Six or eight weeks in, it stops. The waist that was moving every fortnight sits still, the scales do nothing for three weeks, and the sessions start to feel like going through the motions. Almost every man hits this, and most of them quit within a fortnight of hitting it.

First, check it is actually a plateau

Three weeks of no change on a measurement taken properly is a plateau. Two weeks is not, and a fortnight of the scales not moving is certainly not, because that is well inside the normal wobble.

Before you change anything, check the tape rather than the scales. It is very common to stall on weight while the waist keeps moving, because you are building a little muscle at the same time as losing fat. That is not a plateau. That is the best case, badly measured.

The four real causes, in order of likelihood

1. The portions crept up

This is the answer far more often than anything else, and it is nobody's fault. Eight weeks in, the careful early attention has faded. The spoon of oil got bigger, the handful of nuts became two, the plate filled up again. Nothing dramatic, and quite enough to erase the gap you were working with.

2. You move less on the other twenty-three hours

When you start training, your body quietly compensates. You sit more in the evening, you fidget less, you take the car for the short trip. It is not laziness and it is not imaginary, it is measurable, and it can cancel out a surprising amount of a session.

3. You are smaller than you were

A man two stone lighter genuinely needs fewer calories than he did at the start. The gap that was working in week one is simply smaller now. Nothing has gone wrong. The maths moved.

4. Sleep and stress

A run of bad nights or a hard few weeks at home affects appetite, willpower and how much you move, all at once. If your plateau started the same week something else did, that is probably your answer, and the fix is not a harder programme.

What to change, one thing at a time

The instinct is to do everything at once: cut harder, train more, add cardio. That usually produces a fortnight of misery and no information about what worked.

• Fix the portions first. If the five days of writing showed the drift, correcting it is often the whole solution.
• Add steps, not sessions. Two thousand more a day is easier to sustain than another training session and it does not need recovery.
• Add protein. Counter-intuitive when you are trying to eat less, but it keeps you full and protects muscle, and most men over 50 are eating less of it than they think.
• Only then look at calories. A small reduction, held for three weeks, not a dramatic one held for four days.

When a plateau is the right place to stop for a while

This is rarely said and it matters. If you have been running a deficit for three months, are tired, are sleeping badly and every session feels heavy, the answer may not be to push harder. It may be to eat at maintenance for a few weeks, keep training, and let everything catch up.

You will not lose what you have built. You will hold your waist where it is, feel considerably better, and come back to it with something in the tank. Men over 50 who ignore this are the ones who end up injured, or who quit entirely having done everything right.

The one thing not to do

Do not start again. The plateau is not evidence the plan was wrong, it is evidence the plan worked and the situation has changed. Scrapping eight good weeks to begin a different programme from scratch is the most expensive mistake in this whole business, and it is the one I see most often.

What to do this week

• Measure your waist properly before concluding anything. Check you are not stalled only on the scales.
• Write down what you eat for five days. No counting, no judging.
• Change one thing, and give it three weeks before you judge it.
• If you are exhausted, eat normally for a fortnight and keep training. That is a strategy, not a surrender.

Alex Jordan · Over 50 and Healthy