Plateaus: what to do when progress stalls

Almost everyone who loses weight hits a point where the scale stops moving. It's frustrating, and it's often where people give up. But a plateau is a normal part of how bodies respond to eating less, not a sign that fasting has stopped working. Understanding why it happens makes it much easier to respond calmly.

Why weight loss slows down

When you start eating less, the gap between what you eat and what you burn is at its biggest, so weight comes off quickly. But as you lose weight, your body needs less energy to run, and that gap shrinks. Researchers at the US National Institutes of Health built a detailed model of this process and showed that the body's response to a change in eating is slow, with weight settling towards a new level over a period of years rather than weeks ¹. A slowdown is the expected shape of the curve, not a failure.

Is it really a plateau?

Body weight goes up and down from day to day with water, salt, food in your gut and, for women, the menstrual cycle. There's a weekly pattern too. When researchers analysed thousands of daily weigh-ins, weight was highest on Sundays and Mondays and fell through the week. People who lost or kept off weight showed the clearest pattern: they gained a little at the weekend and compensated during the week ².

The quiet ways calories creep back

Fasting helps many people eat less without counting, but it doesn't make calories irrelevant. In a year-long trial in China, people who ate within an 8-hour window lost about the same weight as people who ate the same calories spread across the day ⁵. The window works mainly by helping you eat less.

What helps

In the MATADOR trial, the group that took 2-week breaks lost more weight and more fat, and their resting metabolism fell less than expected for their weight loss ⁴. It took them longer, 30 weeks instead of 16, and it was a single trial in men, so it isn't the final word. But it suggests that easing off for a while, by shortening your fasts and eating to maintain, can be a strategy rather than a setback.

Sources

1. Hall KD, Sacks G, Chandramohan D, et al. Quantification of the effect of energy imbalance on bodyweight. Lancet. 2011;378(9793):826-37. doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60812-X
2. Orsama AL, Mattila E, Ermes M, et al. Weight rhythms: weight increases during weekends and decreases during weekdays. Obes Facts. 2014;7(1):36-47. doi.org/10.1159/000356147
3. Lichtman SW, Pisarska K, Berman ER, et al. Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects. N Engl J Med. 1992;327(27):1893-8. doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701
4. Byrne NM, Sainsbury A, King NA, et al. Intermittent energy restriction improves weight loss efficiency in obese men: the MATADOR study. Int J Obes (Lond). 2018;42(2):129-138. doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2017.206
5. Liu D, Huang Y, Huang C, et al. Calorie Restriction with or without Time-Restricted Eating in Weight Loss. N Engl J Med. 2022;386(16):1495-1504. doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2114833