188. How to Break a Weight Loss Plateau (Without Restricting More)

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Hit a wall on your weight loss journey? Don't panic. It's part of the process.

We treat plateaus like something's broken. When the scale stalls, suddenly we're questioning everything: the medication, our metabolism, our willpower. But they're actually just your body doing exactly what it's supposed to do: adjusting, stabilizing, and catching its breath before it keeps going.

If you're in that frustrating in-between right now, keep reading to find out how to tell a real stall from just needing more patience, why the number on the scale isn't the whole story, and the single most helpful thing you can do about it (no, it's not "try harder").

What a Plateau Actually Is (And What It Isn't)

Let's get clear on something first: a fluctuation is not a plateau.

Your weight moves day to day due to factors like water, hormones, sodium, stress, and sleep. None of that is a stall. A true plateau is weeks of consistency with no real movement. We're talking four to eight weeks of doing the same things, day in and day out, and seeing no change on average.

That word "average" matters. If you're weighing yourself daily, don't obsess over any single number. Add up your daily weights, divide by seven, and track that number week over week. Your weekly average helps you find out where the real story lives. 

And if you're just a few weeks or months into your journey? What you're experiencing probably isn't a true plateau at all. It's more likely that some of the fundamentals (protein, movement, medication dose) haven't fully clicked into place yet.

The Scale Isn't the Whole Story

I tell my patients this all the time: weight loss is not just about the number on the scale.

During a "stall," ask yourself what else might be shifting:

• Has your body composition changed (more muscle, less fat), even if the scale stayed the same?
• Did your bloodwork improve? A1C, cholesterol, inflammation markers?
• Is your sleep better? Is chronic pain down?

Those are real wins. If we only measure success by the scale, we miss the bigger picture and set ourselves up to feel like failures even when our health is genuinely improving.

Get Curious, Not Critical

When progress stalls, the instinct is to clamp down harder by restricting more, pushing more, and punishing yourself into results. I want you to do the opposite.

Ask yourself: what has become automatic?

Not in a self-blaming way, but in a curious way. Like a business consultant walking into a company with fresh eyes, ask questions without judgment:

• Has your protein intake dropped?
• Has movement slipped from 30 minutes to 15 without you noticing?
• Do weekends look wildly different from weekdays?

Small, subtle shifts add up. You don't need to overhaul your life to find them. You just need to step back and actually look.

Pick One Lever, Not Ten

Once you've spotted what's changed, resist the urge to fix everything at once. Overhauling ten things at the same time makes it impossible to know what's actually working, and it's exhausting.

Instead, choose one small, doable change. Maybe it's hitting 20–30 grams of protein per meal, adding one more serving of vegetables a day, or focusing on hydration.

Go all in on that one thing, and give it real time before judging the results.

Why It Has to Be Fun

We don't stick with things long-term that feel miserable. That's not a willpower problem, it's just human nature.

This is where the motivational triad comes in. For any habit to actually last, it needs to check three boxes: it has to be easy, it has to feel good, and it has to be something you actually want to do (not something you're gritting your teeth through).

That might mean switching up your workout, exploring a new trail, or finding a "why" that actually excites you. Chasing a number on a scale rarely keeps you motivated, bus chasing a feeling does.

When You Might Need to Eat More

If you've been in a calorie deficit for a long stretch (18 months or more), the answer might not be eating less. It might be a reverse diet, where you slowly increase intake to help your metabolism recalibrate.

This isn't a free-for-all overnight shift, and it's absolutely something to work through with your medical team. If you've been under-eating for a long stretch, your body may need to come back up before it can keep changing.

A Plateau is Not a Failure

The most important thing to take away from this? A plateau isn't proof that something's broken. It's proof that your body is doing exactly what bodies do: adjusting, recalibrating, and catching up before the next shift forward.

So get curious, pick one thing, and make it enjoyable. 

And trust that this stage, frustrating as it is, is still part of the process, not the end of it.

