Written by Martin Ebner
Last updated October 2026
Getting close to your goal can be incredibly frustrating. You’ve done the hard part, lost most of the weight, and now the final ten pounds refuse to move.
There’s nothing uniquely stubborn about them. Your body doesn’t know they’re the final ten pounds, and it isn’t deliberately protecting them to test your commitment. What has changed is your body weight, your energy expenditure and the amount of room left for error.
You may also be lean enough that further weight loss genuinely requires more care. The answer isn’t automatically more HIIT, fasted cardio, six tiny meals or a fat burner. It’s usually a more accurate look at what’s happening, followed by one sensible adjustment.
MAKE SURE THE PLATEAU IS REAL
A few days without a lower number on the scales isn’t a plateau. Body weight moves with water, salt, carbohydrate intake, digestion, training and, for women, the menstrual cycle. A hard leg session can leave you heavier for several days without adding a gram of body fat.
Weigh yourself under similar conditions three to seven mornings each week, then compare weekly averages. Give the trend at least two or three weeks before deciding it has stopped. Add your waist measurement, photos and the fit of your clothes if they’re useful to you.
If your average weight and waist are still moving down, the plan is working. You may simply need to stop expecting the scales to provide a daily progress report.
YOUR METABOLISM ISN’T BROKEN
A smaller body generally requires less energy to maintain and move. If you’ve lost a meaningful amount of weight, the calorie intake that created your original deficit may now sit much closer to maintenance.
Your body can also reduce energy expenditure beyond what we’d expect from the change in body size alone. This is usually called adaptive thermogenesis. Research following people through progressive weight loss found reductions in resting and exercise energy expenditure as weight came down.
The effect is real, but it doesn’t mean your metabolism has shut down or that fat loss has become impossible. The size of the response differs between people, and dramatic claims about permanent metabolic damage tend to run considerably ahead of the evidence. You can read the study on energy expenditure during progressive weight loss here.
Your body may now need fewer calories than it did at the beginning. That calls for a small adjustment, not a punishment.
CHECK THE INTAKE YOU’RE ACTUALLY HAVING
Dieting for several months is tiring. Portions become less precise, weekends loosen slightly, cooking oil becomes invisible and the handful of something eaten while preparing dinner never reaches the tracking app.
That isn’t dishonesty or a lack of discipline. It’s normal drift.
Track an ordinary week again, including drinks, sauces, oils, snacks and restaurant meals. Don’t produce seven unusually perfect days because you know you’re being watched by your own phone. You’re trying to understand your current diet, not pass an exam.
Compare what you’re eating now with what produced progress earlier. The answer may be obvious once everything is visible.
If the wider diet has become difficult to follow, my 11 practical strategies for sticking to a diet will help without asking you to rebuild every meal from scratch.
MAKE ONE SMALL ADJUSTMENT
Once you know the plateau is genuine, change one thing.
I’d usually start by trimming roughly 100 to 200 calories from the daily average, or adding a modest amount of walking, perhaps another 1,500 to 2,500 steps. Choose one, keep everything else stable and watch the trend for another two weeks.
Don’t remove 500 calories, add four cardio sessions and stop eating carbohydrates on the same Monday. You won’t know which change mattered, and you’ll have left yourself nowhere sensible to go next.
The final stage should be controlled, not desperate.
EXPECT THE FINAL STAGE TO MOVE MORE SLOWLY
Losing one pound a week may have been perfectly reasonable earlier in the process. It can be unnecessarily aggressive when you’re lighter and already fairly lean.
For somebody in that position, I’d often be happy with roughly 0.25% to 0.5% of body weight per week. It may be slower. Ten pounds is around 4.5 kilos, so the final stage could easily take ten to twenty weeks rather than the month you’d prefer.
A trial involving athletes compared slower and faster rates of weight loss while everyone continued strength training. The slower approach produced better outcomes for lean mass and strength. That doesn’t create one compulsory rate for everybody, but it supports taking your time when keeping muscle and performance matters. Here’s the weight-loss-rate study.
The faster option isn’t automatically better simply because the calendar looks tidier.
KEEP LIFTING AND PROTECT YOUR MUSCLE
The goal isn’t merely to become lighter. It’s to lose fat while keeping as much muscle, strength and performance as possible.
Continue strength training properly. You may need slightly less volume because recovery becomes harder in a calorie deficit, but your muscles still need a reason to stay. Keep the main exercises, use challenging weights and accept that progress may slow while fat loss is the priority.
Protein matters here too. Around 1.6 grams per kilo of body weight is a useful starting point for many people who lift, with something closer to 2.2 grams potentially useful when you’re leaner, dieting harder or simply prefer a higher intake.
A controlled trial combining an energy deficit with demanding exercise found better lean-mass retention and fat loss with the higher of two protein intakes. The intervention was far more aggressive than I’d recommend for most people, but it reinforces the value of adequate protein when calories are restricted. You can read the higher-protein energy-deficit trial here.
