Beagle Obesity How to Navigate Weight Loss Plateaus

12 Simple Ways to Break Through a Weight Loss Plateau

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While weight tends to come off fairly rapidly at first, at some point, it can seem as though your weight wont budge. However, several strategies may help you begin to lose weight again.

Achieving your goal weight can be tough. The inability to lose more weight after initially successful quick weight loss is known as a weight loss plateau or stall, which can be frustrating and discouraging.

Here are 12 tips to break a weight loss plateau.

Whether carb restriction leads to a metabolic advantage that causes your body to burn more calories is a question that continues to be debated among nutrition and obesity experts.

That said, there is some evidence that eating a low carb diet may help reduce hunger. This may lead you to subconsciously eat less, making it easier to begin losing weight again without hunger or discomfort.

2. Increase exercise frequency or intensity

Your metabolic rate slows as you lose weight. As weight declines, the progressive reduction in metabolic rate can make continued weight loss difficult.

However, exercise has been shown to help counteract this effect.

Research suggests that when it comes to losing weight, fat, and belly fat, aerobic training is more effective than resistance training. That said, resistance training also has a lot of health benefits, so a combination of the two might be best for overall health.

If youre already exercising, working out an extra 12 days per week or increasing the intensity of your workouts may help boost your metabolic rate.

In addition, your metabolic rate increases in response to fidgeting, changing posture, and similar types of physical activity.

These types of activity are known as non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT. NEAT can have a major effect on your metabolic rate, although the amount varies significantly from person to person.

An easy way to increase your NEAT is by standing up more often, including using a standing desk.

3. Track everything you eat

Research suggests people have a tendency to underestimate the amount of food they eat.

Thats why tracking your calories and macronutrients protein, fat, and carbs can provide concrete information about how much youre taking in. This will allow you to modify your diet if needed.

In addition, research suggests that the act of recording your food intake alone may improve your weight loss efforts.

Heres a review of several user-friendly apps and websites to track your nutrient intake.

4. Dont skimp on protein

If your weight loss has stalled, increasing your protein intake may help.

First, protein boosts metabolic rate more than fat or carbs.

This has to do with the thermic effect of food (TEF) or an increase in metabolism that occurs due to the digestion of food. Protein digestion boosts calorie burning by 2030%, which is more than twice as much as fat or carbs.

Second, protein stimulates the production of hormones that help reduce appetite and make you feel full and satisfied.

Stress can often put the brakes on weight loss.

In addition to promoting comfort eating and triggering food cravings, it also increases your bodys production of cortisol.

Cortisol is known as the stress hormone. While it helps your body respond to stress, it can also increase belly fat storage.

Producing too much cortisol can make weight loss difficult, but research has shown that learning to manage stress can help promote weight loss.

6. Try intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting has become very popular recently. It involves going for long periods of time without eating, typically between 1648 hours.

The practice has been credited with promoting the loss of body fat and weight, though additional research may be needed to verify this.

That said, here you can learn about six different methods of intermittent fasting.

Alcohol may be sabotaging your weight loss efforts.

Although one alcoholic drink (4 ounces (oz) of wine, 1.5 oz of hard liquor, or 12 oz of beer) contains only around 100 calories, it provides no nutritional value. In addition, you may have more than one drink at a sitting.

Another problem is that alcohol loosens inhibitions, which may lead you to overeat or make poor food choices. One study of 283 adults who completed a behavioral weight loss program found that reducing alcohol intake led to a reduction in overeating and greater weight loss among those with high levels of impulsivity.

Whats more, research has shown that alcohol can suppress fat burning and may lead to belly fat accumulation.

If your weight loss has stalled, it may be best to avoid alcohol or only consume it occasionally in small amounts.

Including more fiber in your diet may help you break through a weight loss plateau. This is especially true for soluble fiber, the type that dissolves in water or liquid.

To begin with, soluble fiber slows the movement of food through your digestive tract, which can help you feel full and satisfied.

Another way that fiber may aid weight loss is by decreasing the number of calories you absorb from other foods.

Learn how fiber can help you lose belly fat and discover 22 high fiber foods you should eat.

9. Drink water, coffee, or tea

While sugary beverages lead to weight gain, some beverages may help reverse a weight loss stall.

Research has found that plain water can boost metabolism, which may translate into weight loss over time, especially in those who consume water before meals, which may help reduce food intake.