Listen to the full conversation on plateaus, including how to tell if you're really stuck, what to do about it, and how to make this stage feel less discouraging.

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.  

 Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you all doing today? I am sitting here before we're gonna talk about this plateau episode, and I am drinking from my son's Hot Wheel tumbler. One of his friends gave it to him for his birthday, and I love it. It's like the perfect size. I don't know, this has to be maybe, like, 16 ounces. Anyway, I have this horchata electrolyte drink, and I love it. So those of you that aren't familiar, and, and let me just say the brand real quick 'cause I always forget. It's Sa- Salud, S-A-L-U-D. Okay, so let me tell you the background here. I've always loved the drink horchata. It's a really popular Mexican rice drink, and I actually made it in the past. So you make it with long-grain white rice, cinnamon sticks sugars blended in there with water. Sometimes you use milk as a base, vanilla, almonds, things like that. So think of it like, a milk that is sweet and tastes really great, and it's super refreshing when you have it iced. All right, so I saw for the longest time, over the past year or two, these ads online for this electrolyte blend. And how many calories is this? I just looked it up here. It has one gram of added sugar, 10 calories for the little packet of powder. Anyway, so I was seeing everybody be like, "This is so amazing. This is so amazing." They were putting it with vanilla Fair Life drinks, and I was like, you know what? It's, it's all a scam. It's always a lie. Someone's always trying to push something. Anyway, but this past February when we had our Female Founders Accelerator retreat, me and Amanda Sabacker, one of our doctors, she brought it, and I tried it, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, is this good." So anyway, it is so darn refreshing. So I've been in a recent kick. You know, I kind of go in and out of drinks. I'll have the same thing once a day for a month or two, and then I kind of put it on pause for a little bit, and then I come back to it and I'm like, "This is the best thing ever. Why did I stop having it?" Like the Devotion Hydro Flex line, I just love the flavors. But I'll just suddenly forget it exists and then a few weeks later come back to it and I'm like, "This peach mango is to die for." So I think there's something about, and we're gonna talk about this actually today in the episode, there's something about creating some novelty for yourself. And even though there are some habits and routines, you still need some fun in there. And for me, changing the flavor profiles every so often really Fits with that. I'll make sure that if you wanna check this out, I get them on Amazon. I'll put the link if you are someone that likes that type of drink as well. So I'm having a pretty good day here. I'm not that far out from vacation. I'm still feeling the relaxed energy from that. So let's talk about plateaus today. First thing I wanna do, that I always do when we talk about this, I want to normalize this for you, okay? Plateaus, stalls, whatever you wanna say. I view it as maintenance. This is not a sign of failure. This is a normal part of fat loss that goes with metabolic health improving. Your body needs to adapt. It needs to adjust. It needs to come to equilibrium again. So if you've been losing weight for a while and things have kinda slowed down or stopped, it's actually expected. That's your body adapting. It doesn't mean the medication stopped working. It doesn't mean your metabolism is broken. It means you're in a different phase of the journey. Welcome. Welcome to the next stage. Most people don't really have a serious plateau until at least months into their journey. If it's happening right in the beginning, there's usually something else happening. We haven't really locked in proteins and fibers that work for you, movement that works for you, medication doses that are effective. But typically, after a few months into the journey, classically, by about six to 12 months at least at some point, there will be a stall or a plateau. Now, let's talk about what that actually is. It is weeks on end of you consistently doing those things and you're seeing absolutely no change. Let's say four to eight weeks, one to two months, and here's the, the, the really important thing that you need to lock into. It doesn't need to be perfect. But when we say consistent, you're following the same patterns daily because some people might have a sweet every single day. Okay, great. That is consistently what you're doing, and we know if it works or not. That's what I'm trying to say when I use the term consistency. Now, the other thing that's really important here is there's gonna be fluctuations day to day. So what's your trend over those weeks? That's why I'm really obsessed with you should have an average weekly weight. Let's say if you're weighing yourself every single day, take those seven numbers, div- add 'em up, divide by seven. That's your average weight