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You’ve been consistent in your workouts and nutrition, but your progress has suddenly stopped.
Sound familiar?
This is the dreaded fat loss plateau.
They can be very frustrating, but you’re not alone.
Plateaus happen to everyone.
A weight loss plateau doesn’t mean you’re failing, it’s a natural part of the process. In this article, you’ll learn why plateaus happen and the exact steps to break through and keep shedding fat.
What is a Weight Loss Plateau?
A weight loss plateau is when your body stops losing weight despite the consistent effort. This happens because weight loss changes your body’s energy needs over time. There are a few reasons a plateau can happen.
How it Happens:
- Metabolic Adaptation: Our bodies are adaptation machines. As you lose weight, your body burns fewer calories at rest because you have less body weight to maintain.
- Energy Balance Shift: You may unknowingly consume more calories or expend less energy as your motivation wanes.
- Water Retention: Stress, poor sleep, or changes in your diet can lead to temporarily holding water weight and mask your actual fat loss.
Common Reasons for Weight Loss Plateaus
Reason 1: Over-restrictive Dieting
Eating too little food and calories for an extended period of time can cause your metabolism to severely slow down.
When you eat very few calories for a long time, your body basically thinks that you’re dying or that there is little food around to be had.
So to try and keep yourself alive, your body goes into a “survival mode”, prioritizing energy conservation over fat loss. Your body adapts and slows down your metabolism to try to burn fewer calories and sustain life for as long as possible.
Reason 2: Inaccurate Tracking
Inaccurately tracking your food happens to the best of us. In the beginning, you’re counting everything down to the nearest ounce. As we get more familiar with portion sizes we tend to ease up on tracking and weighing everything we eat.
It’s only natural to slowly lose a grip on how accurately we used to count calories.
Another way calorie creep can happen is by letting hidden calories sneak into our diets such as dressings, snacks, and even eating a lot of ultra-processed foods.
Highly-processed food labels are allowed to be up to 20% incorrect, so if you eat a lot of ultra-processed foods, you may be eating 20% more calories than you thought! (Source: Business Insider)
Also, overestimating the calories burned from exercising can skew your energy balance.
Reason 3: Lack of Dietary Variety
Sticking to the same foods over and over again can lead to nutrient gaps in your diet.
Or worse, increased cravings, which might result in overeating.
Reason 4: Insufficient Movement
As you lose weight, your body and metabolism will adapt. Your daily activity levels may drop unconsciously.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) will often decrease, which will reduce your overall calorie burn.
Things like walking, fidgeting, talking with your hands, and more count as NEAT. Activities that aren’t dedicated calorie-burning exercises like a walk on the treadmill or jumping jacks.
Reason 5: Stress and Sleep Deficiency
Stress hormones like cortisol can encourage fat storage, especially around the midsection (the exact place most people don’t want fat to go!).
Poor sleep will disrupt ghrelin and leptin (your hunger hormones), which will lead to an increased appetite and cravings. This makes it harder to stick to a healthier diet.
Do any of these reasons sound like they might apply to you?
If so, then let’s get into some ways to break through your plateau.
Strategies to Break Through a Weight Loss Plateau
Strategy 1: Reassess Your Calorie Intake
Calculate your maintenance calories. This is the amount of calories you need each day to keep you at the same weight with your current activity level.
I like to use the macro calculator from Mind Pump.
Subtract about 10-15% from your maintenance calories to create a moderate calorie deficit.
Adjust for Plateaus:
If you’ve been eating the same number of calories for months on end, you have 3 options.
- Lower your calories slightly, maybe by about 100-200 calories.
- Do this only if your calories won’t be too low after the additional cut in calories. Eating too little protein, nutrients, fats, calories, and carbs is a recipe for poor health, malnutrition, and terrible workouts. No bueno.
- Take a diet break. This is where you eat at maintenance calories for 1-2 weeks. You’ll probably need 2 weeks if you’ve been in a deficit for over 6 weeks.
