Expert Tips to Overcome Weight Loss Plateaus and Stay Motivated

**Jim Hill:** Welcome to “Weight Loss And…”, where we delve into the world of weight loss. I'm Jim Hill.

**Holly Wyatt:** And I'm Holly Wyatt. We're both dedicated to helping you lose weight, keep it off, and living your best life while you're doing it.

**Jim Hill:** Indeed, we now realize successful weight loss combines the science and art of medicine, knowing what to do and why you will do it.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, the “And” allows us to talk about all the other stuff that makes your journey so much bigger, better, and exciting.

**Jim Hill:** Ready for the “And” factor?

**Holly Wyatt:** Let's dive in.

**Jim Hill:** Here we go. Holly, today we're going to talk about weight loss plateaus.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, the dreaded. I like to call it the dreaded weight loss plateau because everyone plateaus at some point and they don't want to. So it's the dreaded weight loss plateau.

**Jim Hill:** I get asked about this all the time. What do you do when you hit a weight loss plateau? Why do you hit weight loss plateaus? That's what we're going to take on today.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. Why do I hit it and what can I do about it? You know, no one wants to lose weight and to be doing all the things, the behaviors that they associate with weight loss and the scale not moving. So it makes sense why they ask questions about it.

**Jim Hill:** And then oftentimes people will say, conclude that what they're doing isn't working because they hit a weight loss plateau. That may not be the right conclusion, right?

**Holly Wyatt:** It isn't a lot of the time. I mean, I get this question all the time. The scale is stuck. It may not be that the scale is stuck, or even if the scale is stuck, it may be they don't understand what's going on. So I think this is a great topic for our podcast because everyone experiences it. You can't lose weight forever, I say. Everyone experiences a plateau at some point. So understanding, are you really plateaued and what to do about it, I think is a topic that will appeal to a lot of people.

**Jim Hill:** I love it because it really helps us understand how the body balances things. And you know, I love that, Holly, energy balance.

**Holly Wyatt:** And I think this is the perfect topic. You're going to really explain that. And I think people are going to love that.

**Jim Hill:** This is great. It'll be a two-hour podcast. This is exciting.

**Holly Wyatt:** But you're so good at explaining that science energy way in a way that people can understand it, you know? And so that's what I'm excited about you being able to do that. And then we can end with what can you do about it? Like, you know, some practical pie in the plate, which, you know, I love. All right. If you're in a plateau, what do you do? So let's start off, Jim, what is a weight loss plateau? And then I want you to really go into what is the energetics around it.

**Jim Hill:** So a weight loss plateau is when you're trying to lose weight and you're following everything, you think you're following your diet, you're exercising, the scale goes down, down, down, and then suddenly nothing changes. You keep doing what you're doing and the scale doesn't change. And you get frustrated saying it must not be working. Okay, let's look at what happens to the body. Okay, so this is a mini course in energy balance, okay? So if you're at a constant weight, Holly, that means that over a period of time, the calories you take in are equal to the calories you spend, okay? We know how calories come in, right? They come in through food. How do we expend calories? Well, it takes a lot of energy just to keep our body going, sort of maintenance. We call that resting metabolic rate. There's some minimal cost of processing food, and then there's energy required for physical activity. So resting metabolic rate, thermic effect of food, and the energy required for physical activity or movement, right? And when you're in a weight-stable situation, no matter what your weight, you're at a normal weight or you're overweight, if you're weight-stable, it means that the two are in balance. Okay.

**Holly Wyatt:** And I love that because that's for sure. Like we know that, right?

**Jim Hill:** It's the law of thermodynamics. It's not a hypothesis. It's about as close to truth as we can get.

**Holly Wyatt:** I think there are a lot of things I say we don't know for sure. I think we know this one right now if we can count on it, right?

**Jim Hill:** I would put my money on this one.

**Holly Wyatt:** Okay. All right.

**Jim Hill:** All right. Now let's look at what happens when you lose weight. So we know that the amount of energy your body requires from maintenance or your resting metabolic rate depends on your body size, right? A bigger body requires more energy to keep it going. So when you start losing weight, your body gets smaller. Guess what happens to your resting metabolic rate?