for that week. Track the average weekly weights and see what's going on. If you are someone, you're in Excel, you have every single day charted out, I have these patients, and you have a chart that shows overall, okay, amazing. But otherwise, if you want this just super simple, I'm just someone in the notes section of my Apple phone is I have a little note that's called Matthea Data, and I will track in there things like weight, blood pressure, if there were ever any medication changes, when it occurred. Because it became very apparent to me years ago that I cannot remember when I've done what. Some people that are in my clinic, they'll be able to say, "I'm month 19 on whatever dose." I just have never been that person. Keeping track of things in one place has been really helpful So you've been doing all these things consistently. On average, nothing's changing for you. And the thing you need to look at is it is not just about a scale number. During those, let's say, three months, okay, the weight, quote unquote, "the weight didn't change." Is that really true? Did the total overall weight stay the same, but actually you had body fat go down and muscle go up? Did the body composition stay the same, but actually your hemoglobin A1C, the three-month average blood sugar, that improved? Your cholesterol levels improved, your body pain went down, your sleep got better. Those are changes. It cannot just be the scale. This is a long-term game, we cannot just be obsessed with the number going down. If other things are happening, that is such a win, okay? Honestly, if we could have planned maintenance periods, I think people would be so much healthier. There was a study in the past that showed if you did those planned maintenance periods, people retained more muscle, their metabolism stayed higher. It's a win-win-win, but no one really wants to say, "Okay, now I'm just gonna maintain and not do stuff," but again, a true plateau, you're consistently doing these things for weeks on end, and week to week to week, there is absolutely no change in any single direction. All right. Here's the main question that I want you to ask yourself. I want you to ask what has become automatic. Instead of assuming that you need to work harder, and I need to buckle down more, and I need to start tracking everything in the universe, I need you instead to have curiosity. Imagine if a friend told you, they come to you and they're like, "Mateo, I, for the past two years, have been working on this, and I'm so frustrated." By the way, this happens to me with friends. "And I'm so frustrated. I feel like I've been eating really good this week, and I've been walking every day, and nothing's moving, and I'm just so angry." Okay. When those friends keep talking to me, what always ends up coming out, they're like, "Well, if I'm actually really being honest, you know, like, we did fast food, and, I thought I didn't have a lot of it, but, we did do that." And then "Oh, I kinda forgot some of the days to actually get up and do the walk. I know I could be doing this here. I used to XYZ, but now I'm not doing those things." There's a level of curiosity into what is happening in all these different areas, and you need to start to turn the stones and look. So has your protein level gone down? Let's say before you were getting 100 grams or more per day, and now you're like, mm, you're 60. You get some. You've not gone back to you before this health journey ever started, but it's not where it was before. Maybe your portions are just, a little bit bigger, and it's not dramatic. You might not even notice. This might be something so subtle. Or your movement, there was a period when I just wasn't feeling it with walking. I forget how many weeks or months ago this was, and I just got to this place where it was like You know, 30 minutes walking, 25 minutes, and I just noticed, this was only about a week, and I noticed, okay, it's totally fine to have these periods where we're not feeling it that much, but we're not gonna keep this around. We're gonna find something fun to listen to. We're gonna figure out a different trail, like we're gonna figure out how to reinvigorate this. So movement, has that gone down? Are weekends looking radically different than the weeks? 'Cause usually when people start out, that's always a known difference, but sometimes people in the beginning are really aware of on the weekends still really doing what they're doing during the week, but then with time, that's really hard for them to sustain, hence we don't wanna do things that we are not gonna maintain for life. And so with time, they start to be who they actually want to be instead of this idealized perfect version that they started out with. But the reality is it is a change compared to what normally happened. What is actually going on? And curiosity can involve non-judgmentally looking at things. Maybe you do a habit tracker for the week. You just don't sit there and analyze it, but you write down, okay, how many minutes are you walking? How long is the distance? Do a few day nutrition log. I actually am just doing that again