Hit a Weight Loss Plateau? Why Your Results Stopped

Nikkiey: The daily work that you have to do, the systems you have to put in place, it doesn't feel sexy because it requires work. But that is where true transformation happens. It's you eating daily protein. It's you having structured workouts. It's you having the mindset to show up even when your motivation dips. That's what consistency looks like.

What's going on, you guys? Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to today's episode, episode number 275. And my friends, I'm feeling a little spicy.

So I'm just going to put that out there, because I'm going to give you all some tough love in this episode, okay? I don't know why. I just got to stop the accent going on. But let's get into it.

So today, guys, let me start off like this. Do you feel like you've been putting in all of the work, but you're still not seeing the results? Like you feel like you are, quote unquote, stuck in a plateau?

If you answered yes to that question, then we need to talk. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Because I promise you that you're probably not plateaued. You're just probably being inconsistent. Today, we're going to uncover that type of truth, my friends. We're going to get tactical. We're going to get back to being consistent, okay? Because I was on this interview today with a WarriorBabe, which you guys are going to hear in a couple of weeks. And she was just talking about how me and our coaches at WarriorBabe hammer home consistency. Consistency, consistency, consistency. You don't have to be perfect all the time. You just need to be consistent.

So we're going to get back to consistency today, because you're probably not in a plateau. And if you all can be honest with yourself and just be like, yep, Nikkiey, I've been inconsistent, this episode is going to drastically help you. If you can just start off by owning that, instead of saying, I'm just in a plateau. No, no, no. Let me first start off the episode by talking about what the difference is between the two.

A true plateau means you've been consistent. You've been eating well. You've been tracking your macros. You've been showing up on your workout schedule. You've been staying hydrated. You've been getting a decent amount of sleep on a consistent basis. And yet your progress has genuinely stalled. That happens. You can be consistent and cross all of those checkboxes off.

But you may say, the pictures haven't changed. The scale hasn't moved. The inches haven't budged. Then that is a true plateau. And that means at that point you need to just do a little bit of a tweak to your plan.

Inconsistency means you've drifted. You're on your boat with a clear map that was pointing you to your destination. You were on that path, and then all of a sudden, you drifted off, and you're kind of lost out in the middle of the sea. That's the best analogy that I can give you guys. Because you're missing your meals. You're skipping your workouts. You're not tracking your macros. Or maybe you are, but you only track half the day, and then you have a meal that kind of blows it out of the park. You've probably been more off your plan than you even realize. And that's okay. That's okay. I just want you all to take ownership that you have been.

You're skipping your workouts. You're not tracking your meals. You're missing your meals. Even those small lapses compound over time, and they will start to disguise themselves as, quote unquote, I'm stuck. But if you can take ownership and take responsibility and say, you know what, Nikkiey, I was on the map going straight to my destination, but I veered off. I'm lost at sea right now. I fell off the wagon. I skipped a couple workouts last week. That's bleeding into this week, and it's starting to compile week after week. Cool. There's no judgment here. I'm here to help. We're here to help. Okay.

Because most plateaus are really consistency issues in disguise. You've probably been off more than you realize, like I said, and that's okay. But it's time to get back on track.

So what I want to do really quick is audit what's really happening here. The first thing I want to audit with you guys is your meal tracking. Are you logging everything? Listen to me. You heard me say in an episode a couple of episodes before this one that you have to earn your way to intuitive eating. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I highly recommend that you do. "You Can't Intuitively Eat Something You Haven't Learned" — I believe that was the episode's title.

So are you tracking your meals? Are you logging everything? Are you including your snacks? Are you including the drinks that may have some carbs in them? You've got to really pay attention to that kind of stuff. Because if you have drinks that have carbs in them and you're drinking them and you don't even allot them to your calorie intake or macro intake for the day, you're going over in your calories. And what I used to call the BLTs, the bites, licks and tastes, those things add up over time.

So are you meal tracking? Are you including those things? Are you logging your meals? Are you taking the time the night before or the day of to actually sit down and put that into MyFitnessPal so that you can see where you're at for the day? Where are you at with your macros? Where are you at with your calories? Are you doing those things?

Are you watching your progress metrics, way beyond what the scale is telling you? Are you looking at your photos? Are you doing measurements on your waist, on your thighs, on the most important parts of your body? Are you paying attention to your energy levels? Are you paying attention to your strength?

Because the truth bomb is that if you're skipping your tracking, you are going into undetected surpluses, or going too far into a deficit and not giving your body enough. If you're just kind of eating and not tracking, it's wash, rinse, repeat. There's no cumulative progress from knowing that you've been on track consistently with your logs for seven days. And your mindset gets stuck easily when the feedback is absent. When you're doing things and you're not looking, you're out at sea, and your mindset is absent to the inconsistency that's going on.