**Holly Wyatt:** It goes down.

**Jim Hill:** And your thermic effect of food, because you're eating less food, that's going to go down a little bit. Now, physical activity is the variable one, but let's say you don't change your physical activity. Well, you still have a smaller body. It takes less energy to move a smaller body than a big body. So what happens as you're losing weight, the amount of calories you burn goes down, right?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, I think that's key. People don't realize that. You're doing the same thing. let's say you've been walking three miles, you continue to walk three miles. You don't decrease it. But just because you're getting smaller, your energy expenditure, how many calories you burn, decreases. That's just key. I want people to really understand that.

**Jim Hill:** And a lot of people get it wrong. They think that if you're overweight or obese, your resting metabolic rate is lower. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's higher. Your resting metabolic rate is very strongly associated with your body size. Bigger body, bigger resting metabolic rate. So the fact that the resting metabolic rate goes down as you lose weight is expected. It's normal. You have a lower body, right? Okay. So you have energy expenditure coming down. You've already reduced your calories, right? Because you're eating less. So at some point, energy expenditure is going to come down to where you're back in balance. Now you're at a smaller weight, but you're back in balance, not because your diet didn't work, actually because it did work. It made you a smaller person.

**Holly Wyatt:** You lost some weight and that it working kind of counterbalanced.

**Jim Hill:** So if you don't reach a plateau, you're probably not doing something right.

**Holly Wyatt:** Right. Right. Well, you have to reach a plateau at some point.

**Jim Hill:** But again, you know, you and I have talked to a lot of people and they just, they're always in a weight loss scenario. They're always trying to lose weight. Well, you can't lose weight forever because you can't trick your body. Your body adjusts, and this is a good thing. So I think what we're getting at here is don't see the weight plateau necessarily as a bad thing. It's a sign that what you're doing is working. Now, it still can be frustrating, and if you need to lose more weight, you need to think about what you can do with it. But the weight plateaus are normal, and what it means is you've succeeded at reducing your body weight, and that has caused a reduction in the number of calories your body expends each day. Now, let me say one more thing before we talk about what you can do about it. Resting metabolic rates, pretty much tied to body size, okay? Nothing you can do about it. Your body goes up and down, your resting metabolic rate is going to go up and down. Your thermic effect of food is tied to your number of calories. More calories you eat, the higher the thermic effect of food. The one that's really variable is your physical activity.

And that's why I know you and I hammer the importance of physical activity, because while the cost of moving your body goes down, you can increase that by increasing your physical activity. Not much you can do about your resting metabolic rate. Not much you can do about the thermic effect of food. Where you have the power is on how much you move. And even though it costs less to move your body, you can move more and actually prevent that decrease in energy expenditure and maybe even increase it.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So you can add that physical activity that can help you not reach, you know, be able to go further before you reach a plateau. But at some point, Jim, you're still going to reach a plateau unless…you can't increase your physical activity forever, right? There's only so much movement you can do.

**Jim Hill:** And in fact, that's the goal. The goal is to get at a plateau at a weight that you're comfortable with. And you, I've talked before, you know, we ask people what their dream weights are, and they come up with lots and lots of weight loss that probably isn't feasible. But when you really push people, there's a weight most people can reach. It may not be their dream weight, but it's a weight they're comfortable with, and they can be okay with it. What you want to do is reach a plateau at that weight, because then you're going to be able to maintain it. If you don't maintain your behaviors, you aren't going to maintain the weight loss. Right.

**Holly Wyatt:** So it's like you're trying to lose weight. Those behaviors are what now is keeping you in balance. So you've got to be careful because if you go back to doing what you were before, then that is where you regain.

**Jim Hill:** It's crazy, Holly, because so many people think about, I want to lose weight. I'm going to go out and do all these things for three months or six months, and then I'm going to go back to the way I was before. And surprise, the weight comes back. This is forever. Weight loss is temporary. You can do a lot of stuff. We talked before about how almost every diet works for weight loss. Weight loss maintenance is different. The goal is to find a lifestyle that allows you to reach an energy balance at a weight that's satisfying for you.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. But this brings in the perfect other piece of this that we always talk about, and that's that intake. You can pull intake down and adhere by adhering to our energy-restricted diet, and many different types of diet. We don't believe in one diet, but some diets restrict your calories. But at some point, energy intake tends to rise. And how does that affect that plateau now? Tell the story with that in it.