today. It is always painful, always when I have to sit there, because when you have to track things, a different part of your brain turns on, and for me personally, a little bit of pain gets activated, and then you do question things 'cause you're like, "Ugh, I don't even wanna write this down. I don't wanna have to disclose this," you start to... It's a little bit different, and it's interesting. As long as it doesn't flip you into disordered eating, sometimes the tracking can be helpful just to increase awareness and to make you realize, oh, when I'm not doing that, I have a level of denying reality to myself, and that's what we wanna guard against. I'm not sitting here having people track all day long, but I do think here and there it's helpful to know your protein intake, your fiber intake. Where are the actual problems? Sometimes we just stop paying attention because life gets busy and we think, well, I've locked these things in. Some people, like every morning, they're doing the same protein coffee, and a plateau, it's just this invitation to reassess, hey, what's going on? But it's not about sitting there and judging yourself. After you are asking yourself what has become automatic and you are definitely writing the word curiosity in capital letters The other thing I want you to do now that you have the awareness, 'cause you always need the awareness before you can make a change. I've been listening to so many different books and programs here recently, and it's like everyone has been saying the same thing. You need the awareness before you can do anything. You have that awareness now, and what you're gonna do is you're gonna pick one lever, not 10. One thing so you're not overcorrecting a bunch of things. Let's give some examples. You might say, "All right, I wanna get back to making sure that each meal has 20 to 30 grams of protein." A big one that I see work for 99% of my patients, it's bringing in more veggies and fruits. Almost universally, most of us are under-fibered. We're not eating enough whole-based foods, and the answer is usually not keep restricting. It's bring in enough of the things that actually work. Now, might it crowd out other things? Fine and great, but the answer is not to keep taking things away. Can we bring in more veggies for you at each meal? Another apple, things like that. Can you walk a little bit more? Can you look at your sleep consistency, and is there one thing you could try? Maybe you always get up in the middle of the night and you notice there's actually like this bright light that's shining at me through the street. Am I the only one? It's like we have these good curtains up and everything, but what I've come to with time is I have to wear that, that eye mask at night. It's fine. It's no problem. In fact, my sleep is amazing, and I've just realized I need this. I even have one that I travel with and one that's regularly in bed 'cause I'm not gonna deal with this, oh, did I forget to bring it back and did it get lost? That is how much that matters to me. But using that as a tool equals better sleep, the other thing, it's like, could you talk to your obesity medicine clinician and see does the medication need to be adjusted or not? Does this treatment plan need a change? If you go back a few episodes, we'll link it in the show notes, I talked about how do you know if this is something where you just need to keep seeing it through, like you're not actually at a stall or a plateau, you just have not been doing it consistently for long enough. You're actually on the right path. You just have to give yourself a chance to see the fruits of your labor. How do you know it's that versus there actually is a medication or something that needs to change? And your clinical team can help walk you through that. I went over some of the things in that episode a few back, but that's a good one to listen to. But this is where you've decided, "Yep, I do think that I'm in this maintenance land, that I have stalled out a bit. I have awareness of what's going on. Here's the one thing I think I'm gonna change," and then you go all in on that. So the answer, it's usually never perfection. It's just finding that small thing that's gonna give you a potentially big return, and it's hard to know until you try different things. It's always so random what ends up working for everyone, and it only happens because they're being light and playful with it. They're saying, "Okay, this week, what if I try that? This week, what if I try that?" They're not massively crazy things, but they're willing to keep adjusting these things, okay? So remember, the goal isn't to lose fat as fast as possible. The goal is to build a body and a life that can sustain your results and how you want to feel. Sometimes the plateau is where those, those lifelong habits are actually built because you have to show yourself, even when this stuff is happening, I can't get so frustrated where I just say, "Oh, to hell with all of it," and you go do whatever. It's like, "Oh, yes, I'm gonna have to keep doing these things or potentially to maintain what I have here, but here's how I