And you're allowing a lapse over time when you're not giving yourself the feedback that you need, like seeing the logs being inconsistent, or looking at the data and seeing things falling by the wayside. You're going to get stuck in that space, and it's just going to continue to build upon itself.

So what I would say coming out of this episode, if light bulbs are going off and you're like, yes, I take responsibility for being inconsistent: just commit yourself to seven days of logging. Don't give yourself any judgment. Just pay attention to the data and let this be your reset.

And then once you've audited where you realistically are and allowed yourself to reset and get back to center, it's time to build momentum from there. You guys have had habits before. You know what habits feel like. You've been successful with your habits prior to falling off the wagon or drifting out to sea. So it's about getting back and anchoring in those habits.

What do you do in the morning? The first thing I would do is fill up your water bottle and have it on the kitchen counter when you first come down to the kitchen, so that you can immediately start drinking your water. Or if you know a habit of yours is to log your meals for the next day the night before, do that. Build that momentum by bringing back in what you used to do. Once you get back into the routine of what you used to do, things are going to start to pick up and build momentum from there. If you meal prep on Sunday, bring that back. Anchor that in.

If you are in an environment that you need to make more supportive, do it. Maybe you've fallen off track because it's summer and there are a lot of barbecues, or a lot of going out to eat with your friends or your family, and so there are leftovers in the fridge. Throw them out. If you need to make it more supportive for yourself, maybe the night before you go to the gym, you lay out your gym clothes and your gym shoes and get them ready. I've even heard of some people sleeping in their gym outfit. That way they can just get up the next day and go work out.

Get your calendar blocked. You know I've said this in many episodes: you would never miss a meeting, so why would you miss a workout? Put it on your calendar. Put it on your agenda if you use paper.

Get in these micro commitments on a daily basis. Check in with yourself or check in with your coach. Did I log my eating today? If you didn't log your eating and it's halfway through the day, you still have time to put your meals into MyFitnessPal and recognize where you are for the rest of the day so you can stay on track. Did you do your workout? Yes or no. This builds trust with yourself, trust that you can follow through with these micro commitments, which will then compound over time.

Like I always say, consistency doesn't require perfection, but it demands predictability. And predictability comes from these small, repeated choices on a daily basis. What I like to say is that you breadcrumb yourself on a daily basis. That water being out on the kitchen counter is a breadcrumb for you to remember to drink your water. Your meals already being in the refrigerator, prepped, prepared and broken down into the meals you're going to have for the day, that is breadcrumbing yourself to be consistent. It's predictability. It's breadcrumbing. You fall into what's almost a mundane routine, and you see yourself doing the same things on a daily basis.

I know it sounds boring. I hear so many women say, I hate doing the same workout. I hate eating the same thing. But think about the success that brings you. And you can always adjust an exercise or bring in different meals and make it more fun.

Personally, the way I like to handle my consistency is to make sure I'm pretty much predictable. You can guess what Nikkiey is going to have for breakfast tomorrow, because I've had it for the last two and a half years. It's just easy for me to remove that thought process from my mind. What am I going to eat for breakfast? What am I going to have for lunch? What am I going to have for a snack? What am I going to have for dinner? What workout am I doing today? That thought process is already planned for me, and that allows the other things I have to expend my energy on in a day to take up that space.

And the same goes for you guys. Think about all the other responsibilities you have in your life. You have your kids. You have your partner. You have a family. You have a job. You have maybe a team that looks up to you. You have all of those things you have to think about every single day.

If you can literally just put on repeat what you eat and how you work out, or have it already done for you, which is why I highly recommend having a coach that can do it for you. You guys can check out WarriorBabe, because that's what we do for you. We use our professionalism, what we went to school for, what we love to do, and we put that in place for the babes in our community. We tell you what to do, and you just have to go do it. And you're going to get the results if you are consistent with it.

But it's the same thing. If what you eat and how you work out are already set, you're breadcrumbing yourself on a daily basis. That's the way you set yourself up to be consistent. You don't have to be perfect. If maybe you have five workouts in one week and you can't get to the workout you have scheduled for today, well, guess what? There are two other days you can move that workout to.

I can feel my energy right now. Very, very, very spicy. It's like, this is what it is.

If you guys can accept that you don't have to be perfect. I put this on Instagram: a Monday could be 100 percent effort. A Tuesday could be 10 percent effort. Wednesday could be 90 percent effort. Thursday could be 20 percent effort. But you're still showing up every day. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just demands that you compound on the consistency. You're going to have good days. You're going to have bad days. But how can you breadcrumb yourself every single day?