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, so that's exactly it. So you're on a diet. Let's say you reduce your intake by 1,000 calories a day and you lose weight. And you reach a point where now you aren't going to be able to continue to eat less. And in fact, we have talked about this many times. Human physiology did not develop to allow us to restrict calories. It developed to encourage us to eat calories. So this is that whole transition from weight loss to keeping weight on. You can't stay on that calorie restriction forever. What you've got to do is now your calorie intake is going to come back up. And that's why physical activity is so important. Physical activity gives you a level of energy expenditure that is feasible to meet on an amount of calories that keep you satisfied. Maybe not everything you want to eat. Put simply, people try to food restrict. You can food restrict. It's like holding your breath. Some people longer than others, but eventually, pretty much nobody's going to do it. You got to take a breath. You're going to have to increase your calories. And if you haven't changed your energy expenditure primarily through your physical activity.

You're going to be stuck with eating a low number of calories. And really simply, one of the big reasons people fail to keep weight off is they don't have an energy expenditure that's high enough to allow them to eat a number of calories that's satisfying. You get hungry, you overeat, and then it's in reverse. As you overeat, resting metabolic rate goes up, thermic effect of food. So see, the body is wonderful because expenditure adjusts to intake. So dieting, food restriction is a way to get the weight off. You can't food restrict forever. You've got to match it to energy expenditure. And this is why physical activity is so, so important. The more physical activity you're able to do, and it has to be permanent. This isn't temporary. The more physical activity, the higher your energy expenditure, which means the more calories you can eat without gaining weight. It is simple in that respect.

**Holly Wyatt:** And that metabolic flexibility that we've talked about so much comes in where you actually may get a little bit of adjustment, a little bit of movement in addition to this process you're talking about. So the way I think about it is as I'm losing weight, my energy expenditure is decreasing. I'm doing that physical activity, which may help a little bit, but it's decreasing. The more weight I lose, the lower it's getting, the lower it's getting, the lower it's getting. At some point, it's going to match how much food I'm eating. And when it does that, I'm not going to lose any more weight. And in addition, if I've been on a diet, a restricted eating plan for a long period of time, I also see my energy intake slowly increasing because adherence is going to start failing. We have good data to show whatever diet adherence starts to fail. Three months, four months, five months, six months, going up and up. So expenditures coming down and my energy intake is, even though I'm trying, super hard.

**Jim Hill:** And it isn't a failure. It's biology. You're fighting this strong biology. Humans, I mean, our brains are wired to get us to eat. They're not wired to get us to restrict food. And it's hard. And you can do it for a little while, but almost nobody can do it long-term.

**Holly Wyatt:** You know, when people tell me I'm in a plateau and they're frustrated and they're like, it's not working and I can't do this. I'm like, your body is working perfectly. But what a different way to think about it, right? Not beat up on yourself, not shame or, you know, blame. It's working as it was designed to work. How beautiful is that? Thank goodness it does that. And if you see it that way, you can work with it.

**Jim Hill:** And so that's the key. Now, we're not saying if you reach a plateau, forget it, because there are things you can do, right?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes.

**Jim Hill:** But you have to realize what's happened is when you reach a plateau, you've reached this level of energy balance. So if you want to then continue to lose weight, you may need to think about some different kinds of strategies.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes. And we can talk about those. One thing I want to bring up right now, though, is sometimes people have what I'm calling a pseudo plateau. It's not a real plateau. So a real plateau is where energy intake is matched or equaling energy expenditure and you've lost some weight. And we just explained why. Sometimes the scale isn't moving, but you're not really in energy balance. You're still burning fat, but you don't see it on the scale because the scale doesn't go down. And this can sometimes happen early in a weight loss, you know, a weight loss plan. And people think it's a plateau and they get frustrated. And when really it's not, really it's water. So the scale is tricky because you could be losing a pound of fat. A week, you know, or two pounds of fat a week, which would be meaning you're in a negative energy balance. But if for some reason you're holding onto some water and there's so many reasons why you hold onto water, uh, then you're not going to see it. It may take several weeks and then whoosh, you lose three or four pounds. And it's not that you suddenly lost three or four pounds of fat. It's that you suddenly lost the water. So you have to be careful to really understand when do you call it a true plateau. And when is it water kind of screwing up with the scale?

