Plateau at month 5 on tirz, is my deficit the problem or just habituation?

Question

Stuck somewhere around month 5 on tirz and the scale basically stopped moving for like 3 weeks now. Down about 14% from where I started, which honestly I am not mad about, but the trend line on my spreadsheet basically went flat and it is bugging me 😅. I track food pretty closely and my calories are still in a solid deficit. Protein is around 130g a day. Sleep is fine, HRV is actually trending up. So from a numbers standpoint nothing obvious is breaking. I am wondering if this is just receptor habituation kicking in, since the early drops felt almost effortless and now my appetite suppression feels noticeably weaker on the same dose. Or maybe I am just at the point where my TDEE recalculated downward and my deficit is not as deep as I think it is. For anyone who has been on this longer, did a dose step fix it for you, or did you have to actually tighten the diet side? Not looking for a magic answer, just curious what other people saw at this stage.

grinder265 · Accepted Answer

Ngl month 3-5 is exactly where people seem to hit the wall most often. The appetite thing fading a bit could be GLP-1 receptor desensitization, or it could just be that the honeymoon phase of early satiety wears off and you kinda unconsciously let portions creep back up. 3 weeks flat at 14% down isn't really a plateau imo, your body is just being a body. Curious what your deficit actually looks like in calories though. 130g protein is solid but if you dropped weight your TDEE shifted and your "solid deficit" might be like 200 cal now instead of the 500 you started with. A lot of people I have seen talk about this found that tightening the diet side did more than chasing a higher dose, but going up a step also worked for some. Have you recalculated your TDEE recently or are you still going off the starting number?

tiredmira · Answer

Yeah this tracks with what I was thinking. My deficit started around 600 cal based on my initial TDEE, but if it recalculated down then I am probably running closer to 300 now which still should be something on the scale. Portions have not crept up intentionally but honestly I have not been weighing as religiously the last 2 weeks, so could be a bit of both. Might do a strict 2 week weigh-everything reset and see if the trend wakes back up before I touch the dose 🥗

Plateau at month 5 on tirz, is my deficit the problem or just habituation?

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