Week 19 plateau and hair shed is messing with my head

2026-09-30 19:26

I'm down 38 lbs since January, stuck at 204–206 for the last 6 weeks. Scale hasn't moved more than a pound either way. I'm walking 8k steps, lifting 3x/week, tracking 120g protein, water, sleep.

The annoying part: my hair is shedding way more than usual — shower wall looks like a small animal. I keep seeing IGF-1 LR3 hair gain threads and it's tempting, but I'm not doing anything sketchy without my doctor.

Has anyone else had the shed slow down after a plateau broke, or is this just the price of the last 20 lbs? I'm not quitting, just tired.

2026-10-02 00:37

yo the 6 week scale freeze + shedding combo is brutal, been there. one thing that helped my sanity: stop judging by daily scale and track 7-day average + waist at navel + one progress pic same lighting.

i was stuck 5 weeks but lost 1.5" off waist while lifts went up, so it was recomp/water. hair wise, my shed hit around month 4-5 after dropping fast, lasted like 2 months, then baby hairs came back. not saying it's the same, but rapid loss + low cals can do a number.

have you checked if your waist/measurements are still moving, or is everything flat too?

2026-10-07 11:36

Scale is a lagging indicator; hair is a lagging indicator of the lagging indicator. If your steepest loss was Jan–Mar, the week-19 shed lines up with a delayed stress shed from that phase, not necessarily current diet.

I stopped weighing daily for two weeks and tracked waist + thigh + lifting PRs. Concrete thing that broke my mental plateau: same calories, but I added a 10-min post-dinner walk and shifted 30g protein to breakfast.

Scale stayed 203–205, waist dropped 1.5 in. Did your shed start ~12 weeks after your biggest monthly drop?

That timing tells you more than the shower wall.