How to Fix a Weight Loss Plateau

If you’ve been working toward the goal of losing weight, you may be surprised by how hard it is. Do you ever feel that just as you start to see progress, your body seems to stop responding to the changes you make in your eating style and activity levels? Or maybe you’re on a maintenance meal plan and, upon stepping on the bathroom scale, find that you've shot up a couple of pounds.

Overview

If you’ve experienced this frustration, you're not alone. Though you may be working hard at losing weight, your body is going to work even harder to keep energy intake and output in balance. The simple truth is that your body doesn't like to lose weight. In fact, your efforts to burn more calories can eventually slow down the process.

The challenge of weight loss plateaus can be incredibly frustrating. There may be some physiological explanations for this. Everyone’s weight fluctuates. Daily weight fluctuations are very common (some people can fluctuate around 5 pounds per day). However, if these fluctuations go on for a month—or your weight loss comes to a complete halt—here's how you can figure out the cause and get back on track.

Why Plateaus Happen

Understanding what’s happening during a plateau, why it happens, and what you can do about it will also reassure you that the stall isn’t necessarily your fault.

Too Few Calories

It takes calories to burn calories. When you decrease your food intake, your body lowers its metabolic rate in response. If you're not eating enough calories, or you're inconsistent, your body (and metabolism) may respond erratically.

Solution: If you aim for a total calorie intake that’s slightly below your maintenance calories, you’ll keep your metabolism in high gear. Keep in mind that a deficit of more than 500 to 700 calories will make it much more difficult to maintain lean body mass.

Everybody’s caloric needs are different. Gender, activity level, and your overall state of health will influence how many calories you need.

Changing Portion Sizes

When you initially changed your eating style or meal plan, you may have measured your portion sizes. As time has progressed have you made changes? Tiny increases in the amount of food you pour into a bowl or spoon onto your plate are not likely to have an impact on your body size, but large increases can have an impact and may be more than you need.

Solution: Over-restricting your portion size or making irrational food rules can cause binge eating later on. Extreme shifts in food intake can also impact metabolism. Use hunger and satiety cues to direct your food intake. Give your body time to enjoy your food and if you feel that you want more, then eat what you like. You may find that giving yourself time to listen to your body helps you to eat what and how much your body needs.

Faulty Calorie Counting

You may be tracking your daily intake of calories and nutrients with a paper journal or an online app. If you’ve started to enter foods by memory, there is a good chance you've been forgetting to add a food here and there or entering an incorrect portion size.

Solution: Having a tracking app on your phone can make it convenient, but if you prefer to take notes by hand, keep a small notebook in your bag. You can also try setting an alarm on your smartphone to remind yourself to record your food intake.

Too Many Calories

If you have lost weight successfully so far, the number of calories you need to eat every day has probably started to decrease. As your body gets lighter, it requires fewer calories to move through your normal daily activities.

Solution: Go back and re-evaluate the number of calories you need to eat to lose weight. Be honest and realistic about your activity level. You may be overestimating how many calories you burn with exercise.

Loss of Lean Body Mass

Muscle burns more calories than fat. If you lose muscle, you’ll burn fewer calories. When the lean muscle is lost, your metabolism drops. In response, weight loss can slow down or stop.

Solution: A well-designed strength training program will help you to build and maintain muscle mass. This doesn’t mean that you have to become a bodybuilder, but simple bodyweight exercises like push-ups and lunges will help you maintain healthy body composition. Muscle will help to improve the way your body moves throughout the day and also helps you to burn more calories.

If your energy levels and motivation seem to be dipping, you may want to consider meeting with a registered dietitian to make sure you're getting the nutrients you need to make the most of your program.

You’ve Lost Weight

While weight loss may be your goal, don’t forget that when you weigh less, your body needs fewer calories to function. When you lose any amount of weight, your body’s energy requirements will be reduced. 

Solution: Considering starting a weight training program to help increase your lean body mass. Muscle will add to caloric burn and keep your body strong. It may not be safe to continue to decrease the number of calories you’re eating, so you’ll need to add in more activity. A strong, nourished, body will be able to keep up with more intense or frequent workouts.