**Jim Hill:** So how do you know the difference? How do you know if you're in a real plateau or a pseudo plateau?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. One of the things you have to do is it's about time. If you've just been on a diet for two weeks, you're not in a plateau most of the time. I tell my patients that three to four weeks, I want to see the scale not changing for three or four weeks before I'm going to call it a true plateau, a true plateau where we're going to do something about it. And I always say, I'm going to play a card. I don't want to play a card too early. I want to keep the cards in my hand to use them when it's real, not use it when it's fake. So I usually say we want three to four weeks of no drop in the scale. Our scale goes up a little bit, down a little bit, you know, it averages out. And I actually have my patients not just look at a single weight. This is really important. They average the week and they look for a new low. And so is the average for each week decreasing? And if it's not for three or four weeks, I may call that a plateau. Or if you don't have a new low weight for three or four weeks, then I'm going to say, okay, we're at a real plateau. What can we do? But I think it's important. You don't want to say you're at a plateau too early.

**Jim Hill:** Early plateaus probably are more due to not following the diet, right? If you think you're reaching a plateau two or three weeks in, then quite likely the problem is on the intake side because your expenditure hadn't gone down that much in that period of time.

**Holly Wyatt:** If you're at a real plateau early in your weight loss plan, in your journey, and you're actively, then it's probably adherence to the diet. Or you could be adhering to the diet, Jim, but there are water shifts. You know, when you take in more carbohydrate or you're working out and that can give inflammation, you're stressed, your body holds on to water. I know people that hold on to large variations in water, which can hide it. So it's either you're not adhering to the diet and that's a true plateau if it's early, or it's a pseudo plateau with the water. And that's why we wait several weeks before we say, okay, what are we going to do? Because when I play cards, when we, I call them cards, we have several cards we can play to kind of trick up the metabolism or to re get you out of a plateau. I don't want to waste a card, right? I've got some good cards. I'm not going to waste it on a pseudo plateau because once you play it, yeah, you've kind of played it. And at some point, guess what? You're going to go into weight loss maintenance. Oh my gosh, that's going to happen. But I can kind of keep the weight loss going with these cards as long as possible. We then go into weight loss maintenance, and then you can go into weight loss again.

**Jim Hill:** But that's the other thing is you don't, you can try again. We talk about that as sort of a stepwise approach. Lose some weight, keep it off, lose some more weight, and keep it off. What you want to do is avoid regaining it, that cycle of losing weight and regaining it.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes. And the mind state, Jim, is so important in this because if you think it's not working, If you think you're failing if you think, if you have this negative, you know, mind state, guess what? It is hard.

**Jim Hill:** You know, we say that over and over. If you go into a program expecting failure, you're going to get failed. You always tell me, you know, you, I hear you tell your patients, they say, what if this doesn't work? And you always say, what if it does?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes. Why would we focus our energy and our thoughts and why would we concentrate on it not working? I just don't get that. How is that helpful? Explain that one to me because I don't get it.

**Jim Hill:** I'm with you. So let's say I'm at a real plateau, but I want to lose some more weight. Are there things I can do?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So we know what's going on physiologically and we kind of know the reasons why you plateau. So we can play cards. We can do things to try to keep the weight loss going, to try to put you back into a negative energy balance where you're eating less calories than you're burning, right? A plateau means you're matched. And we just talked about that. We want to get you out of that matching or the equal of intake and expenditure and get you eating less and burning more. And when you do that, you will burn fat and you'll be out of the plateau. So we got to think about what we can do. The first thing, Jim, and people don't like this, but this is what you've got to do. This gives you so much good information. When people say they're in a plateau and I believe it, it's like, it's a real plateau. I'm like, “food log for two weeks.”

