Why Weight Loss May Stop After the Second Week of Dieting?

When you begin dieting, it is quite possible that you are witnessing much progress in the first week itself. Your weighing scale shows that you have been able to knock quite a few pounds off your body. However, by the time that the second week comes up, you start finding that the weight loss has reduced or might have stopped completely. While in the first week of starting the diet, you might find a loss of as many as 5 pounds, you find the needle on the scale to have stopped moving despite not doing anything different. Here are some possible reasons to explain such a phenomenon.

Not much water weight is lost in the second week

Weight loss with a meal plan aims at losing the unwanted fat from the body. What you are losing is actually a combination of water, muscle and fat. Water constitutes 50% of body fat. It might be possible in severe cases to lose as many as 5 pounds in the first week. Much of this can be water weight. However, this pace might not be sustainable.

It could be that some water retreated in the first week might be regained in the second week. This might lead to a gain in weight. However, you might actually be able to gain overall body weight and lose fat at the same time.

Find out how to predict how much weight you will lose in this article.

Regaining of Glycogen after the first week

The glycogen stores of the body are the other areas where there is enough water. A form of carbohydrate that is stored in the muscles and liver, Glycogen works as a backup source of energy when there is low energy from the diet. At one time, around 400 grams of glycogen might be stored. However, for each gram of Glycogen 3 times of its weight can be stored in the form of water. There might be up to 1,600 grams of water and glycogen combined in the body in total, which means around 1.5 kilos. In the first week itself of starting the meal plan, you can lose most or all of it. However, you can regain some of it in the second week.

Temporary fluctuations

You might still find an odd fluctuation in weight in the second week. However, beginning around the 3rd week, your body might begin to settle into a firm routine – which can lead to a consistent weight loss of around 0.5 – 1 kg per week.

Find out how to maintain the weight you lose.

For most people, it is quite common to reduce a decent number of pounds in the first week right after starting a new diet. However, this is followed often by hard work and slow gains in the next weeks. Some people feel that their present strategy is failing to work, and they stop dieting from the third week. However, unusual changes are actually predictable and expected from the outset. In case your weight loss results are highly different in your second week from your first, you actually need to move ahead with your existing diet program until over the long term you can clearly find out whether or not it is working.