Experts reveal exactly when your weight loss will plateau, based on whether you’re dieting or taking Ozempic – and how to push through it
No matter what method you use to lose weight, you can’t keep losing pounds forever.
Eventually, everyone reaches a weight plateau, Dr. Scott Butsch, director of Obesity Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic’s Bariatric and Metabolic Institute, told the Daily Mail.
This happens in part because as you lose weight, your appetite increases as your body searches for the calories it’s used to receiving, according to Dr. Kevin Hall, who researches metabolism for the National Institute of Health.
This biological mechanism keeps you from starving, but can make dieting more difficult for you.
But the way you choose to lose weight can help you avoid that plateau for longer, according to Dr. Hall, who was placed in the magazine Obesity.
People who used medical interventions to lose weight had double the time before reaching a weight loss plateau, according to Dr. Hall’s new study.
Dr. Hall found that people who cut calories to lose weight reached a plateau β stopped losing weight β after about a year. Those who lost weight using medications such as Ozempic and surgical sleeves reached their plateau around two years of age.
Looking back at previous data on these three weight loss interventions, Dr. Hall found that the medical methods suppressed appetite better when people lost weight than traditional diets.
This is a mathematical representation of “something we’ve known all along,” said Dr. Butsch.
Your body prefers to burn food over other energy sources, such as the fat stored in our muscles and liver. This is why fat can be stubborn: our bodies use it as energy storage in case we need it to survive.
So when we restrict food, the brain fires more signals telling us to eat more to try to maintain fat stores. This urge becomes stronger as we lose more weight, according to previous research by Dr. Hall.
“It’s almost like your body has a certain point where, once we reach that with weight loss, it resists.” It’s almost like a survival function,” Dr. Frank Chae, bariatric surgeon and medical director of bariatric surgery at Sky Ridge Medical Center in Colorado, told WKBW.
At the same time, the decrease in calories will cause your muscles to send signals to your brain that slow down your metabolism.
This may mean that people who have had success losing weight may see this progress slowly erode or stop as their body tells them they need to eat.
This mechanism is especially strong in obese people, Research from 2018 from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
When you reach this plateau, the Mayo Clinic recommends reassessing your current weight loss methods. If you can afford to cut back on calories or increase your exercise regimen, it can help you lose weight again.
Traditional dieting follows the simple rule that you should burn more calories than you consume. These often involve calorie-restricting diet plans.
First, Hall wanted to see how the appetites of people on traditional diets changed as they lost weight.
To do this, he looked back at data collected from 2010 Comprehensive assessment of the long-term effects of reducing energy intake (CALERIE) study.
In the CALERIE study, sponsored by the NIH, half of the participants cut 800 daily calories from their diet at the start of the study, and half of the participants continued to eat their normal diet for three years.
At the end of the study, the people who reduced their daily calories lost an average of 16 pounds, while the control group gained two pounds.
Based on this data, Hall estimated that for every kilogram of weight lost, participants needed 83 additional calories.
At their lowest weight, participants craved 622 more calories per day than when they started losing weight.
This made it harder for them to continue losing weight as the study continued, because the more weight they lost, the more they craved food.
By the end of the three-year study, participants had only managed to reduce their initial intake by about 200 calories. Their weight loss plateaued around the first year of the study.
The active ingredient in Ozempic, semaglutide, caused people to crave 49 extra calories for every 2.2 pounds of weight they lost, according to Dr. Hall.
The active ingredient in ZepBound, Tirezpatide, caused people to need 48 extra calories for every 2.2 pounds of weight they lost.
Next, Hall looked at weight loss data in people taking semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, and Tirezpatide, the active ingredient in Zepbound.
These medications mimic GLP-1, a hormone that keeps you full. They slow down the speed at which food leaves your stomach and keep you feeling full for longer.
When they started injecting Ozempic or Wegovy, Hall found that people consumed 1,300 fewer calories than before they started. When they started taking Zepbound, they consumed 1,560 fewer calories than before starting the drug.
Those injecting Ozempic craved an extra 49 calories for every kilogram they lost, and on Zepbound they craved an extra 48 calories for every kilogram they lost.
In both groups, weight loss stagnated after about two years.
When Hall examined the effect of bariatric surgery, he found that the participants’ appetites were curbed more than those of the calorie restriction group.
Bariatric surgery is an umbrella term that includes operations such as gastric bypass, gastric sleeves, and LAP bands, which surgically restrict stomach size to help patients eat less.
Those who had weight-loss surgery cut about 3,600 calories from their diet each day, Dr. Hall. Note that many of these surgeries were performed on people who ate more than the 2,500 daily recommended calories.
Because they lost weight through this calorie deficit, people undergoing bariatric surgery desired 58 calories per day per 2.2 pounds lost. It also took them about two years to reach a plateau in weight loss.
Reaching a plateau doesn’t have to be the end of your weight loss journey, Dr. Hall said.
If you haven’t quite reached your goals yet, you can try a more rigorous exercise routine or a different diet.
Weight loss, Dr. Hall said, is a lifelong commitment to changing your behavior. That doesn’t change based on the method you use.
Even so-called miracle drugs like Ozempic have their limits, Dr. Chae said. ‘The medicines are a good tool, but they are not a cure.
“You have to keep injecting this indefinitely, and the drug companies really don’t know what the long term, years down the line, what the long term effects are.”
No matter where you are in your weight journey β stalled, losing or gaining pounds β Dr. Butsch said don’t be frustrated with yourself.
‘Weight plateaus are normal and expected and occur after periods of weight loss. And we shouldn’t worry about reaching a plateau when we’re trying to lose weight,” said Dr. Butsch.
Adding that this plateau can actually be seen as a sign that ‘the changes that’ [you’ve] actually have a positive impact.’