**Jim Hill:** Oh my God. I hate them.

**Holly Wyatt:** I know. I know.

**Jim Hill:** But they're so useful, aren't they?

**Holly Wyatt:** Oh, people roll their eyes. They roll their eyes at me. I'm like, oh, it's like torture, they feel like.

**Jim Hill:** You know, it's funny. People say, well, I know what I eat. And in fact, you don't, because you don't think about it. I've seen so many people, you ask them to keep a food log, and they go back and say, oh my God, I had no idea I was doing this or that. It's just an awareness.

**Holly Wyatt:** They tell me, let me tell you what I eat. And they're not lying. They're giving me a true day where they really did restrict. They don't necessarily tell me or remember the day that they had the pizza and the beers.

**Jim Hill:** That was rare.

**Holly Wyatt:** That was an unusual day. That wasn't my typical day. And I believe that they really are trying hard and there are days when they really are restricting their calories, but there are other days they're not. And over time... You know, it's not enough. So a food log really helps with that energy intake, what you're eating. It helps us look at patterns and it really helps us try to decide what cards we want to play. So I do think it gives you a lot of knowledge and data so you can assess what's really going on.

And when it comes to weight loss, we always talk about nutrition. What you're eating is the biggest driver. So that's why we start with a food log. Well, you know, we love energy expenditure. We love activity, but that's more about maintenance. So I'm going to concentrate first because we want to be in weight loss. If we're going to break a plateau, I'm going to concentrate on the food log. And I say two weeks, I like, and this is me, write it down yourself. I don't use the apps.

**Jim Hill:** Oh, I think that's probably good. You're probably getting people to get more skin in the game on their intake.

**Holly Wyatt:** It's so easy on an app, Jim. You just, when you're on an app, you just check something that's not real, right? If you write it down, and I tell people, be simple and write down everything you're eating. But if you're writing it down, it'd be easier to be simple. So whatever diet plan you're using, we can do a log on it, but keep it simple. The more moving parts you have, the more different ingredients, the more sauces and things, people, the more it's hard to tell what's really going on. So keep it simple, monitor what you're eating and the portion. That's what I have for them.

**Jim Hill:** What do you look for in a food log? You don't count calories, do you, of a food log?

**Holly Wyatt:** I don't always, if that's what they're doing, we can. And so we can look at the calories, but depending on what their eating plan is, what their diet is that they're using, then I'm gonna be looking for specifics around that and are they adhering? So basically what I'm looking for in the food log is have we reached a plateau because they're not adhering to the diet or have we reached a plateau because of this energy efficiency you talked about and that energy expenditure decreasing? increasing. And it may be a little bit of both. It may be too simple to say it's one or the other, but what's the predominant problem? The predominant problem is they can't stick to what they need to be eating to keep their calories low. Or is the predominant problem, that they're sticking to it pretty good, but that energy expenditure has probably decreased usually because they've lost a significant amount of weight?

**Jim Hill:** Okay. So number one, keep a food log. What else?

**Holly Wyatt:** So then after I look look at the food log. Now I have some data. So if you're doing this, you have some data. You can look for patterns. You can look for, oh, there's some days I'm really on. There are some days I'm off. You can look for that. And if it's due to adherence, which a lot of times it is, you can't be on a diet forever. You will stop adhering to that diet. Little bites of food. I've been eating this off my kid's plate. Oh yeah, well, I went out and I caved in and I had a hamburger with the guys. you know, that's okay. It's not about blame, but it's about understanding that and seeing adherence is starting to fail. It's starting to go away and that's normal. So what are the cards that I could play? The second card I could play if I think it's around adherence is let's go back to that motivational fire.

Let's go back to that energy of why you want to lose the weight and why adhering to your diet or your eating plan is important to you. So we've talked about that motivational fire. And so we will talk about extrinsic things. Can I put some gasoline on it? Can I put some other kind of external freshers on me? That would help, and some people do well with that. Or do I need to go intrinsically and really remember my private why? And so I may spend time on that if I think that that could be helpful.

