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When the scale stops moving, the instinct is to restrict more, exercise harder, and white-knuckle your way through it. I get why this is a common reaction, but it's not what your body actually needs to break through.

The answer to a plateau is almost never "do more and eat less." It's usually something far more holistic, and a whole lot kinder. So instead of clamping down harder, I’m going to walk you through five overlooked strategies that get things moving again, without making you miserable in the process.

1. Hydration 

This might seem obvious, but it's not just knowing that hydration matters. It's actually doing it. Every single day. Consistently.

Are you genuinely hitting your water goal? Not thinking about it, not meaning to — actually doing it? Because this one thing can shift so much: your hunger, your energy, everything that's happening in your body.

I'd recommend keeping a habit tracker for two weeks and aiming for at least 64 ounces a day. If you're in a plateau, this becomes incredibly important. Most people think they're doing well with hydration but when they actually track it, they realize they're coming up short more often than not.

2. Sleep And Rest (They're Not the Same Thing)

Yes, sleep matters. But I want to talk about something that gets overlooked even more: rest.

Sleep is what happens at night. Rest is the white space in your day. The unaccounted for, unscheduled time where you're not producing or doing or going anywhere. I call it my frolic time. A walk to get a nice coffee, browsing a bookstore, laying down for an hour without falling asleep.

Ask yourself honestly:

• Are you getting enough restorative sleep at night?
• Is there anything getting in the way (scrolling, Netflix, staying up too late)?
• Do you have any downtime in your week that you can actually point to?

If you're constantly running around, your body pushes back. Your nervous system stays jacked up and eventually your body forces you to rest by making you sick. Instead of clamping down harder, ask yourself if you're actually getting what you need.

3. Bring Back Some Joy

This one is so important and so underrated. You cannot white-knuckle your way through this. We need less tension, not more. And that means having something in your day that you actually enjoy.

I'm not talking about one fun thing on a Saturday. I mean something every single day, even if it's just 10 or 20 minutes. For me right now, it's alcohol markers and cozy coloring books. Sometimes it's junk journaling — taking random paper, washi tape, and stickers and doing creative layouts. I'm not great at art (that's not the point). The point is the relaxation of it.

Our brains are not supposed to be miserable all day long. If you tell me you don't have the time, I'd gently push back, because if finding that hobby meant you were no longer plateaued and finally happy with how you felt, you would find the time.

Find your thing. Do it every day.

4. Audit the Drift

Is there one area where something has quietly crept back in without you really noticing?

Maybe you've started having a few bites while cooking dinner. Or the nighttime snacking is back. Maybe you slowly started drinking alcohol again even though you don't really need or want it. It happens, and it doesn't mean you've failed. It just means something drifted.

My advice: pick one thing, make one small adjustment, and experiment with it for a week.

I love the concept of non-committal experimentation — you're not committing to this forever, you're just seeing what happens when you bring that one thing back.

One thing. You don’t need to take this to perfectionland and overhaul everything. 

5. Add 1,000 More Steps Than You're Currently Getting

This one is simpler than you'd expect. Pull up your phone and look at your actual 30-day step average. Add one thousand to that, and that's your new daily goal for the next week.

That's roughly five to ten extra minutes of walking. You don't even have to go outside. You can walk back and forth in your kitchen, use a walking pad, it doesn't matter. What matters is that it's:

• Gentle on your body
• Easy enough to actually follow through on
• An intentional act of showing yourself you can be consistent

Notice that every single thing on this list is nice and gentle. The goal here is to decrease stress, not add to it.

The Bigger Picture

Plateaus are frustrating, but the answer is almost never to clamp down harder, restrict more, or push yourself to exhaustion. It's usually something much simpler that you've been overlooking.

Pick one of these five things to start with this week. Just one. And see what happens when you give your body a little more of what it actually needs.

Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to this week's episode of The Obesity Guide for more guidance on breaking through a plateau the right way.

TRANSCRIPT:

Disclaimer: The transcript below is provided for your convenience and may contain typos, errors, or grammatical inconsistencies, as it has not been professionally edited or proofread. Please enjoy it as-is and read at your own discretion.

Please note: The content shared in this podcast and blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalized medical guidance.    

Today we're gonna talk about everybody's favorite topic, which is. Busting a plateau. Now, I'm not gonna tell you the same things you're hearing everywhere else. I'm gonna give you some of the things that people overlook, because honestly, we could always talk about this for a hundred episodes.

This is the thing that frustrates people the most. And everyone knows about doing a nutrition log and making sure they're getting the protein and the fiber. That's the obvious stuff. But we're gonna talk about. I think I broke it down to five things that, that I find to be very helpful that are not traditionally looked at before I get to that.

