This gets cited here weekly, usually second-hand, so it is worth setting out what it does and does not establish.
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.
Where I think it is weakest: the completion rate deserves as much attention as the headline, because a large effect among those who finished is a different claim from a large effect among those enrolled.
The narrow version of the question is how to distinguish a genuine plateau from measurement noise and creeping intake, before changing anything. I would rather have one careful answer than five confident ones.
Figures above are from the primary publication rather than the press summary. If a number here disagrees with one you have, post yours and we will work out which of us is reading a secondary source.
sarah_nash92 said: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…
Plateau breaking story with a stall: I stalled at 195 lbs for 8 weeks. Tried everything — calorie cycling, increased exercise, more water. Nothing worked.
What finally broke the plateau: adding HIIT cardio 2x/week. Lost 6 lbs in the next 3 weeks. Plateaus are temporary — they always break if you stay consistent.
sarah_nash92 said: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…
I read this differently from sarah_nash92, on substance rather than tone. The "it is your intake" reflex here gets tiring. Some people genuinely stop responding at a dose that worked, and telling them to track harder when they have already tracked is how people stop posting.
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Browse GL BiochemAnswering the narrow version, because the broad one does not have a single answer. Genuine plateaus happen too, and the mechanism is metabolic adaptation plus a smaller body. A body 20kg lighter needs meaningfully fewer calories at rest and less to move, so the deficit that produced the first phase is arithmetically smaller now. The options are the honest ones — increase the deficit slightly, increase activity, or accept the new plateau — and escalating the dose is only one of them.
Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.
LibrarianMeg said:Plateau breaking story with a stall: I stalled at 195 lbs for 8 weeks.
Adding a me-too, because a thread of one person's experience is not much use. Nothing to add that would improve it.