**Jim Hill:** And we did a whole podcast on motivation people can go back and listen to if you want to do a deeper dive.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, so working on motivation is one card you can play. Remembering putting something on your refrigerator. Why is this important? Do I want the burger with the guys, are do I want the reason I'm really trying to lose this weight? So can I get back my adherence to my diet by working on my motivation? Third card, the third thing is also around adherence, but it's not necessarily motivation. I look at the log and I say, where are the problems? Oh, looks like some extra calories are coming in at night when they're stressed out, or looks like it's on the weekends, or it looks like portion sizes are starting to creep up. Where are these extra calories going in? You almost have to be a detective and kind of look at it. And then you want to attack specifically that problem, where they're eating off plan or where if they're on a low carbohydrate diet, where the carbohydrates are coming in. If they're on State of Slim or the Colorado diet, when do they eat foods that aren't on the plan? So where is it occurring? And this is the key, and this is what people don't do. Why?

So I'm eating at night, more calories, or I'm off plan at night. Why is that occurring? Is it occurring because I come home and I have no food ready for me? And I call up the fast food to come, you know, I call up Uber to come send me something? often? Is it because there's good food that I could eat, but I choose not to because I'm stressed and I want to eat something else, but a little bit of why? Then, Jim, you can attack it and see what could I change to help. Maybe it's that I, you know, I've been going home, picking up fast food. All right, let's change how you drive home. Let's not drive home by your fast food joint, you know, or let's see how we can let's go for a 20-minute walk when you first get home because stress is so high, you eat the first thing that you grab. So let's work on that time period to see if we can get you back in adherence. Does that make sense?

**Jim Hill:** It makes total sense. So really, the first thing you look at is what's happening on the food side. Are you adhering? Do you have the right kind of motivation? Are there some things you can change up?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. Why are you not able to adhere? The food log helps you see, I'm not adhering. And then from that, you can think about why and be clever about what I can change here. Don't say, I'm just going to adhere.

Well, if you could do that, it would be easy. I'm just going to try harder. And I'm like, nope, not good enough. We're not going to just try harder. We're going to be strategic, right? We're going to be clever. We're going to think about how to help you in these situations. So that's the key in that. And then the next card, Jim, and you're going to love this. I want to hear what your take is on this. If I think it's more about efficiency, meaning they're adhering pretty well, but their body, the energy expenditure has decreased enough and even some efficiencies have developed. So maybe it's even decreased a little bit more than you would have expected from their weight loss. The body is adjusted. Body's so good at adjusting. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. But really good at adjusting. It's adjusting and it's more on that energy expenditure side. Then I play a card that I call, okay, we're going to change it up. Your body is used to what you're eating and what you're doing for expenditure. Let's mix it up. And a lot of times I do that on the food side.

If they're eating a lot of something, I'm going to take it out and put something else in, or I love to do it on the activity side. Let's start. If you've been exercising in the morning, let's exercise in the evening. If you've been doing predominantly only one type of exercise, let's add a different type of exercise in. Let's change the intensity. Let's change the type of activity, anything. I just want to change it up. I just want to throw what I call a curve ball to the metabolism, something the body is not used to. Now I see this work, but Jim, why do you think this may work?

**Jim Hill:** I like that. I think in a way our body is attuned to be aware of different things. I mean, it's like in your daily routines, you don't even notice this. It's like, you know, you drive to work and if I ask you to think about it, you don't think about it because it's just on automatic. But if something happens, you almost get an accident or something, man, now you pay attention to it. So I think there may be something to that of your body's in this routine, boom, sort of hit it with something that's different and you pay attention to it. So, you know, I'm just speculating, but I see that over and over. It's the change that your body really pays attention to.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. It's almost like it's really efficient. It knows what you're doing. It's gotten really good at. I'm walking for three miles and that's great, but now I'm going to add a little something. I'm going to add some hills to it, or I'm going to add something else to it. And it kind of goes, wait a minute. I'm not really good at that. And it may even waste some energy figuring it out. I know I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I think there's something about keeping it changing like you're saying, where it wastes or spends more energy than when you do the same thing over and over and over again.

