Stuck at 203 for six weeks, then 199.4 this morning?

The deload plus sleep combo would be my guess. Every time I get eight hours for a week, the scale finally moves.

Same. I stalled five weeks at 187, then dropped three pounds after two nights of real sleep.

Sodium? More carbs usually means more water, not less.

Carbs don’t automatically mean water retention if you were coming from a deficit and low glycogen. I peed constantly for two days after a refeed.

A1c 5.4 and fasting 92 aren’t really plateau clues. I’d look at a two-week average, not one morning.

That 203-205 range for six weeks would’ve broken me. Did your waist change, or just the scale?

Waist matters. Mine dropped 1.5 inches during a scale plateau.

I’m not buying the refeed alone. You changed sleep, training stress, and food. Too many variables.

The whoosh is real though. I dropped four pounds after a deload week, then stayed flat another month. It wasn’t fat loss that day.

I’ve logged daily weights for three years, and my biggest whooshes almost always follow a week of 7.5+ hours of sleep and more walking, not a specific macro change. The scale can hide fat loss under inflammation and glycogen water.

Six weeks at 203-205 while lifting three times a week sounds like you were losing fat but retaining water from training stress. The deload let the water go.

I’d track a seven-day average and waist, then compare the next four weeks. If the average keeps dropping, you found the pattern. If it stalls again, it might just be a normal water shift.

I’d also check sodium. My whoosh was a big pasta dinner and a lot of peeing.

199.4 is a milestone. Congrats. Update in two weeks?

I weigh daily but only judge by the 7-day average, and I tape my waist at the nael every Sunday — that combo saved my sanity during a 5-week stall last spring. Scale sat at 187 for 34 days while my waist went 36.5 to 35.25. Are you tracking a weekly average or just single mornings?

Contrarian take: that 3.8 lb drop probably wasn't mostly fat, and the six-week stall probably wasn't a real stall either. Three lifting sessions a week at 6.5 hrs sleep is a lot of inflammation and cortisol floating around, and that shows up on the scale as water.

I lived this — deloaded last spring, ate more carbs, slept 8, woke up 4 lbs lighter in six days. Freaked out, then ate a salty dinner and got 2 back by Wednesday. Nothing about 4 lbs in a week is fat math. Your sleep going from 6.5 to 8 is the interesting variable there, not the carbs.

Classic stall-then-sudden-drop. Your body was just holding onto the water it was hoarding while you were under-recovered.

Curious what your lifts did during those six weeks. If your squat or rows went up while the scale froze at 203, you were losing fat and it was just masked by water and new muscle.

I stalled six weeks at 210, added 25 lbs to my squat, and went down a pant size. Pick one gym number that only goes up and watch that instead.

@helen_2024 said:

Pick one gym number that only goes up and watch that instead.

Solid advice — but here's the other number worth grabbing: get a tape measure out this week. Mine told the truth about five weeks before my scale did.

From February to April I sat at 187-189 on the scale, absolutely flat, while my waist went from 43.5 to 41.25 and I dropped a belt notch. Same food, same three lifting days, same 10k.

I only noticed because my jeans started sliding down while I was getting the mail and I got annoyed enough to dig out the tape. If your waist is down even half an inch across those six weeks, the scale was just sitting on work you already did, and this week's number is it catching up.

If the tape is flat too, that's a different story and worth changing something — but check before you touch your calories.

Six weeks of "1800-ish" can easily be 2100 with nobody lying to themselves. When I finally weighed and logged for two weeks instead of eyeballing, the gap was cooking oil and the handfuls I ate while packing my kid's lunch — 200-250 a day, completely invisible to me.

The annoying part: my weekdays were genuinely fine, and one Saturday undid the whole week, easily 1500 over betwen brunch and a couple beers. So my weekly average looked reasonable while nothing moved on the scale.

Try five straight days of weighing everything, including the bites that don't feel like meals, and see where your 1800 actually lands. If it comes back at a real 1800, food isn't the issue and you look elsewhere — but it's the cheap thing to rule out first.

Before you write off those six weeks, grab a shirt or pair of jeans that was snug in January. My scale sat at 191-193 for five weeks while I went from a tight 36 to a comfortable 34. I'd have sworn nothing was happening.