Coffee and tea may also help your weight loss efforts. Green tea, in particular, contains an antioxidant known as EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) that may promote weight loss.

Moreover, research suggests that consuming caffeinated beverages can significantly enhance the metabolism-boosting and fat-burning effects of exercise.

Sleep is extremely important for good mental, emotional, and physical health.

Its also becoming clear that not getting enough sleep can lead to weight gain by lowering your metabolic rate and altering hormone levels to drive appetite and fat storage.

To support weight loss and overall health, aim for 78 hours of sleep per night.

11. Eat vegetables at every meal

Vegetables are the ideal food for weight loss.

Most vegetables are low in calories and carbs, high in fiber, and loaded with beneficial nutrients.

In fact, research has found that diets that include lots of vegetables tend to produce the greatest weight loss.

Here is a list of healthy, low carb vegetables to include at mealtimes.

12. Dont rely on the scale alone

Scale reading may not always accurately reflect your progress, such as changes in your body composition.

Rather than weight loss, your goal is actually fat loss. If youre working out regularly, you may be building muscle, which is denser than fat and takes up less room in your body.

So if the scale weight isnt moving, you could be building muscle and losing fat, yet maintaining a stable weight.

In addition, you may retain water for a number of reasons, including your dietary choices. However, the most common reason involves changes in hormone levels that affect fluid balance, particularly in females assigned at birth (FAAB).

Here are several strategies you can take to help lose water weight.

What causes a weight loss plateau?

There are various reasons for hitting a weight loss plateau. They include overeating, not eating enough protein, not getting enough exercise, and not getting enough sleep.

Here are 14 common reasons youre not losing as much weight as you expected.

How do I break a weight loss plateau?

Its common to reach a weight loss plateau after initial progress. You can try to break through it by reducing carbs, increasing exercise, managing stress, and more.

Here are 14 simple ways to break through a weight loss plateau.

How long does a weight loss plateau last?

How long a weight loss plateau lasts varies from person to person. It can be a few weeks or a few months.

Can a cheat day break a weight loss plateau?

Theres some evidence that an occasional, small break from dieting can lead to overall greater weight loss in some cases.

Weight loss plateaus can be frustrating and demoralizing.

However, they are a typical part of the weight loss process. In fact, nearly everyone experiences a stall at some point on their weight loss journey.

Several strategies can help you begin to lose weight again and safely achieve your goal weight.

Heres when your weight loss will plateau, according to science

CNN

Whether youre shedding pounds with the help of effective new medicines, slimming down after weight loss surgery or cutting calories and adding exercise, there will come a day when the numbers on the scale stop going down, and you hit the dreaded weight loss plateau.

In a recent study, Kevin Hall, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health who specializes in measuring metabolism and weight change, looked at when weight loss typically stops depending on the method people were using todrop pounds. He broke down the plateau into mathematical models using data from high-quality clinical trials of different ways to lose weight to understand why people stop losing when they do. The study published Monday in the journal Obesity.

What he found is that part of the reason that gastric bypass surgery and new weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound are so effective is because they double the time it takes to hit a plateau. People are able to lose weight for longer than by cutting calories alone.

The body regulates weight by trying to maintain an equilibrium between the calories we eat and the calories we burn. When we expend or cut calories, and start burning our stored energy, appetite kicks in to tell us to eat more. Halls studies have shown that the more weight a person loses, the stronger appetite becomes until it counteracts, and sometimes completely undoes, all the hard work theyve done to lose in the first place.

This feedback mechanism was valuable for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but it doesnt work so well for modern humans who have easy access to energy dense ultra-processed foods.

To study the trajectory of weight loss using calorie restriction alone, Hall modeled the observed weight loss in the CALERIE study, which randomly assigned 238 adults to either two years of following a 25% calorie restriction diet or eating as they normally would. The study ran from 2007 to 2010 and was sponsored by the NIH. The adults in the group that cut calories lost on average about 16 pounds.The group that followed their normal diets gained about 2 pounds.

Though the people who took part in the CALERIE study kept up their efforts for two years, their weight loss stopped somewhere around the 12-month mark, as their appetite ramped up to counteract it.

Hall notes that his study deals in averages. The timing of a weight loss plateau may vary for individuals.

Halls model predicted that in order to achieve the weight loss reported in that study,people whose diets started at 2,500 calories per day had to cut just over 800 calories a day.Their bodies responded by prompting them to add to their daily caloric intake an estimated 83 calories for every kilogram of weight they lost.