**Jim Hill:** And again, you know, it's like... Change it up. Something goes wrong with your computer, reboot it. You don't know why it works, but do something to change it up a bit. And it works for me all the time. I just, you know, try pushing buttons and maybe one of them will work. So I think it's a good thing. Change it up. It can't hurt anything. And I think the body, you kind of shock the body into paying attention.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. I think you can get some more weight loss that way. I've seen it multiple times. Anecdotally, this works is to change it up and we'll get the scale moving again.

**Jim Hill:** I like that. I like that a lot. What else? Anything else?

**Holly Wyatt:** All right. Yeah, there's one more. And this is the last card I usually play. And I found this by just kind of sheer luck. This happens several times in my patients. And I started saying, huh, let me now try this. But this is, you've been in a plateau. You've really been trying. We've tried, we played some of these other cards. You lost a little bit of weight, Maybe you've plateaued again. And this is kind of the last card I play. And I call this the vacation. And everybody loves that. They're like, oh, a vacation. And what it is, is you go off. And the reason I found this is people would say, okay, I'm going on vacation. What should I do? And I said, you know what? Eat what you want on vacation. Keep your activity super high. Don't let that activity, Jim, go down. I think that's pretty, keep your metabolism high. But I want you to eat what you want. Enjoy it you don't have to stuff yourself but if you want the chocolate croissant and you want some ice cream. Eat it, come back, and we'll deal with what happens when you get back. That's how it started, right? What I would notice is people would go on one to two weeks, not usually longer than that they would go on a cruise, they'd go to Europe they would keep their activity super high, that's important in this right they're not sitting around all day eating, they're moving and eating and when they would come back, the scale would be up a little bit.

We would immediately go back to a restricted eating plan. They would lose the few pounds that they had gained and more. So they would break the plateau. It's once again, you kind of changing it up, but you're changing it up in a more drastic way. I also think it helps with adherence to food because now they've had some of the foods they wanted. And when they get able to come back, they now can be restricted again without that, you know, oh my gosh, I never get to have my ice cream type mind state. So it may work from that too, but I've seen it time and time again. You may gain three, four pounds during the trip, or maybe not. Sometimes I've seen the plateau stay and then they come back and restrict and they lose a few more pounds. Break that plateau again.

**Jim Hill:** So you're kind of giving people a reason not to feel guilty about going on vacation.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. I think it works from a mind state standpoint, but I think there also may be a metabolic reason it works too, a physiological reason and why it works. But that's the last kind of card I play. And then the final thing is, and people don't like to hear this, but I think it's important to say, if you've been in weight loss for a long period of time, you've lost some weight, you've played these cards, it may be time to go into weight loss maintenance.

**Jim Hill:** Ah, the dreaded weight loss maintenance.

**Holly Wyatt:** It's beautiful. Weight loss maintenance, that's what you want, right, guys?

**Jim Hill:** You know, that you and I, Right? That's been the focus of our research is that's where the fun part is. What you can do, you can really reinvent yourself and have a new life in weight loss maintenance. This is something to look forward to, not to dread.

**Holly Wyatt:** But Jim, here's what they say, “Dr. Holly, Jim. I have more weight to lose. I'm not where I want to be. I have 50 more pounds I want to lose.” What do you say to them, Jim?

**Jim Hill:** Well, again, it's back to energy balance. You're at a weight that you can maintain. If you want to lose more weight, you're going to have to permanently change some additional behaviors. And that's where people have a choice. You're at a weight. It might not be the weight you want at, but it's a weight that you've got a lifestyle that you can keep it off. Okay, fine. That's success. If you say, oh my God, it's more important that I lose more weight, realize that you got to change behaviors permanently. You got to do more exercise. So you do have a choice, but it comes down to energy balance. You have to decide the weight that you can maintain, and hopefully, that's a weight that's acceptable to you. The other thing is you can do maintenance for a while. If you say, I got it, I can do more, you can go back and lose some more weight.

