I am training twice a week and would rather optimise that than add a third session.
I can do the algebra. I am not confident about the conversion factors.
If there is a standard way to lay this out, I would rather learn that than invent one.
Can someone show the working rather than just the answer?
Over 28 days, expect one and a half to two and a half kilograms of it to be water, and on a fast start that can be most of the total. The arithmetic is glycogen. A well-fed adult stores roughly 400 to 500 grams of it, each gram bound to about three grams of water, so a substantial depletion releases 1.2 to 1.5 kg of water from that alone. Add a fall in sodium intake — which is what happens when total food volume drops — and the extracellular compartment contracts by a few hundred grams to a kilogram more. That is why week 1 flatters and week 4 disappoints: the fluid is a one-off transfer, and once it is gone the curve reverts to whatever the energy deficit alone supports, which is roughly 0.5 to 1 kg a week. It also runs in reverse. A single high-carbohydrate day refills glycogen and its water, and the scale reports two kilograms of "regain" that contains no fat whatsoever. The measure that is not fooled by any of this is a waist circumference taken the same way each week. It moves slowly, and slowly is the point.
Before changing anything, confirm the plateau is real using a trend rather than a reading.
Diet breaks — a fortnight at maintenance — have modest evidence for improving adherence and none for accelerating loss, which is still a reason to consider them.
| Method | Measures | Sensitive to | Least significant change |
|---|---|---|---|
| DEXA | Three-compartment by attenuation | Hydration, positioning | ~2–3 % regional lean |
| BIA (consumer) | Impedance, modelled | Hydration, food, temperature | Not usable at this timescale |
| Air displacement | Two-compartment by density | Lung volume, hair, clothing | ~1–2 % fat mass |
| Tape and scale | Circumference, mass | Technique | Surprisingly usable as a trend |
Intake drift is real and invisible: portion sizes creep, untracked items accumulate, and self-reported intake is systematically underestimated even by people who are trying hard.
Adaptive thermogenesis beyond that predicted by mass loss is documented in metabolic-ward and doubly labelled water studies and persists for years in some cohorts.
A plateau on a scale is not a plateau in body composition; a scan may show change the scale does not.
Measure intake honestly for a week before changing anything.
HPLC purity, identity confirmation and quantified content on the vial you actually hold. Reports arrive with the chromatogram attached, not just a number.
Submit a sampleFounded 1998. ISO 9001 and cGMP certified, 1,500+ staff and 200+ patents. The synthesis house behind a great many of the vials that get sent out for testing - batch-specific documentation with every order.
Visit GL BiochemStart with the timescale. Four weeks of no change is a plateau; ten days of no change is measurement noise plus water.
A four-week flat trend with honestly measured intake is a genuine plateau. Anything shorter is not enough data to act on.
The correct instrument is a rolling average of daily weights, not a weekly single reading. Daily variation of a kilogram either way is normal and swamps a real weekly change.
Research-use compounds are not approved for human use.
Trajectories flatten in every trial in this class. That is the shape, not a failure.
Answer first: a plateau is almost always the arithmetic catching up rather than the intervention failing, and the arithmetic changes because you are smaller.
Escalating the deficit is the intuitive response and the wrong one: it increases the lean fraction of loss and reduces adherence at the same time.
Stated carefully, water retention masks fat loss on a timescale of weeks. Glycogen repletion, sodium changes and menstrual cycle phase can each hide a kilogram or more of genuine loss.
The caveat is that reducing intake further is not always the right response and can be actively counterproductive.
Four weeks of trend data before you call it a plateau. Ten days is noise.
The relevant physiology is that a smaller body costs less to run, so the same intake that produced a deficit is now maintenance.
Maintenance energy requirement falls with body mass. Losing fifteen kilograms reduces it by roughly two to three hundred kilocalories a day for most people, which is enough to close a moderate deficit entirely without any behaviour changing.
Self-reported energy intake is underestimated by twenty per cent or more in doubly labelled water comparisons, consistently across populations.
Use a rolling average. Single weigh-ins are not a signal.
Answering this needs the actual intake data, because unmeasured intake drift is the largest single contributor and the hardest to see from inside.
Adaptive thermogenesis adds a further reduction beyond what mass predicts — commonly cited at 10 to 15 per cent of resting expenditure after substantial loss — and it persists for a long time after the loss itself.
Weight-loss trajectory in the major trials in this class flattens around the nine-to-twelve-month mark, which is the expected shape rather than a failure of the intervention.
Your maintenance requirement fell because you did. Recalculate rather than escalate.
Ask PeptideStack is a static archive. Posting is closed, but the norms are worth stating: answer the question that was asked, show your working, cite the trial or the certificate, and say plainly where the evidence runs out.