on paper, week seven of your fat loss plan looks exactly like week two. same calories in your tracking app, same training sessions, same chicken and rice you’ve been meal-prepping since day one. at first, everything seemed to be working. the scale dropped almost every monday, your jeans started to feel looser, and you began to think that maybe, finally, you’d figured it out
and then, for no reason you can find, the number stopped moving, and it has been sitting in the same place for weeks.
this is usually the moment when people panic and do something drastic, like cutting another 300 kcal, adding cardio every single day, or deciding their metabolism is “broken” and giving up altogether. none of those are good ideas, and most of them come from not knowing what actually happens inside your body during a diet.
so before you touch your calories, i want you to understand what’s going on in there. we’ll start with how your metabolism works — in plain words, i promise, no biology degree needed — then go through the five reasons fat loss slows down during a diet. after that, you’ll learn how to tell a real plateau from a scale that’s simply lagging behind, and what to actually do about it, starting this week.
a quick disclaimer: this article is educational content, not medical advice. if you have a medical condition, are pregnant or breastfeeding, have a history of disordered eating, or notice changes in your menstrual cycle, talk to a doctor before starting or changing a diet.
your metabolism is a budget
the easiest way to understand metabolism is to think of it as a monthly budget. what you eat is your income, and what your body spends is your expenses. when income and expenses match, your account stays the same, which in body terms is maintenance. when you spend more than you earn, you pull from your savings, and your savings are your body fat. that’s a caloric deficit — eating less energy than your body uses. aaaand it’s the only way fat loss happens, whatever diet you follow.
your expenses fall into four lines ⬇️
#01. the fixed costs. this is your basal metabolism, the energy your body needs just to keep you alive: your heart beating, your brain working, your organs doing their job, your temperature staying stable. it’s the biggest line by far, usually around 60 to 70% of what you burn in a day, and it depends mostly on how big you are and how much lean mass (muscle, organs, bones, water) you carry.
#02. the cost of digesting. breaking down food also costs energy, about 10% of your day. protein is the most expensive nutrient to digest: around 20 to 30% of the calories in protein are used just to process it, compared with 5 to 10% for carbs and almost nothing for fat (no, life it’s not fair 😭). it’s one of the reasons a high-protein diet makes a cut easier.
when i use the word cut in this article, i’m referring to a phase of dieting focused on losing body fat while preserving as much muscle as possible.
#03. your workouts. this is the line people overestimate the most. a solid strength session burns a few hundred kcal at most, and once you spread four sessions over a whole week, training is often a smaller part of your daily spending than you’d think.
#04. everything else you do all day. walking to the metro, carrying groceries, cleaning, standing while you cook, fidgeting at your desk, taking the stairs. the technical name is NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis, meaning the energy you burn moving outside of your workouts), and it’s the most variable line in the whole budget. between two women of the same size, it can differ by hundreds of kcal a day, simply because one sits at a desk all day and on the couch all evening while the other walks everywhere and never sits still.
before going further, one myth needs to go, because it comes up every time someone talks about a plateau.
unless you have a diagnosed medical condition (like an underactive thyroid), you almost certainly don’t have a “slow metabolism.” when you compare people of the same size and body composition, the energy they burn stays remarkably stable between the ages of 20 and 60. it doesn’t drop at 30, it doesn’t fall off a cliff at 40, and it only starts to decline slowly after 60. what does change with age is how much we move and how much muscle we keep, and both come back later in this article.
why fat loss slows down, even when you’re doing everything right
when you start a cut, you create a gap between your income and your expenses. let’s say you eat 1,700 kcal a day and your body spends 2,100. your deficit is 400 kcal a day, and your savings start going down.
the problem is that this gap doesn’t stay the same size. as the weeks go by, your expenses shrink and your income creeps up, and you rarely notice either one. there are five reasons for this, and they’re listed below from the one that matters most to the one people blame the most.
the rest of this post is for paid readers. it covers:
why fat loss slows down: the five main reasons your progress can stall during a cut, from your body’s natural adaptations to the small, often invisible changes
how to tell if you’ve really stalled, with the four simple habits that separate a real plateau from water retention hiding your progress
what to do when your fat loss really stops: six realistic fixes in the order i’d use them, with clear numbers for calories, steps, protein and how fast you should be losing weight
when to take a break and when to end your cut, and the signs that your body isn’t getting enough energy
what changes after 40 (and what doesn’t): what’s true and what’s exaggerated about perimenopause, metabolism and fat loss
your three-week check-in: a week-by-week plan to find out which situation you’re in and what to change, starting this week
fall special 🍁 subscribe annually and enjoy 20% off your subscription. that’s just €4 a month, less than a little treat from your local french bakery. a paid subscription unlocks the full archive, all the practical tools, plus exclusive member perks.