Your Body Adapted

When you start a new exercise program, your body will begin to make changes. At this stage, your muscles are rebuilding themselves—a process which requires calories. But the more you do something, the better you get at it. As your body becomes more efficient at the exercises in your workout, it will need fewer calories to perform them.

Eventually, your body will stop adapting to increased workloads. Unless you change up your routine, you’ll be burning fewer calories for the same activities.

Solution: The key is to make sure your body doesn’t have time to “get used to” the exercise routine you take on. Maintain your body's adaptation period by changing the intensity, duration, frequency and/or the mode of exercise. You may want to include interval training as well.

For example, if you’ve been using the treadmill for two weeks, try switching to the rowing machine or stationary bike. This may also be the appropriate time to make changes to your weight training program.

Not Enough Exercise

Do you compensate for your workouts by spending the rest of the day sitting at your desk or laying on the couch? If you are sedentary for most of the day, you'll miss out on the many benefits of exercise.

Solution: Boost your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) by adding movement to daily tasks. Stand up and work at your computer; take the stairs instead of the elevator; or do easy household chores while you watch television. Activities like walking the dog and gardening are also great ways to boost NEAT.

Not Enough Protein

Protein has been shown to balance out some of the metabolic adjustments that happen when you lose weight. Researchers believe this is because protein helps us to maintain the muscle we have and build new muscle.

Solution: Evaluate the nutrient balance of your current diet. Make sure that you are getting enough protein to adequately build the muscle you need to maintain a healthy metabolism.

Exercising Too Much

When you exercise too much, there can be a point of diminishing returns when an increase in exercise energy expenditure is negated by an equal decrease in non-exercise energy expenditure. In other words, when you increase your exercise intensity, your body responds by decreasing the number of calories you burn during the rest of your day.

Solution: Take time to recover. Exercise burnout is a sign you need a break for a few days—but that doesn’t mean you have to be completely inactive. Try something gentle like yoga or a stretching routine.

Once you’ve given your body some rest, ease back into light exercise and increase your intensity only when necessary.

You’re in Better Shape

Your body becomes more energy-efficient as your physical health improves. A lower resting metabolic rate means your body needs fewer calories to perform normal daily activities, as well as exercise. Improvements in health aren’t just reflected by the scale: improved cardiovascular fitness can show up as a lower resting heart rate.

If you commit to a new exercise program and stuck with it, your fitness level has probably increased. While this represents meeting a goal in and of itself, it also means your body doesn’t need to work as hard, or burn as many calories, to complete the same amount of work.

Solution: If you are healthy enough for vigorous activity, now is a good time to add high-intensity interval training to your weekly schedule. You can also begin a circuit-training program. A circuit workout builds muscle and burns calories with aerobic activity in a shorter period of time. You can also add a second easy workout to your day to burn extra calories. Try fitting in a morning walk or bike ride after work.

You’ve Lost Motivation

When you start a new health plan, motivation is high in the beginning. But if you make too many changes at once or they are too intense or restrictive, you are likely to lose motivation. The key to long lasting lifestyle changes is small, realistic, and tangible goals.

Solution: Take the time to acknowledge and be proud of the progress you’ve made so far. In a way, a weight loss plateau is actually a sign you’ve been doing a lot of things right. Try setting a short-term goal for yourself and use new motivational techniques to recapture some of your initial enthusiasm.

You Need a New Goal

Hitting a plateau is the perfect opportunity to stop and check in with yourself. You may find that there are several reasons for the plateau—and you may benefit from making adjustments to your goal. For example, while you may want to lose more weight, your body may feel the weight you’ve reached is healthy.

Solution: There have been some researchers that have proposed a set point theory. The theory suggests that your body has a set weight that it seeks to maintain. If you feel you still have weight left to lose, first evaluate where you are right now. Ask yourself how you feel in your body right now: Do you feel happy and healthy? Would you be content to stay in the maintenance phase?

It may be helpful for you to embrace the body at the weight where it is. Learn more about the Health at Every Size (HAES) principles that seeks to de-emphasise weight loss as a health goal, and reduce stigma towards people who are overweight or obese. HAES may be a smarter approach. If you still choose to maintain a weight loss journey, start by setting small, short-term goals.