My protein-intake guide covers the practical numbers without requiring you to live inside a tub of protein powder.
WALK MORE BEFORE DECLARING WAR WITH HIIT
Walking is usually my first choice for increasing activity during the final stage of fat loss. It uses energy, supports your health and creates very little fatigue.
HIIT can improve fitness and burn calories, but it isn’t compulsory and it doesn’t create a separate form of superior fat loss. It had its moment, then people started adding it to everything until every workout became a punishment.
Fasted cardio doesn’t unlock stubborn fat either. You may burn a greater proportion of fat during the session, but that doesn’t guarantee greater body-fat loss across the day or week. I’ve covered both sides in HIIT vs long-distance cardio and does fasted cardio burn more fat?.
Use cardio because it fits the plan and you can recover from it. Don’t use it to compensate for food or prove you’re working hard enough.
A DIET BREAK CAN HELP WITHOUT RESETTING YOUR METABOLISM
If you’ve been dieting for months, a week or two at estimated maintenance can be useful. It gives you more food, better training and some relief from constantly trying to eat less.
It doesn’t restart your metabolism, and it isn’t a week-long buffet. Body weight may rise when you eat more carbohydrate because glycogen and water increase. That isn’t the same as regaining the fat you’ve lost.
Research in resistance-trained adults hasn’t consistently found that diet breaks produce greater fat loss than continuous dieting. They can still make the process easier to tolerate and give you a temporary break without automatically adding body fat. One randomised trial in resistance-trained women found no body-composition advantage, but also no penalty for using planned maintenance breaks. You can read the diet-break trial here.
Use a diet break because you need one, not because somebody promised it would confuse your body into burning more fat.
SLEEP CAN CHANGE THE RESULT
Poor sleep makes dieting considerably less pleasant. Hunger becomes harder to manage, training feels worse and the evening cupboard develops a surprising amount of charisma.
In a controlled weight-loss trial, people exposed to regular sleep restriction lost a smaller proportion of their weight as fat despite losing a similar amount of total weight. Here’s the sleep-restriction study.
You can’t always control sleep, particularly when work, children or health issues are involved. It still deserves attention before cutting food again.
If you’ve handled the obvious basics and want to know what a sleep supplement can realistically offer, I’ve reviewed Performance Lab Sleep separately.
DECIDE WHETHER THE LAST TEN POUNDS ARE WORTH IT
The goal weight may have been chosen months ago, when it was little more than a number. You’re allowed to reassess it now that you understand what reaching and maintaining it will require.
If your training is still productive, hunger is manageable and you’re happy to continue, carry on. If sleep, mood, performance, your social life and your relationship with food are all deteriorating, the final ten pounds may not improve your life enough to justify the cost.
There’s no failure in maintaining a strong, healthy body that weighs slightly more than an arbitrary target.
WHAT ABOUT WEIGHT-LOSS DRUGS?
Semaglutide and tirzepatide can be extremely effective treatments for suitable people living with obesity or overweight alongside related health problems. They aren’t products I’d recommend to an otherwise healthy person who simply wants to remove a final cosmetic ten pounds.
The European indication for Wegovy begins at a BMI of 30, or 27 alongside a weight-related health condition. These are prescription medications requiring proper medical assessment, not advanced fat burners.
If you’re already using one under medical supervision, don’t adjust or stop it because of anything in a fitness article. Speak to the clinician managing your treatment.
WHAT I’D DO FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS
For the first week, change nothing. Track your normal food, morning weight and daily steps. Keep training and calculate your weekly weight average.
If the trend is genuinely flat, make one adjustment. Reduce the daily average by roughly 100 to 200 calories, or add a modest amount of walking. Keep protein high and continue lifting.
Hold that new plan for two weeks. Don’t react to individual weigh-ins. At the end, compare the new average with the first week, alongside your waist and training performance.
If nothing has changed, adjust again. If the trend is moving, leave it alone.
That’s considerably less exciting than a secret stubborn-fat workout, but it’s how you make a useful decision.
LOSE THE FAT, KEEP THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
The final ten pounds aren’t protected by some special biological force. You’re simply lighter than you were before, your energy needs have changed and the margin for error is smaller.
Confirm the plateau, check what you’re eating and make the smallest adjustment that restarts progress. Keep lifting, eat enough protein, use walking and recover properly. Give the result enough time to appear.
If reaching the number requires you to make your entire life worse, reconsider the number.
If you live in Barcelona and want help applying this to your own training and diet, you can read about my weight-loss coaching.
If you’ve ever cut another 200 calories because the scales went up after one salty dinner, Check It Oot is where I separate useful fat-loss decisions from the weekly panic. One email once or twice a month, written by me and delivered straight to your inbox.