- Consider a reverse diet. This is where you slowly increase the amount of calories you eat over time to speed up your metabolism before your next cut phase (fat loss phase). Each week you raise the amount of calories you eat per day by about 200 until your calories per day are higher and reach a great place to cut from, making fat loss easier.
Strategy 2: Increase Protein Intake
Protein has the highest thermic effect of food, which means it burns the most calories during digestion. It’s not a massive game-changer, but it helps.
Try to aim for 0.8-1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight to preserve as much muscle as possible during this fat-loss phase.
If you’re overweight or obese, aim for 0.8-1.2 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass instead of your total body weight.
Strategy 3: Add or Change Your Workouts
Doing the same workout routine can become stale after a few weeks to months of the same exercises.
A good way to counter this is to change up your routine. Use different rep ranges, rest times, lifting tempos, swap out exercises, or do an entirely different program.
If you’re not already doing resistance training, find a good program and add it to your fitness routine. This will build muscle, preserve muscle mass during a fat-loss phase, and speed up your resting metabolic rate.
If you’re tracking your steps, try adding 2,000-3,000 more steps to your daily goals to increase your NEAT.
Strategy 4: Prioritize Sleep and Manage Stress
A lot of times, people may be doing everything right and not realize that sleep could be the final piece to their fitness puzzle.
Aim to get 7-9 hours of quality sleep every night. This will help regulate hunger hormones and allow your body to recover by building muscle and burning fat. Sleep is where most of these processes take place.
If stress is a big issue for you, practice mindfulness with meditation or prayer. Adding yoga, deep breathing exercises, or a walk in nature could help reduce your cortisol levels too.
Strategy 5: Change Up Your Diet
You could be eating in a deficit for too long and may need to change your diet. Be it through a diet break, reverse diet, or a refeed day (higher calorie/carb day).
Introducing new foods and recipes can help prevent boredom and improve nutrient intake.
You could also try switching up your macros. Try higher protein days one day, lower carb days another day, and higher fat days the next.
Carb cycling may work for you where you alternate low- and high-carb days to boost fat loss and energy.
Strategy 6: Track Progress Accurately
Don’t let calorie creep mess up your results!
Track your food for a period of time to resharpen your calorie counting. Make sure you’re eating exactly what you’re tracking down. You could also reintroduce tracking periodically just to make sure you’re tracking your food accurately. Maybe conduct a check-in on your tracking one week out of every 4 or so.
Weigh yourself consistently at the same time, same day, under the same conditions.
As Geoffrey Verity Schofield once said, “You should weigh yourself right after you wake up in the morning and use the bathroom. So, wake up, take the kids to the pool, and step on the scale.”
Take measurements and photos and save them to track your body composition changes. Some changes may not show on the scale, so using other methods of tracking can help paint the full picture of what’s going on in your body.
4. Why You Should Embrace Plateaus
Plateaus aren’t necessarily a bad thing. They can be annoying, but if you change how you look at them, you may start to like them.
A plateau really is just your body signaling to you to reassess your routine. They’re not a failure. If anything, they’re a reminder that you’re still in the game going after what you want.
Take it for what it is, a sign, and adapt.
Use this time to use the strategies we discussed earlier and focus on the other victories you’ve likely accomplished that don’t involve the number on the scale.
Are you stronger in the gym? Has your endurance increased? Are your energy levels better?
Listen to what your body is trying to tell you instead of focusing on the scale. The scale is only one part of the bigger picture.
Try to look for any progress you’ve made outside of the scale!
Key Takeaway
Plateaus are a natural part of weight loss, signaling it’s time to adapt. Whether it’s tweaking your diet, increasing activity, or improving recovery, small changes can restart your progress.
Don’t view a plateau as failure—it’s a chance to grow. Celebrate wins beyond the scale, like improved strength, energy, or discipline.
Take action today: pick one strategy and apply it. Every step forward builds a healthier, sustainable lifestyle. Plateaus are just part of the journey, they let you know that you’re in the game of better health. Embrace them, learn, and keep going.
You’ve got this!
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