The plateau that lasted eleven weeks

Dear You,

Week one of the stall I shrugged. Week two I weighed myself twice, which is one more time than I’d agreed with myself was useful. By week five I had a theory, by week seven I had three, and by week nine I had quietly decided the whole thing was over and I’d better get used to it.

It lasted eleven weeks. Then it didn’t. This is what happened in between, as one person’s experience, not as a map.

What I tried

I tried everything a reasonable person tries, and then a few things a tired person tries.

I logged food again, for the first time in months, hunting for the leak. There was no leak. I was eating the way I’d been eating, in the small portions my appetite had settled on. I added a walk after dinner. Good for the mood, didn’t move the number. I cut out the one glass of wine on Fridays, then felt resentful on Fridays, then added it back. I drank more water on the theory that it was water weight, then on the theory that it wasn’t enough water. The theory changed daily. The scale did not.

I also tried, in week six, the quiet bargaining. If I’m extra careful this week, it’ll move. It’s a bargain with no one on the other side of the table.

What my prescriber said

I brought it to my appointment at week eight, half expecting to be told I’d done something wrong. What I got instead was a shrug of the professional kind. Stalls happen. Bodies hold. Some last weeks, some last longer, and the length of a stall isn’t a grade.

We talked about whether anything needed to change on the medication side, and I’m not going to tell you what we decided, because that was a decision about my body and my labs and my history. Yours belongs in a room with your own care team, and it’s a good thing to bring to them rather than to a forum at 11 p.m.

What I remember most was being asked how I felt, as opposed to what I weighed. I felt fine. Better than fine. Clothes fit the same. Energy was good. Sleep was good. The only thing that was stuck was a number I’d decided was the whole story.

What I stopped trying

Around week nine I stopped weighing daily. Not as a grand gesture, more like putting down a book I wasn’t enjoying. Once a week, Sunday, before coffee, and then I got on with my Sunday.

I stopped treating the stall as a message. It wasn’t telling me I’d failed or that the medication had stopped working or that this was my body’s final answer. It was a plateau. Flat ground. You can walk on flat ground for a long time and still be going somewhere.

And I stopped adding things. The walks stayed because I liked them. Everything else I’d piled on in a panic came off, and I went back to the plain routine that had been working before I decided it wasn’t.

What finally shifted

Time, mostly. I’d love to tell you it was the magnesium or the earlier bedtime or the oat thing I tried for two weeks. It wasn’t. Week twelve, the number moved. Week thirteen it moved again. Nothing I’d done in week twelve was different from week ten.

What I did differently was keep going through the flat part without turning it into a verdict. That’s the only skill I can actually hand you from the whole experience, and it’s less a skill than a decision made over and over: the stall is not the end of the sentence. It’s a comma.

If you’re in one right now, here is what I’d want someone to have told me at week three. Check the things that are actually yours to check. Bring the rest to the people with your chart. Then go do something that isn’t about your body for a while. The plateau will be there when you get back, or it won’t, and either way you’ll have had a better eleven weeks than I did.

Want to tell me something? Reply to any Low Volume email, or write to me here. I read everything.

Getting Quiet shares lived experience, general education, and practical tools. For medical decisions and individual treatment questions, talk with your qualified care team.