could make it much more fun. I could make it much more enjoyable." We do not do things long term that are very hard. We just don't. If it's not fun, if there's not some reward in some capacity, like I'm working a lot more on my physical health this year, but the fun for me is I really want to be able to do hikes up a mountain and it not feel as wretched. And that's a really big reward, to be honest. To do something where initially my brain just within the first few steps is like, "Oh my God, I hate my life," like just such negative talk ensues. To get to a place where I'm like, "I love this. I enjoy this," again, where I'm tuning in more to nature, things like that, that's a massive reward. Okay, I'm willing to go through the day-to-day maybe not loving it, because I know that those weekends on a hike, I know the once-a-year vacation going to somewhere bigger, I know that those things are gonna be so much more fun. I'm willing to do the other things. But if I didn't get the payoff in some capacity, why would I sit there and just be in pain all day long when there's no reward to me? Now, some people love that they look different in a dress. I don't care what the motivation for you is. But in some capacity, if it's not fun for you, if it's super hard, you're not gonna do those things long. We thrive on the motivational triad. Things need to be easy, they need to be pleasurable, we need to want to do them. Have some fun with looking at what could I change here, and then seeing what's the one lever that you wanna change. When people have a business And they're looking at growing that business. A lot of the time, they can't figure out why they're not growing, and so they'll hire what's called a consultant, they'll hire someone to come in who does not have a, a pony in the race, okay? They just come in and they're just, looking at what everyone's doing and they're asking questions. They're neutral, and they're just trying to figure out from an outsider's perspective what's happening. Why is it often helpful? Because they are asking, like, "Why do you even do things in that way?" Because you assume in the business that this is how it should always be done, but they're not locked into that, and so they're questioning everything. That level of just looking at things and inquiring and thinking, do that with your own life. What if there was no rule book? It didn't have to look this way. I didn't need to do XYZ. Like, you technically, I don't love it, but you technically could be someone that just on the weekend you do a bunch of exercise. Now, we call that a weekend warrior, and a lot of people are gonna say, "Oh, Matthea, that's horrible." But listen, I would rather that you be a Saturday, Sunday, you walk two, three hours each day on those days than you do nothing. Maybe that's the only time you perceive that you have right now. If that's our in, let's go ahead and take it, it's gonna look different for everyone, but this assumption of it has to be every day, it has to be this, it has to be that. Maybe for you, that's not what's gonna work. I don't know. But we're gonna have to find the one lever to, adjust. All right. Last thing I wanna leave you with. Everyone assumes that you need to clamp down more and eat less, and that it's this like more and more and more pain route. And if you, for a long time, I'm gonna classify this as roughly speaking over 18 months, so a year and a half, if you have just been calorie restricting, calorie restricting, you're always in a deficit, losing, losing, losing, you might need to go through a period where you very slowly start to eat more. We call this a reverse diet. For some of you, you need to come to the conclusion, hopefully with your medical team, so they can help guide you through if this is happening for you or not, where you might need to actually take a period of eating more. I'm not talking overnight you're suddenly eating 1,000 calories more a day. That's not what I'm talking about. But your work might actually be, I have to get myself out of this massive restriction that I've put myself in because I've actually created a cage for myself, and it's gonna feel like it's going backwards by me eating more. But you cannot, everybody hear me, you cannot get to the promised land by just less, less, less, less, less with calories. People think that's the case. It's like sad. It doesn't work long term. People end up looking sickly even though, quote unquote, "they're thinner." I'm always shocked when I look at people's data, how you cannot tell from just looking at someone whether they're healthy or not. Okay, if there's one thing I know, it's that you can do this. You are gonna figure it out. You can make it fun again for yourself. We all fall into habits and routines, and a lot of the time it's helpful, but sometimes we need some stuff to mix it up a little bit. If you come from an open place, you will figure out a lot more than if you're hard on yourself and you kinda go down the negative, harder, harder track. It just doesn't work out as well. All right, I hope that you all have a great rest of the week, and we'll talk soon.