Plateau
 

Until now, my diet and exercise has been paying off. In the past two months I have taken off 20 pounds. But that's where it stops. For the last 8 days the scale hasn't budged. Nothing has changed in my exercise or calorie intake, but the scale will not moved. Frustrating!! Is this normal? What can I do?

It's normal. I stalled at one point for 6 weeks before my body resumed losing. Lately, I'm stalling for longer periods of time, and I suspect that what is going on is that my caloric intake and my current weight have caught up with one another and I'm going to have to tweak my diet again to get things moving for these last 14 lbs I want to lose. If you're getting close to goal, that may be what is going on with you, also. But otherwise, even if you have a ways to go, you might just be on a temporary plateau. If you stay there too long, try either adding a bit more exercise, reducing your carbs, or reducing your overall calories a little to jump start it again, but sometimes even when you're already doing everything right your body just takes a break.

I encourage you to take a closer look at your calorie intake and exercise estimates. You can also input the values into a tool built by the NIH (search Body Weight Planner) -- it's fairly robust and can give you a sense of how your progress should proceed.

Many researchers have found that people typically hit a weight loss plateau a few months into their weight loss journey, when the best models we have suggest they should occur 1-2 years in. The current working hypothesis is that this kind of plateau results from a slow loss of adherence to a diet or weight loss approach: studies have shown that participants will self-report they're successfully sticking to a calorie deficit, but they'll be sitting in a plateau, so either the science is completely wrong (unlikely) or the self-report is off.

You've made a lot of progress so far! Try to be super precise about the choices you're making, and if you haven't tried calorie counting, log all of your food for a short period to see if your estimated calorie intake is in line with what you're logging. You can break through!