Experts reveal exactly when your weight loss will plateau, based on whether you're dieting or taking Ozempic - and how to push through it

No matter what method you're using to lose weight- you can't go on shedding pounds forever. 

Eventually, everyone hits a weight plateau, Dr W. Scott Butsch, the Director of Obesity Medicine in the Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at Cleveland Clinic, told the Daily Mail.

This happens in part because as you lose weight, your appetite increases, as your body searches for the calories it was used to receiving, according to Dr Kevin Hall, who researches metabolism for the National Institute of Health. 

This biological mechanism is in place to make sure you don't starve, but might make dieting harder for you. 

But how you choose to lose the weight might help you avoid that plateau for longer, according Dr Hall's new study, which was posted in the journal Obesity. 

People who used medical interventions for weight loss had double the amount of time before they hit a weight loss plateau, according to Dr Hall's new study.

Dr Hall found that people who cut calories to lose weight hit a plateau - stopped losing weight - after roughly a year. Those who lost weight using medications like Ozempic and surgical sleeves hit their plateau around two years. 

By looking back at previous data on these three weight loss interventions, Dr Hall found that the medical methods better suppressed appetite as people lost weight than traditional dieting. 

This is a mathematical representation of 'something we've known all along' Dr Butsch said. 

Your body prefers to burn food over other sources of energy, like the fat stored in our muscles and liver. This is why fat can be stubborn - our body uses it as an energy store in case we need it to survive. 

So when we restrict food, the brain fires off more signals that tell us to eat more to try and preserve fatty fuel reserves. This urge gets stronger the more weight we lose, Dr Halls previous research has found. 

'It’s almost like your body has this set point where, once we reach that with weight loss, it resists. It's almost like a survival function,' Dr. Frank Chae, a bariatric surgeon and medical director of bariatric surgery at Sky Ridge Medical Center in Colorado, told WKBW. 

At the same time, the decrease in calories will trigger your muscles to send signals to your brain that slow down your metabolism. 

This can mean that people who have had success losing weight may slowly see that progress erode, or stop- because their body is telling them to eat. 

This mechanism is particularly strong in obese people, 2018 research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found.

If you hit this plateau, the Mayo Clinic staff recommends reassessing your current weight loss methods. If you can afford to cut some more calories or increase your exercise regiment, that could help you get back to losing weight again. 

You should get at least 300 minutes of rigorous exercise a week in order to best maintain your weight loss, according to Mayo Clinic. They also note that you need to eat at least 1,200 calories a day.

Traditional dieting follows the simple maxim that you must burn more calories than you consume. This often involves calorie-restricting diet plans.

First, Hall wanted to look at how the appetites of people who followed a traditional diet changed as they lost weight. 

To do so, he looked back at data collected from the 2010 Comprehensive Assessment of Long Term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy (CALERIE) study. 

The CALERIE study, sponsored by the NIH, had half of its participants cut 800 daily calories out of their diet when starting the study, and half of the participants continue eating their normal diet for three years. 

At the end of the study, the people who had cut their daily calories lost on average 16 pounds, whereas the control group had gained two pounds. 

Using this data, Hall estimated that for every kilogram, or about 2.2 pounds, of weight lost, the participants craved an extra 83 calories. 

At their lowest weight, participants craved an extra 622 calories per day than they did when they started losing weight. 

This made it harder for them to continue losing weight as the study continued, because the more weight they lost, the more they craved food. 

Towards the end of the three year study, participants were only successfully reducing their initial intakes by about 200 calories. Their weight loss plateaued around year one of the study. 

The active ingredient in Ozempic, semaglutide, led people to crave 49 extra calories for every 2.2 pounds of weight they lost, according to Dr Halls new study. 

The active ingredient in ZepBound, tirezpatide, led people to crave 48 extra calories for every 2.2 pounds of weight they lost.

Next, Hall looked at data tracking weight loss in people using semaglutide, the active ingredient Ozempic, and tirezpatide, the active ingredient in Zepbound. 

These medications mimic GLP-1, a hormone which is responsible for telling you you're full. They slow the rate that food leaves your stomach and make you feel full for longer.

When they began injecting Ozempic or Wegovy, Hall found that people consumed 1,300 fewer calories than they did before starting. When they began taking Zepbound, they consumed 1,560 calories less than they did before starting the drug. 

Those who injected Ozempic craved an extra 49 calories for every kilogram they lost, and on Zepbound, they craved an extra 48 calories for every kilogram they lost. 

 In both groups, weight loss plateaued after about two years. 

When Hall investigated the effect of bariatric surgery, he found that participants' appetites were curbed more so than the calorie restriction group.

Bariatric surgery is an umbrella term that encompasses surgeries like gastric bypass, gastric sleeves and LAP bands, which surgically restrict stomach size in order to get patients to eat less.  

Those who had weight loss surgery cut about 3,600 calories from their diets each day, Dr Hall estimated. Note that many of these surgeries were performed on people who were eating in excess of the 2,500 daily recommended calories. 

As they lost weight from this calorie deficit, people who had bariatric surgery craved 58 calories daily per every 2.2 pounds lost. It took them about two year to hit a plateau in weight loss as well. 

Hitting a plateau doesn't have to be the end of your weight loss journey, Dr Hall said. 

If you haven't quite hit your goals yet, you can incorporate a more rigorous exercise routine or a different diet.

Weight loss, Dr Hall said, is a life-long commitment to changing your behaviors. That doesn't change based on the method you take. 

Even so-called miracle drugs like Ozempic have their limit, Dr Chae said. 'The medications are a good tool, but it is not a cure. 

'You have to keep injecting this indefinitely, and the drug companies really don't know what the long-term, meaning years later, what the long-term effects are.'

 Regardless of where you're at in your weight journey- stalled out, losing or gaining pounds- Dr Butsch said, you shouldn't be frustrated with yourself. 

'Weight plateaus are normal and expected and occur after periods of of weight loss. And we shouldn't fret over hitting a plateau if we're trying to lose weight,' Dr Butsch said. 

Adding that this plateau could actually be seen as a sign that, 'the changes that [you've] made are actually having a positive impact.'