Last night we had my son at a school. They do a fundraiser. It's a carnival thing. It's really cute. They do such a great job at the school with everything that they do. And part of this event, there was a silent auction, and I'm bringing this up because how cool is this? One of the items is that they auctioned off the fire department.

Had where one time they can come with a firetruck and the kid gets in the firetruck and they bring you to school. And I just think that is so cool. So here's the thing, last year I didn't win it because I put down a bid and someone came and outbid me. So this year I was a little bit more aggressive and let me tell you friends.

Someone, I'm not gonna tell you the number we ended at, but someone put down $25 and I was like, I know that this is going for more than a hundred. 'cause I knew from last year like this is going for more than that. So I put down a hundred, someone bid after me, I had to bid again. It was not too much damage.

And you know what? It's for a good cause it goes to the school. I think this is the coolest experience ever. But that was a really fun experience and they had so much fun, nice stuff that you could do. They had bingo, they had games for the kids in the gym. They had Costco food, which to me is always a win when I can get some Costco pizza.

This was a Thursday night, and I have to tell you, maybe this is just getting older. I had a blast at this event and I was thinking, wow, I never thought that going to my kids' first grade carnival would be just fun of the century. But you know what? This is what it's about, actually enjoying things in life.

Real quick, before I get into today's episode, I realize I have not talked about this at all, but if you wanna do with me and Amanda Saer, this is a joint group that I'm running this summer. It's gonna be May, June, July, August, four months. It's called the Summer Reset

we're reading four books. The books, you don't even have to read them. It's really like a scaffolding for us to go over a concept that month. What happens is, in the beginning of the month, we release a podcast episode to you. You can listen to it if you read the book, amazing. Does not matter if you don't.

We've got some calls where we're gonna get together and we're not just rehashing the book. We're really talking about how do you take those topics and you implement them. The books are. Fun. It's the year of Yes. By Shonda Rhimes. French women don't get fat, learning how to eat for pleasure.

I can't even remember the other, okay, one is about it. It sounds so random because it's about basically throwing parties and you're thinking, what does that have to do with anything? But one thing that we know a lot of the women in our world that are entrepreneurial and that are in business, well really anybody, this is not just limited to women.

You need to know how to network better and how to build friendships better and how to have more of that connection in your life. And so we're, that's just one of the books that we're using in that direction. And then of course, you knew this had to make an entrance, the slowing down to the speed of joy.

You know, I've all been obsessed with that book this past year, and so we're gonna bring that in. The goal in these four months is to bring those concepts into your active life. We are not about you. Just sit there and think about it and talk about it. You wanna actually go do something with this stuff.

If that sounds fun to you, come join us. I honestly, I think it's gonna be super high energy. Me and Amanda have a great. Time. I don't know if you listened to any of the, that sort of limited edition podcast that we had where we were talking about business and entrepreneurship. We talked about women in medicine and it was just such a fun series.

So I'll make sure to link that. If you wanna take part in that summer program, I highly encourage you to sign up now because we are starting really soon in the beginning of May. Take advantage of that.

Let's go over here with a plateau. Here are five things I want you to think about. If you are stuck in one. Before I even get to this, stop being frustrated because this is part of the natural trajectory. Your body's not failing you. It loves you. It thinks it's keeping you safe. Let's just stop this, where we're so angry that our body's not releasing quicker.

This is part of the process and the quicker we can come to acceptance, the quicker we can love it enough and do enough great things that it will continue to go in the direction that we are. Definitely asking it to go. Number one.

I'm gonna say the captain obvious, which is hydration, but actually doing it. Okay, so it's not just, oh yeah. I think about it. I know it's a great concept, but it's literally every single day. Are you getting the hydration that you know you need and. This can shift so much, your hunger, your energy, everything that's happening. Keep a habit tracker with this and see, hey, for two weeks, can I get a hundred ounces of water daily if that's what I wanna do? I say, at least 64 ounces a day, absolutely everything counts. Do you need to track it? Do you already know? No, Matea, this is not a problem for me.

I already do this. I find that people go through periods of being good at it, but I don't have very many patients that are. Consistently really getting a hundred percent all the liquids that they need, they get closed, they're doing it. But if you're in a plateau, this becomes incredibly important.

Now we're gonna get to a little bit, not as obvious, number two. Sleep. And not just sleep because, okay, fine you know, all right, I need the sleep, but also rest and that's not the same thing. Sleep is at night. How many hours are you getting that are restorative where you feel good in the morning?

And what I want you to look at is. Are there things at night that are getting in the way of this sleep? You're sitting there and you're scrolling online for hours, watching reels, or you're watching Netflix, or you can't put the book down that you have. Those are the kind of things that we wanna work on, and if you have a more significant sleep problem where.

