If you want to know how to identify the cause of your weight stall and know what to do, then you want to read this article.

Read Time: Double-Shot Skim Cappuccino (7 minutes)

Key Points:

Before deciding what course of action to take, you should ask yourself questions to determine the likely cause; behavioural compensation, metabolic adaption, water retention.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Collecting some objective data on energy intake and expenditure keeps us honest and means we don’t have to rely on memory when looking back at out previous few weeks.
Metabolic adaption does not suddenly occur, rather it chips away. Thus a sudden stop in fat loss is likely water retention or behavioural compensation.
There are two main options if you’ve truly stalled. Take a diet break or re-create the energy deficit. If time is not an issue then taking a diet break should be your first choice.

Welcome back!

Hopefully, you've read through this articles predecessor part 1 which was all about the "why" of body fat stalls.

You learnt about how metabolic adaption, behavioural compensation and water retention can all play a role in causing weight loss to stall. If you haven't read it yet, then I suggest you take a couple of minutes to go back and go over it.

I'll wait...

Ready?

Excellent. Onto part 2.

What should we actually do when we experience a stall in our weight loss?

Before we can discuss what should we change we first need to investigate what is the most likely cause/s?

Luckily we don't have to be Sherlock to shed some light on the problem. There are clear clues we can look for that may shed some light on who the likely culprit might be.

Let the investigation begin;

How consistent have you been with the plan?

Have you accurately and consistently stuck to your energy budget? Whether that's a meal plan, tracking calories and macros or following some ad lib. diet.

Have you been as active as you need to be?

Have you completed all workouts, cardio, hit your step goal, etc.?

Are you sweating under this intense interrogation of your compliance? Good.

You need to be 100% honest with yourself and answer the above.

Ideally, you'll have been collecting objective data that can help you accurately answer these questions rather than relying on memory.

Relying on our memory when it comes to these questions is foolish. Humans are notoriously bad at estimating our intake and expenditure. We tend to vastly underestimate how much we consume and over-estimate how much we burn.

That's why it's essential to manage and measure certain key variables when dieting. Namely, energy intake and energy expenditure.

Now before I get someone commenting about the accuracy of tracking calories and Fitbit expenditure, I need to clarify something.

The goal is not to know precisely how many calories we've consumed or expended. The goal is to be consistently accurate enough so that when we make changes, we can be confident it's going to have the desired result.

How we accomplish this is going to be down to the individual and their goal, but weighing and tracking foods is the most accurate method. Which means that when done well it increases confidence in our predictions.

The same applies to energy expenditure. Yes, activity trackers can be pretty inaccurate when it comes to their energy expenditure predictions, but they're at least reliably inaccurate. Meaning if you've been hitting 12,000 steps a day on average, but in the past fortnight you've only managed 10,000, we can use that as a proxy measure for NEAT levels and assume that you've likely moved less and potentially expended fewer overall calories.

So I repeat; analyse your past fortnight or month of dieting and be completely honest with yourself. If you haven't been at least 90% on plan, then look at why.

What's causing the issue?

Where can you improve?

Spend another fortnight working on these areas and ultimately improving adherence. There's no point making changes that are going to require more effort if you can't adhere to the current plan that requires less.

Has weight loss suddenly stopped or has it slowly been decreasing week to week?

Metabolic adaption is something that's likely slowly chipping away at energy expenditure, coinciding with body weight and fat mass, rather than a sudden drop.

A sudden stop is more likely to be due to one of two things:

1) Behavioural compensation.

You've consciously or subconsciously increased food consumption and/or decreased activity expenditure leading to your energy deficit closing.

2) Water retention.

While fat loss might be occurring under the surface, on the surface you’re standing there buck naked, looking at the unchanging number on the scale thinking "WTF?!". In this scenario, water retention may be masking true fat loss on the scale.

It's likely partly due to hormonal and metabolic changes, such as increased cortisol levels in the body while dieting.

What should I do about it?

So hopefully by now, you have a better idea of what may be causing the stall. This is important because it helps us choose the right path of action.

I should also mention that time frames should also be considered. If you're limited in time (comp, weigh-in, photoshoot) then your hands will be tied and options limited.

Here's what to consider for each potential cause:

Behavioural compensation

Focus on improving your compliance to the plan.

Vow to stick to the plan to the best of your abilities for the next fortnight.

If there's something that's explicitly causing you to reduce adherence, then look to address that.