Medical Causes

While plateaus are normal and just about every person will experience one when they start a new eating style, if you’re finding that nothing seems to be breaking the plateau it may be time to check in with your doctor.

In some cases, a medical cause may be impeding your weight loss.

Solution: Make an appointment to talk to your doctor. First, they’ll help you get to the bottom of what’s preventing you from making progress toward your weight loss goals. In some cases, medication or surgery may be an option for you.

Exercise

Early in your weight loss program, it’s possible to shed pounds through caloric restriction alone—but you will be unlikely to maintain the loss if you remain sedentary. To sustain weight loss, strengthen your body and get it moving, too. Regular exercise, ideally with some strength training, can help prevent plateaus.

Building lean muscle creates energy stores the body can fill during periods of rest.

Exercise has other benefits, too: the release of hormones, such as endorphins, can enhance your mood, mental acuity, and energy levels.

Ketosis

Ketogenic diets are designed to achieve ketosis; the state where your body is burning more fat for energy rather than sugar from carbohydrates. The byproducts of increased fat metabolism are called ketone bodies. If you’re eating a Keto diet, you’ll be increasing your intake of healthy fats and reducing carbs.

To reach ketosis, you may need to drastically cut carbs. The exact amount needed to achieve ketosis varies from person to person: You may be able to get there eating 100 grams carbs per day or you may need Atkins induction levels.

If you’re considering a Keto diet, talk to a qualified nutritionist before you get started. With guidance, along with at-home tools like urine test strips to measure ketones, you’ll be prepared to try the eating style safely.

Basics of Fat Fasts

If you’re on a low-carb diet, you may already know about the Atkins Fat Fast. Some people have found the method helpful to break a weight loss plateau. The three to five day fast restricts you to 1,000 calories a day—80 to 90 percent of which comes from fat.

The Atkins Fat Fast puts your body into ketosis by minimizing the carb intake and loading your meals with healthy fats from foods like avocados, or macadamia nuts.

While it can be effective, the plan may not be the right choice for you. Talk to your doctor or a nutritionist before starting any kind of fast or major dietary change.

Atkins Fat Fast is not a long term strategy for weight loss and maintenance.

The plan is not safe to use for longer than five days. Doing so can deplete your body’s mineral stores, lead to lean muscle loss, other potentially serious health complications.

Strategic Weigh-Ins

Unless your doctor has instructed you to closely monitor your weight each day, daily weigh-ins are generally not helpful and may even add to your stress. Everyone experiences weight fluctuations not just day-to-day, but throughout a single day.

Factors like fluid balance, your body composition, whether you’ve gone to the bathroom, and hormones (for women who menstruate) that can cause fluid retention, contribute to these changes.

Successful weight loss that sticks is invariably a slow-and-steady process. It’s a good idea to track your progress, but you’ll get a more accurate sense of true weight loss if you weigh yourself once a week rather than daily. Be sure that you weigh yourself the same way, preferably at the same time of day and on the same scale, at each weigh-in.

Consistency is key to accurately track your weight trend over time.

A Word From Verywell

Some weight regain is normal, especially if you have been on a restrictive "diet." Diets are temporary and usually don't work. Losing weight is complicated and people need support. Consider meeting with a registered dietitian to develop a sustainable plan to reach a weight that makes you feel healthy and good.

In addition, you may want to look for ways to practice self care and self acceptance. If you have to restrict and count calories, and be hungry all the time to reach your goals, it's may not be worth it. With support from medical, behavioral, nutrition professionals and others who have been there, you can take steps to be as healthy as you possible with the body you have.

3 Sources
Verywell Fit uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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  2. Melanson EL, Keadle SK, Donnelly JE, Braun B, King NA. Resistance to exercise-induced weight loss: compensatory behavioral adaptations. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2013 Aug;45(8):1600-9. doi:10.1249/MSS.0b013e31828ba942

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Additional Reading

By Paige Waehner, CPT
Paige Waehner is a certified personal trainer, author of the "Guide to Become a Personal Trainer," and co-author of "The Buzz on Exercise & Fitness."