You literally can't get to bed, you're doing all the simple sleep hygiene things. We just had an episode where I brought a physician on that's a specialist with sleep. That was a few episodes back. We'll make sure to link it in the show notes. She talked a lot about how, if you're doing all the sleep hygiene things and it's not working out, there are so many other reasons that your sleep could be affected.

Sleep apnea being one of them and there's many more. You wanna make sure to see a sleep medicine physician to get an evaluation for all these things. We have to first decide that this actually matters, and I'm not gonna let Netflix and these other things get in the way, and then there's no, I try to go to sleep and I can't go to sleep.

That's insomnia. And it's not really even just a sleep problem. It's that during the day you feel bad. Of course you're plateaued when all day you're tired, all day, you're exhausted, you feel horrendous. Insomnia is a 24 hour problem, sleep is number one, that you're getting enough of it that you're not in a sleep debt.

And you do the best you can, right? We're not looking for perfection. You do the best you can, but let's talk about the rest part. Are you ever off? Is there ever white space downtime? I refer to it as my frolic time where if I wanna go get nice coffee, I can do it. If I wanna go look at Barnes and Nobles, I can go do that.

It's the time that's open, that's unaccounted for. Do I wanna just lay down? I'm not someone who takes naps. I do like laying down for an hour or two. I don't fall asleep. But there's something about when my body is laying down horizontally. I feel so different afterward. Do you have a weekend that's slower, just you have less going on? Sometimes. I have a friend where, now granted she does have three young kids, but she is so busy if I lived her life, I would be dying. It is, I think like three events per evening. Well, this kid goes to swimming and that kid does this and yeah, maybe it's a phase of life.

I just know for me, I cannot be that overly booked. My kids can't do more than one thing each at a time. One can do theater, one can do soccer, but we're not doing everything all the time. There have to be considerations when you're in a bigger family. At least this is how I. Believe in family rules and things like that, but it's because I can't restore if I'm doing things 24 7.

Rest, are you getting that time? If you're constantly running around, your body pushes back, you end up getting sick more often because your body's like, okay. You are not gonna chill out. Your nervous system's always gonna be jacked up. Cool. We're gonna make you sick so that you have the flu or COVID or whatever it is, and you're gonna have to lay in bed for a period of time.

Now, do you get sick in general? Sometimes yes, but when you are raggedy, tty worn down, your immune system is in the toilet. You popping a vitamin C in the morning, doing a multivitamin is not enough to handle it. It does help, but it's not enough. So instead of thinking, how can I restrict the calories more, how can I clamp down more?

I need you to do a search for if you have rest and free time and some fun happening, that's what I need you to search for. Do you see the difference here? That instead of yanking more stuff from you and making you even more stressed out, we're actually seeing if you're getting what you're needing. Number three, and this is very closely related, let's bring back some joy.

This can't feel miserable. I made a video online the other day and I was talking about breaking a plateau, and I talked about how I wanted be able to get water every single day. I wanted them to not focus on the scale because what we focus on, we really magnetically attract. So when you're like, is it going down?

Is it going down? Is it, you end up attracting that and we don't want that, don't even weigh yourself for two weeks. The thing that I spoke about in that video is that I wanted people to, if they had a hobby. Do it every single day or find a hobby, but that every single day they needed to do something that brought them joy.

You can't white knuckle your way through this. We need less tension. And how do we do that? We need to have things where you actually like doing them. We need you to like it. I have made a list in the past. I can't even, I, I think I've shared on the podcast, I've tried so many things. I've tried scratch art, I've tried different classes in the community.

Right now what I've been doing for a long time and I love are the alcohol coloring markers with a lot of the cute, comfy cozy coloring books. I'll try to link some in the show notes 'cause there's a few books that, you know, there are some of them where I keep reordering them. I didn't realize this 'cause I wasn't really.

In the coloring community until the past few years. But you end up liking a coloring book and you sometimes rebuy it a few times. Maybe I'm the only one because they're not all amazing. Once I find something that I like, sometimes I'll repeat them. So I'll put some of the links in the show notes if you wanna check that out. And then what I've gotten more recently into is a little bit more. It's called junk journaling, where you're basically taking random paper and washy tape and stickers and you're doing creative layouts on the page.

Sometimes it's a more vintage feel, sometimes it's different, quotes. Sometimes it's the, a flower border with something happening in the middle. It's really all different, and it's about creative expression. I'm not great at art, guys. This is not about having this amazing thing at the end.

It's about the relaxation of. Work has ended. I've made a dinner, eaten a dinner in peace, playing with my son, and then I have this little craft area set up. It's literally right next to me on the couch. At night I can just 20, 30 minutes do this. And I know every day I'm getting to do something that I love. It's not just like one time on a Saturday that I get to do something. Our brain freaks out with this. We're not supposed to be miserable all day long.