If you're following a method that is less accurate (ad. lib diet that doesn't track calories, non-weighed meal plan etc.) then spending a week or two weighing and tracking is likely a smart idea to increase accuracy.

In 90% of cases, the above will either result in overcoming the stall or identifying direct causes.

Water retention.

The best thing to do if you think this is the case is to remain patient. Give it another week or two and focus on reducing current stressors. If you're someone who is prone to feeling stressed, anxious or you struggle to get enough sleep then focus on ways to improve these.

Alongside the inherent stress of dieting and training, the above factors can place us in a state of chronically higher cortisol, which may increase water retention as well as make every other aspect of the diet harder to follow.

Try to balance the above by scheduling time to relax, be social and enjoy life.

You know, actually get outside, explore and laugh.

You can also consider an increase in calories, either via a refeed or diet break (see below). Refeed's are essentially a few days of increased calorie intake during a diet. Setting calories around maintenance levels, with the increase in calories being primarily from carbs. This has the potential to benefit performance, replenish glycogen stores (which can deplete gradually over a diet), and reduce cortisol levels.

The main thing to understand with water retention is that progress is still occurring despite the scale not reflecting it. So be patient and work on improving key diet skills and habits.

Metabolic Adaption

If you've been nailing your plan, your sleep is fine, stress levels are under control, and you've been patient, then we can tentatively assume that metabolic adaption may be playing a significant role in your stall.

In this scenario, we have two main options.

Take a diet break.

I've put this first as it's the preferable option when one isn't limited by time. It's much like the refeed mentioned above but extended to a minimum 1-2 week period.

The purpose of a diet break is to provide a psychological and physiological break from dieting. This break helps to alleviate some of the negative adaptions that occur during a diet. They can also act as a breath of fresh air during a diet before diving back down into a deficit, allowing us to dive deeper aka a mental break that will enable us to re-focus and increase compliance moving forward.

These should still be controlled and not seen as a period of "cheat days" which could potentially result in fat gain and undoing the habits that have been developed. A controlled period of increased intake, still sticking with the general guidelines of the plan will result in minimal fat gain as you shouldn't be in a surplus. Any slight scale weight increases are likely due to glycogen, water weight and increased food content in the GI tract.

2) Re-create the energy deficit.

What should likely be our last option is often what many individuals and coaches jump to first. Again in time-restricted scenarios, this may be warranted. For those with plenty of time (aka 90% of individuals) making changes to the plan to re-create the energy deficit should be the last option.

Why?

Because each time we decrease energy intake or increase energy expenditure, we're likely reducing the long-term sustainability of the plan or getting closer to the UNSUSTAINABLE ZONE…

When it comes to behaviour change, the more effort required, the less likely it is to happen. The size of the zone would also change dependent on the individual.

Keeping sustainability a priority also then dictates that unlike most individuals, we should not automatically cut our food portions in half and increase cardio to 7 days a week.

Instead, we should be looking to make the smallest change possible that elicits the required result.

Or as I like to call it; the minimum effective dose.

To re-create the energy deficit we have 3 options.

1. Increase energy expenditure

2. Decrease energy intake

3. A combination of both.

Which is going to be best for you is going to depend on:

How much you're currently consuming. As a rule of thumb, we definitely don't want to be spending much time below our RMR
Your lifestyle. How much time do you have available for increasing time exercising?
Your personal preference. Would you prefer to eat a little bit less or move a little bit more?
Your current activity levels. Are you already pretty active? Is your time for further activity limited?
Your size. Smaller individuals, especially females, are likely to have a lower total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). This means that realistically, we only have so much room to move regarding reducing energy intake before it becomes difficult to hit our nutrient needs.

So you now have a better idea of what may be the likely culprits when it comes to your weight loss stall. You know the options that are in front of you and what you need to consider when making a choice.

The final question is what do these minimum effective doses look like?

Well, for example, you may:

Reduce total calories by 10-20%.
Look for the low hanging fruit. What are easy changes you can make that will have big returns? Do you have any energy dense, low volume foods in the plan? Sauces, soft drinks, honey, chai lattes, chocolate, biscuits etc. Dropping these can easily cut a few hundred calories.
Swap some of your energy dense carbs for higher volume options. E.g. Sweet potato for pumpkin.
Add some cardio. Think about ease of adherence. Does an early morning walk appeal to you more than 30 minutes on the stepper post work?
Add a 10-minute warm-up and cool down on the incline treadmill around your gym sessions.
Set a higher daily step goal.
These are just examples so remember to take into consideration your personal situation.