**Holly Wyatt:** And that's what I usually tell them because I do think it's time now to practice weight loss maintenance, allow your body to get used to weight loss maintenance, which means balance at this new reduced body weight, not regain. That's what a lot of people, they lose and then regain. They lose it. No, you lost. Your body's now going to get used to this new lower body weight. You're going to have that energy expenditure activity high. You're going to be matching, which is where what the food coming in is going to match the energy you're burning. I say do that for two to three months. Get good at it. Learn it. Understand it. Your weight will go up a little bit, down a little bit, up a little bit. See that natural variation. And then you can go back into weight loss. You can go back to restricting the calories down a little bit. And when you restrict your calories down, you will get in a negative energy balance, and you can lose another bout of weight. So you can lose, maintain, lose, maintain. What you said is true though. The more you lose, the lower you get, the closer you get to a, what we call a healthy body weight or an ideal lean state, the harder and harder it will get from an energy standpoint. And there's where you've got to decide, where am I able to do the behaviors that's required to maintain at this weight, basically.

**Jim Hill:** What we don't want is people trying to lose more and they get frustrated and then they regain it. I mean, literally, think about weight. This is hard-earned weight loss. You don't want to give it up. Yes, you can try some things to do more, but the last thing you want to do is to really regain that weight because then you have to start all over again.

**Holly Wyatt:** Right. The yo-yo. And that's hard. So even at 20 pounds, you want to lose 40, but you've lost 20, you're plateaued. Maintain that 20, wait a couple of months, and then let's tackle the second 20. And I have seen that work multiple times.

**Jim Hill:** Wow. All right. I guess now, Holly, it's time for the personal vulnerability question.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. What are we going to ask? This is a hard one.

**Jim Hill:** What I'm going to ask you is, how have you dealt? Have you experienced weight plateaus? Have you dealt with it?

**Holly Wyatt:** Oh, yes. A lot of this comes from my own personal experience and then helping others with it. So the big one for me, we talked about multiple cards to play, but the one that I found works best for me is that change it up. I keep my body guessing and I can keep my weight loss going, but I also recognize when it's time for me to what I call rest and weight loss maintenance I don't rest and weight regain but I rest and weight loss maintenance and then I can tackle another weight loss if I need it you know right now I'm kind of in maintenance and I may only vacillate of five pounds and so I may want to say for summer I want to lose five more pounds or ten more pounds for summer but in the past, it's really been about changing it up and then adherence It's really working on adherence to my eating plan and food log. I have to use a food log. I don't remember it. And by writing it down, I see the patterns.

**Jim Hill:** Wow. Wow. Well, I think we see over and over keeping food logs is important. So I think what we're concluding here is don't dread the weight loss plateaus. First of all, understanding. Understand it. In most cases, it's a good thing. Understand what's happening. And then we've given you some specific strategies to play through that if you really want to lose some more weight. At the end of the day, it's all about choices. We talk about this all the time you've got choices. is what we want to help you do is to understand why the plateaus occur. Then you've got some choice. One choice is you may have reached your goal. This is a way you can maintain. Otherwise, you may have to look at adherence. You may have to look at changing it up. And not everything works for everybody. What we'd like to do is give you some tips that you can try. Change it up. If that works for you, great. If it doesn't, try something else.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. I always say knowledge and awareness allows you to make strategic choices. That's the key. Have the knowledge of what's going on, awareness of what's going on with you, and then have some strategies or choices that you can make.

**Jim Hill:** All right. Don't dread those plateaus. Understand them and deal with them.

**Holly Wyatt:** I love it. We can celebrate the plateau, the dreaded plateau. We can celebrate the weight loss.

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, if you're not reaching a plateau, you're not succeeding at weight loss.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, love that.

**Jim Hill:** Think of it as a marker, not necessarily a bad thing.

**Holly Wyatt:** I agree.

**Jim Hill:** All right. Thanks, everybody. And we'll talk to you next time on Weight Loss And. Bye.

**Holly Wyatt:** Bye.

**Jim Hill:** And that's a wrap for today's episode of Weight Loss And… we hope you enjoy diving into the world of weight loss with us.

**Holly Wyatt:** If you want to stay connected and continue exploring the “Ands” of weight loss, be sure to follow our podcast on your favorite platform.

**Jim Hill:** We'd also love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions by reaching out at [weightlossand.com](http://weightlossand.com/). Your feedback helps us tailor future episodes to your needs.

**Holly Wyatt:** And remember, the journey doesn't end here. Keep applying the knowledge and strategies you've learned and embrace the power of the “And” in your own weight loss journey.