In the first weeks or months of your weight-loss journey, the regular scale routine can feel intoxicating. Each time, the number reads a little lighter than before. You share your week-by-week numbers with your friends and family; they congratulate you on your success. Until, one day, you hit a weight loss plateau.
A few weeks later, it still won’t budge. Your reaction might be to think that you’re something wrong.
Don’t succumb to negative self-talk, says Dr. Alexandra Sowa, a New York City-based internal medicine physician and diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. “It’s so important to expect to hit a plateau at some point. If you don’t, it can be easy to get frustrated, give up on healthy lifestyle changes and regain all of the lost weight.”
After all, even those who follow their diets to the letter can expect to hit a weight-loss plateau about six months into their weight-loss journeys, according to 2014 research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Why? Your body is a master adapter, Sowa says. Its end goal is homeostasis, or for everything to stay the same. But that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve your fitness goals.
Here are three possible reasons you’ve hit a weight-loss plateau – and how to break through to reach your goal weight.