A kilogram is about 2.2 pounds. For every 2.2 pounds of weight participants lost, their appetite responded by asking for 83 more calories a day. The average weight loss reported in the study was 7.5 kilograms, or 16 pounds, which would mean that at their lowest weights, they were feeling the need to eat 622 more calories a day more than before they started losing weight.

But they werent actually eating 622 more calories a day instead, thats the extra amount of appetite they were feeling, even as theyre putting in the same amount of effort as they did in the beginning to cut 800 calories a day.

At the end of the study, Hall said, participants were working as hard as they did in the beginning to resist food, but only managing to cut about 200 calories a day instead of the 800 they were shooting for. That brought their weight loss to a halt.

Dr. Christopher Gardner, director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, previously told CNN this feedback mechanism is why weight loss gets harder the more you lose.

Because peoples bodies react to that, and they become more metabolically efficient. And so the same calorie deficit wont do it for you. Thats why peoples weight loss starts to plateau, Gardner told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in the Chasing Life podcast.

In Halls model, as people in the CALERIE study lost more weight, their appetites roared back, and around the 12-month mark, they stopped losing weight.

The drugs semaglutide and tirzepatide, which mimic gut hormones to help people lose weight, prompted greater caloric restriction.For semaglutide, the active ingredient inWegovy, Halls model predicted that as people gradually increased their dose in the study, they went from eating about 600 fewer calories a day to 1,300 fewer calories a day at the highest dose.For tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Zepbound, the number of calories people cut from their diet each day increased from 830 on the lowest dose to 1,560 on the highest does tested in the study.

But crucially, the drugs didnt merely have an effect on the number of calories people cut from their diets. They also lowered the number of calories their bodies were prompting them to eat back as they lost weight in effect, weakening their appetites.For Wegovy, people only wanted to eat back about 49 calories daily for every kilogram of weight they lost. For Zepbound, that number was 48.By cutting their appetites by about half, they were able to keep losing weight for longer, an extra year on average compared with calorie restriction alone.People taking weight loss drugs generally stopped losing weight around the two-year mark.

Weight loss surgery had the strongest effect of all, prompting people to cut about 3,600 caloriesfrom their diets each day, and only eat back 58 calories for every kilogram theyd lost every day.People whod had weight loss surgery also had another year before their reached their plateau, suggesting that the surgery turned down their appetite significantly.

Hall says there are several important insights from this study.The first, he said, is drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound and interventions like weight loss surgery, lengthen the time it takes to hit a plateau, but they dont stop it from happening completely.

Whats happening is that they still experience an increase in appetite, the more weight that they lose, Hall said.

If they had no appetite circuit, in other words, the drug just kind of kicked in and their intake stayed at this very low level. It would take many, many years for them to reach a plateau and they would lose, you know, an exorbitant amount of weight, Hall said.

While it may stymie dieters, the appetite feedback circuit is actually a good thing, he said.It would be dangerous if a drug or treatment got rid of appetite entirely. If that happened, a person might stop eating entirely until they died.

Hall said the study also helps to refine some ideas about why people stop losing weight.

For example, one theory has been that weight loss damages metabolism, so people end up burning far fewer calories at rest than when they started and can regain weight very easily.

Hall says metabolism does drop after weight loss, but not anywhere near the amount that will be required to explain the timing or magnitude of the weight loss plateau, he said.

Hall says the study also seems to disprove the notion that the drugs eventually stop working. I think thats also incorrect, Hall said.

Our modeling suggests that the reason for the plateau is because thats the point at which the drugs effect has been matched by the increase in appetite, he said.

Sometimes people hit a plateau well before theyve reached their goal weight, which can be extremely frustrating.

Hall said in situations like that, people may have to add interventions to increase their effect.

Another very common thing now is that people who didnt lose as much weight from bariatric surgery as they thought, will go on one of the GLP-1 receptor agonist so theyre adding interventions on top of each other, Hall said.

Whatever route you choose, a persistent effect is required to maintain the weight loss, Hall said. So its a good idea to consider whether you can keep doing what youre doing for the long haul.

People who hit a plateau after cutting calories can likely bust through it by restricting calories even further or adding exercise to their routine.

The whole point here is that whatever you do, you have to keep doing it. And so youve gotta be happy with that lifestyle intervention for the rest of your life. Otherwise, its not going to have the added benefit, Hall said.