Splitting this out of the general thread because the answers kept arriving in ones and twos and nobody could see the shape of it.
Thirteen weeks at the same dose with no change on the scale, and I have gone from assuming it was the drug to assuming it was me and back several times.
What I actually want to know is how to distinguish a genuine plateau from measurement noise and creeping intake, before changing anything.
Roughly, people seem to land in one of these:
- Held where they were and waited it out
- Changed one variable and kept everything else fixed
- Changed several things at once and cannot now attribute the result
- Stopped and reassessed from a clean baseline
Say which and say why — the why is the useful half.
mike_mod said:Thirteen weeks at the same dose with no change on the scale, and I have gone from assuming it was the drug to assuming it was me and back several…
Plateau breaking story with a stall: I stalled at 217 lbs for 6 weeks. Tried everything — calorie cycling, increased exercise, more water. Nothing worked.
What finally broke the plateau: increasing protein to 150g/day. Lost 9 lbs in the next 2 weeks. Plateaus are temporary — they always break if you stay consistent.
LibrarianMeg said:Plateau breaking story with a stall: I stalled at 217 lbs for 6 weeks.
LibrarianMeg has the substance of this right. The condition it depends on is worth stating. Most reported plateaus are not plateaus. Weight is a noisy signal — daily variation of one to two kilograms from glycogen, sodium and gut contents — so a fortnight of flat readings is well inside the noise band. Before concluding anything, look at a rolling weekly average over at least four weeks and at a tape measure, because recomposition shows up in circumference before it shows up in weight. Then track intake honestly for a week: appetite suppression fades unevenly, and intake creeping back up is the single commonest cause.
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Shop Reference Standardsmike_mod said:Thirteen weeks at the same dose with no change on the scale, and I have gone from assuming it was the drug to assuming it was me and back several…
Second this.
Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the correction. That is slower than asserting, and it is the only version that survives being wrong.