My loss line flattened while my gut got louder and I don't know what's going on with this

I did the same thing — treated a rising symptom score like a green light. Mine went up because protein and water both quietly fell off; everything tasted off so I skipped the shakes and sipped less, then ate plain crackers at night just to settle my gut.

Net deficit was basically zero. My waist actually crept up 0.3" over those weeks while the scale sat still, which stung.

What do your protein and water columns look like from 18–22 versus earlier? That's where mine cracked first, before the weight trendline ever admitted it.

late night gamer here. my symptom score was useless until i split it into nausea vs burps vs cramps.

the 3.6 weeks for me were mostly burps/reflux from eating too late + way too much fizzy water trying to settle my stomach, not actual appetite suppression. weight went flat but waist kept creeping down, then whoosh 9 days later.

what’s actually driving your 3.6—nausea, sulfur burps, constipation, or just general ick? that changes whether the flat scale is water/backup or a real stall.

also did your waist move at all during those weeks?

I feel this in my airport-sole blisters. My log got way more useful when I added two dumb columns: “travel day?” and “restaurant/airport meals.” My symptom score spiked on day 2–3 of trips, usually after a salty hotel-breakfast situation and way less water than I thought.

Scale stayed flat, waist didn’t budge, but I was clearly holding water and my gut was staging a protest. Curious: did your waist or how your clothes fit change during those weeks, or was it only the scale?

If waist moved even a little, the trendline may be lying to you.

For what it's worth, your 12 columns are missing the one that explained this pattern for me: bowel movement frequency/consistency. When my symptom score rose and the weight trendline flattened, I was retaining water upstream of slow transit.

I added Bristol stool scale plus days since last BM. Flat scale, louder gut, and a BM gap clustered together; once transit normalized, symptoms dropped and the trendline resumed.

Not saying that’s your mechanism—just easy to test. Are you logging BMs at all, or only subjective gut noise?

I’d add a timing column before changing anything else: clock time of each symptom peak and clock time of last intake. In my log, the “louder gut” days weren’t low-intake days—they were high liquid-load days.

I was sipping protein/fluids to settle queasiness, so total energy crept up while symptom score rose. The score was tracking gastric load, not deficit.

Did you log when, not just how much? A 2–4 h postprandial lag explained most of my false “green light” readings.

One thing I’d split out in that log: symptom type, not just the 0–5 number. For me, a 3 from reflux and a 3 from bloat/constipation behaved completely differently on the scale.

The bloat days kept my weight flat while my waist kept creeping down; then it whooshed once things settled. If your waist trend is also flat, I’d be curious whether the louder gut is changing what you actually eat on the calmer evenings—crackers, toast, etc. can quietly offset the low-intake days.

What’s your waist trendline doing compared with the weight trendline?

Your waist column is the answer you're ignoring. If waist kept dropping while weight sat flat, that's gut contents and water, not fat.

Slow transit means the scale is holding onto yesterday's food. Also worth timestamping symptoms against your shot day.

Mine spike day 2–3, scale blips up 1–2 lb, then dumps. A flat trendline with a rising symptom score usually just means backed up, not burning.

Which one actually moved, waist or weight?

Been there. The thing that cracked it for me was laying my waist trend next to my weight trend during the loud-gut stretch.

My scale sat flat for weeks while my waist kept creeping down, so the flat line was mostly GI/water noise, not stalled fat loss. If your waist is also flat, that’s a different signal.

Did your waist move at all from week 18 to 22? Mine also got noisy after a few low-water days or a sudden fiber jump, even when protein looked fine.

I’d stay curious, not alarmed.

I run a cafe, and this rings so true. When my gut got loud, I didn’t actually eat less—I ate differently: spoon tastes while baking, broken cookie halves, an oat milk latte to settle my stomach.

None of it felt like a meal, so it never made my log. My symptom score was high and my weight line was flat, which drove me nuts.

Could there be a “settling foods” column missing? For me, queasy days were soft-carb days—sourdough, rice, crackers—not high-protein days.

Are you logging the standing-up bites too? That was my hidden 200–300 calories.

Not saying it’s yours, just what flattened my own line.

Here's a column I'd add: steps, or just "hours off the couch." I went through nearly the identical stretch — symptoms climbing, scale frozen — and when I finally overlaid my step count, my loud-gut days were my 2k-step days. I wasn't eating less, I was moving way less, because feeling gross meant parking on the couch instead of my usual evening walk and errands.

That's a couple hundred calories a day quietly vanishing, and not one entry in my log flagged it. Also, what's your water column doing those weeks?

Mine cratered because drinking seemed to make the slosh worse, and I'm pretty sure that fed the whole mess. What does your movement look like lately?

Respectfully, I’d push back on assuming queasier = bigger deficit. In my log, symptom score tracked way more with sleep debt and low protein than with intake—my gut got loud during a stretch of hard lifting, ~6h sleep, and maybe 100g protein, while my weight trend sat flat.

I’d overlay symptom score against sleep, protein, and training load for those weeks. Did your spike line up with a program change or a few low-sleep/high-volume days?

That’s the column I’d check before blaming the scale.