oils, and sauces that add up quickly
If you’ve been at this for a while and things have stalled, it might be worth tracking your food more precisely for a week or two—not forever, just to get a reality check. Sometimes we’re eating more than we realize, and that’s an easy fix once you spot it
Israetel recommends reevaluating after a few months of this approach. If you’re still feeling fatigued or super-hungry, you’re best off continuing to slowly add calories to your daily intake. Otherwise, you may be ready to switch back into that ‘cutting’ phase.
“Everyone thinks they’re the exception to the rule,” Israetel says. Pacing yourself and finding your rhythm between about two months of maintenance for every three months of calorie-cutting should help ward off that dreaded plateau.
A Few More Tips to Keep Things Moving
While you’re working through this process, here are some additional strategies that might help:
- Prioritize protein: Getting enough protein (aim for that 0.7-1.0 grams per pound of body weight) helps preserve muscle and keeps you feeling fuller longer. Plus, your body actually burns more calories digesting protein than it does digesting carbs or fats—bonus!
- Stay hydrated: Sometimes what feels like hunger is actually thirst. And proper hydration supports all your body’s metabolic processes.
- Get quality sleep: When you’re sleep-deprived, your hunger hormones can get even more out of whack, making everything harder. Aim for 7-9 hours.
- Manage stress: High stress means high cortisol, which can mess with your hunger signals and even promote fat storage around your midsection.
- Be patient: It can take time for your body—and your habits—to settle into a new normal. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Related: Exactly What To Eat To Build Muscle
Remember, hitting a plateau doesn’t mean you’ve failed—it means you’ve made progress! Your body has adapted to the positive changes you’ve made. Now it’s just time to switch things up a bit and keep moving forward. You’ve got this!
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