Bring back the joy, bring back the hobby. What is it? And every day you do it. And there's people that say, I don't have the time. Yes, you do. You're scrolling online, you're doing other things. I have yet to meet a person where every single minute they're productive. It usually doesn't exist. Let's find this for you, because if finding that hobby and that time meant that you're no longer plateaued and now you're happy with your body and your life and how you're feeling, you would find the time.

I want you to think about it in that way. Alright? Number four here, I would, I call this like audit the drift. I want you to pick one thing where when you look at the day, you're realizing, you know what? And by the way, it's not that we're going for perfection. We're not overhauling everything.

But you notice, okay, what kind of crept back in? It's like, yeah, when I'm making dinner, I'm having a few bites of stuff that I normally didn't have. You started to like slowly incorporate alcohol again, even though you didn't, you don't really need it or want it. You suddenly notice the nighttime snacking comes back.

You stopped doing a helpful habit, I want you to pick one area to clean it up and maybe say, I'm just gonna, when I make dinner, I'll chew gum or I'll drink water, or I'll make a plate. I've heard this concept a bite lick and a taste plate and everything that you would've put in your mouth, you put on that plate and basically you see at the end of it, I would've had this whole plate of food.

But you're able to. Visually see it instead of just, it disappearing and you're thinking that everything's working against you. So there's lots of ways to do this, but I would find one area, it can be anything. This could be paired with, number one, the hydration. Yeah, that kind of fell off

It could be. Meal related. It could be. I just started to serve myself more and maybe I thought my hunger went up. Like they have shown that as you lose weight, you think you need more food. It's really interesting. I don't know if it's tied to ghrelin or what it's tied to, but you don't need as much food, but you keep thinking that you need it.

It's just a really interesting phenomenon that happens. I would look for one thing. Do a slight adjustment with it. I heard this great concept the other day and it's non-committal experimentation, and I'm gonna make a whole episode on this, but try something for a week and you're not committing that you have to do this for the rest of your life.

You're just seeing what happens if I do that for a week. Let's noncommittally experiment with one area where you drifted off and let's bring it back. You are not allowed to take it to perfection land. This is not everything gets overhauled. Do not do this to yourself. You pick one thing and that's the thing that you're gonna slowly do.

One change with that. Okay? Number five, I want you to get a thousand more steps than what you're currently doing. Look at your actual, not thought in your mind, your actual 30 day average step count.

Go in your phone, look at where you've been, and hopefully it's representative of a regular time, right? It's not like you're like suddenly busting it out. Look at that and I want you to add one K steps to that, and that's what I want you to try to hit daily for a week and.

It's about another five, 10 minutes of walking. You don't even have to go outside. You can walk back and forth in the kitchen. I don't care. Walk on a walking pad if you have it. Go walk outside right now if you can. It's with it being spring and summer. The weather is just so much better, right?

What this shows you, this is that 10% improvement. Not perfection. It shows you, you can follow through. It's gentle on your body. You've already stressed yourself out. We're trying to decrease your stress. Notice every single thing that we're doing is nice and gentle. The walking is probably gonna get rid of some of the stress from your day.

If you do it after dinner or if you do it in the morning, you're gonna go into the workday more clear, or if you're retired and you've just started to feel crummy. All right, let's get you moving in the morning and let's see how you feel. You'd be amazed how everything changes when you move more.

To recap the five things here, let's really hydrate and actually make sure that's locked away. Number two, yes, care about sleep, but also rest. Is it planned? Can you easily identify it in the week? If not, you don't have enough of it. Three, let's bring back some joy, some hobbies.

Can we do it every single day? Even if it's like 10, 20 minutes, but we need to bring something back where the tension goes down and there's just a joy factor involved. Four, we're gonna pick one area where we're like. Yeah. I used to really, this was something that really worked for me that I implemented, and then it just flew away like a bird.

Okay. I'm gonna bring back that. That habit, that thing, and just work on that. And then number five, you're gonna add one case step to however much you're doing, which sounds little. It's not, when you think about it's an intentional act of being able to show yourself that you can be consistent and do new things.

This is not everything, but this is just some options to get you thinking that, oh, it's not. Just decrease the calories more and clamp down even more, or over exercise until I'm dying. That is not the point. The point usually is much more holistic with what needs to happen. Alright, I'm gonna leave it here.

Reminder, if you wanna do that summer program with me and Amanda Ker, we're gonna have the link for that and it's gonna be a blast. So I hope that you join us. All right. I hope you have a great rest of the week and I'll see you next Monday.