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And you guys are going to hear this in the episode I drop with the interview I did today with one of the WarriorBabes. Once you build these types of habits... she explained it from her experience and her perspective. In her first year at WarriorBabe, she was laying this type of foundation down. She had to get rid of years and years of yo-yo dieting and trying all the different programs out there and being told this and being told that, only to be given: hey, this is what you need. These are the basics. We're not going to biohack, or tell you that you need to go do some magical ice bath, or that you need to eat something and assign points to it, whatever. These are the basics. These are the habits we have to start implementing. And you're basically laying down the foundation.

You can't build a house if you don't have a solid foundation. And that's exactly what she was doing, how she explained it, in her first year. And what she's looking at for her second year is that now she's learning how to live a lifestyle.

And not to go off on a tangent here, but a light bulb went off in my mind. Maybe this is you. I know this is her; we talked about it in the interview. Women spend five, 10, 20, 25 years on this yo-yo loop, stuck. And she's figuring this all out and getting incredible results in just two years. So let that be mind-blowing. People go years trying to figure this stuff out, but she did it in two years of WarriorBabe. And that could be you guys too. All right. Because here, we play the long game.

And I know that consistency doesn't sound sexy. It's not, oh my gosh, you can lose 10 pounds in two weeks, where we're chasing that outcome. It's more so the daily work that you have to do, the systems you have to put in place. It doesn't feel sexy because it requires work, but that is where true transformation happens. It's you eating daily protein. It's you having structured workouts. It's you having the mindset to show up even when your motivation dips. That's what consistency looks like.

Maybe you guys are wondering about what I said earlier, when I was talking about what a true plateau looks like. It's when you're actually on track and you're actually doing all the things, and you meet a true plateau where progress has stalled. All you need to do is literally make the smallest changes. You don't need to make drastic changes.

The first thing I would recommend is a small macro adjustment. If your energy feels low and your weight is stalling, you just need to tweak your macros by about 100 to 150 calories, no more. What I would do is pull your carbs and your fat down slightly. And if you still feel really hungry, give yourself five extra grams of protein. Five extra grams of protein goes such a long way in holding over your hunger cues.

Something else I would say: if you're showing up consistently in the gym for your strength training workouts, you don't need to do more. You don't need to add in cardio sessions. You just need to implement a little bit more progressive overload. Maybe you haven't adjusted your weight in a couple of weeks. Maybe you haven't adjusted your reps. Maybe you haven't adjusted the intensity. Maybe it's a matter of, hey, I'm showing up, but the motivation hasn't really been there for three weeks, so this week I'm going to show up and increase my intensity.

Or maybe it's time for a deload week. Maybe you've been going to the gym too much. Maybe it's a little bit of overtraining and you haven't had the right type of recovery. So maybe implement a deload week and focus on hydration, focus on sleep, focus on sleep strategies.

True plateaus just need small, small, small adjustments after you've had a solid run at consistency. It's not about making radical changes or something drastic like, I need to cut 500 more calories, or I need to add more cardio to my routine. It's just about making smarter ones. And what I just said is all you need in order to break through a plateau: small macro adjustments, looking at the way you're training with progressive overload, or recognizing, hey, I've been pushing it too much for a period of time and I need to give myself a recovery week.

This is how you play the long game. This is how the babe you'll hear in a couple of weeks turned it into a lifestyle in her second year. It's because she stopped chasing the outcome. She stopped chasing, oh, I just need to see a number on the scale. And she got more obsessed with: I'm playing the long game. I'm building a lifestyle from this.

When you release this plateau narrative and lean more into, let me be more predictable for myself, let me be more consistent, let me take an honest look at the way I've been showing up, then you take back your own personal power, and you're going to see the results. You're going to see the real results that you want. And you're going to build a body and a mind that last for the long haul.

So this week, like I was saying earlier, commit to seven days of honest logging, honest tracking. Get back on the wagon. Take this as a serious commitment to yourself. Use an anchor point, like having the same breakfast or the same lunch, or just the same meals overall for the first seven days or even 14 days. Anchor your workouts and plan them. Put them on your calendar like you would plan an appointment for your kids or a meeting for work, and notice how you become consistent. Just show up the best way you can daily. And you don't have to be perfect. Okay.

So go implement these things. If you feel like you've been putting in all of the work but you're not seeing the results, and you feel like you're stuck in a plateau, are you really stuck in a plateau? Be really honest with yourself using the definitions I gave you. Is it a true plateau, or is it inconsistency? Once you have that honesty, you can move into the data to get you back on track, which is logging, bringing in better ways to track progress, and setting yourself up for better success moving forward.

All right, you guys. I love you all. I hope this episode helped you. If it did, tag @themacrohour on Instagram and let me know your biggest takeaway, or tag me at Nikkiey Stott. I love sharing those. I love being able to celebrate what the takeaway was for you, or even just starting a little small talk in the DMs. Either way, love you guys. I appreciate you. Go crush it. Go get back on track, or just know what a true plateau is and what inconsistency looks like, if this was just an education for y'all. All right. Love y'all.

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