Last updated: September 2026
Quick Summary:
- Week 6 of my comeback: 83.7 kg to 82.1 kg (184.5 to 181.0 lbs). The 1.6 kg (3.5 lbs) is last week’s water leaving as predicted, which puts the real 2-week loss at 0.2 kg (0.4 lbs) from Week 4’s 82.3 kg.
- I audited the week on 5 lines: sessions, protein, fat, steps, sleep. Four were red and one amber, one week after all of them were green. That is not a plateau, that is a plan not executed, and the difference decides what you change next.
- What moved anyway: waist 93.6 to 93.3 cm (36.9 to 36.7″), second week under the 94 cm (37 in) goal; body fat 15.6 to 15.4%; skeletal muscle flat at 44.0 kg (97.0 lbs); resting heart rate 88 to 80 bpm.
Not losing weight after 40 has 2 very different causes, and most of us reach for the wrong one first. The first is the real plateau: you did the sessions, hit the protein, walked the steps, slept, and the body stopped answering. The second is the week I just had: the plan stalled, and the body was never given the chance to plateau.
Week 6 of my comeback came straight after a week 5 where every line was green and the scale still jumped 1.4 kg (3.1 lbs) on water, so I have both cases 7 days apart, and this check-in is built around one honest audit rather than one hopeful explanation.
If you’re new here, the full context is in the comeback log and the plan I’m following is in the 10-week cutting plan.
The audit: 5 lines, 4 of them red
Before I let myself say “plateau” about not losing weight after 40, I scored the week against the plan I published, and against the week before it. Here is the table. It is not flattering, and that is the point of publishing it, because not losing weight after 40 usually has a boring cause you can see in a table like this one.
| Line | The plan | Week 5 | Week 6 | Score, week 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sessions | 4 a week | 4 of 4 | 2 of 4, logged in the app | Red |
| Protein | 2 g/kg, 195 g target | 173 g | 140 g a day, 7-day average, 1.7 g/kg | Red |
| Fat | 40 g, spread across the day | 55 g average, quota gone by mid-afternoon most days | Red | |
| Steps | 10,000 a day | 10,200 average, under 10,000 on 4 of 6 days | Amber | |
| Sleep | 7 hours plus | Shorter and earlier-broken, most nights | Red | |
| Calories | 2,200 target, deficit from activity | 2,007 | 1,975 average | Green |
The sessions line has no excuse available: the app I built logs every set with a timestamp, so I know exactly how many times I trained. Two, and a week earlier it was 4. The protein line was 173 g 7 days ago and I called it a strength; it slid to 140 g without my noticing until Sunday’s average.
The fat line explains the protein line: my plan sets fat at 40 g, which is about 0.5 g per kilo and the floor of what a cut should run on, and a floor that low is gone by 3 pm on any normal day. When it is gone, dinner gets built around what is left, and what is left is carbs, not the chicken that would have carried the protein.
Steps were the surprise: 10,200 a day on average, on target, because 2 long days carried 4 short ones. Steps are the line most men not losing weight after 40 never check, because a phone counts them without being asked.
Why the week looked like that is simple and not for this page: a week where family logistics took the hours training usually gets, on top of a demanding stretch at work, and sleep paid for both. I am not writing that as an excuse. I am writing it because a reader who is not losing weight after 40 and has the same week needs to know which of the 2 problems he has, and the audit is how you tell.
Not losing weight after 40: plateau or plan?
A plateau is a body that stopped answering a plan that was executed. Sustained restriction lowers energy expenditure below what the lost weight alone predicts, through less spontaneous movement and a modest drop in resting metabolism, and Trexler and colleagues put that adaptation at a few hundred calories a day for people cutting for months (1). When that happens to a man who did the work, the answer is a diet break, a refeed, or a smaller deficit, and there is a good literature on each.
None of that applies to a week with 4 red lines. Under-executed weeks stall the scale through mechanics, not adaptation: fewer sessions means less glycogen turnover and a body holding more water; short sleep raises cortisol and water retention and nudges appetite; low protein reduces the thermic cost of eating and the signal to keep muscle (2, 3).
The scale reads flat for reasons that have nothing to do with the body giving up. Calling that a plateau and cutting calories further is the one move guaranteed to make it worse, because it takes the plan you were not executing and makes it harder.
So the rule I am writing down for myself, and for anyone not losing weight after 40: score the plan first. If the lines are green for 3 weeks and the tape and the scan are flat too, that is a plateau and you change the plan. If the lines are red, you have your answer already, and the plan is fine.
The numbers: week 6 of the comeback
| Metric | Week 5 (Sep 14) | Week 6 (Sep 20) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weight | 83.7 kg (184.5 lbs) | 82.1 kg (181.0 lbs) | -1.6 kg (-3.5 lbs) |
| Waist (at navel) | 93.6 cm (36.9″) | 93.3 cm (36.7″) | -0.3 cm (-0.1″) |
| Chest | 109.6 cm (43.1″) | 109.1 cm (43.0″) | -0.5 cm (-0.2″) |
| Right arm | 34.8 cm (13.7″) | 35.0 cm (13.8″) | +0.2 cm |
| Left arm | 35.1 cm (13.8″) | 35.0 cm (13.8″) | -0.1 cm |
| Sessions | 4 of 4 ✓ | 2 of 4 ✗ | |
| Avg calories | 2,007 | 1,975 | -32 |
| Avg protein | 173 g | 140 g | -33 g |
The 1.6 kg (3.5 lbs) is not fat loss and I said so last week, which is the trap in every not losing weight after 40 story: it is the water from one big dinner leaving on schedule. Against Week 4’s 82.3 kg (181.4 lbs) the honest 2-week change is 0.2 kg (0.4 lbs), and that is the number the audit above explains.
The tape says the thing the scale does not. Waist 96.3, 95.9, 94.2, 94.2, 93.6, 93.3 cm across 6 weeks: a second week under the 94 cm (37 in) goal, and a line that has not gone up once. Chest and arms flat to within tape error.
New this week, and in the log as permanent columns from here: hips 96.1 cm (37.8″), thighs 53.7 / 54.5 cm (21.1 / 21.5″), calves 35.3 / 35.5 cm (13.9 / 14.0″), waist-to-hip ratio 0.94. Baselines, not changes.
Monthly scan, 6 weeks from the August 9 baseline:
| Scan metric | Aug 9 | Aug 23 | Sep 6 | Sep 14 | Sep 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Body fat | 16.2% | 15.4% | 15.7% | 15.6% | 15.4% |
| Skeletal muscle | 43.7 kg (96.3 lbs) | 44.3 kg (97.7 lbs) | 43.9 kg (96.8 lbs) | 44.0 kg (97.0 lbs) | 44.0 kg (97.0 lbs) |
| Visceral fat index | 7 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Subcutaneous fat | 11.0 kg (24.3 lbs), 13.4% | ||||
| Resting heart rate | 94 bpm | 88 bpm | 80 bpm |
Body fat is back to the August 23 reading, which settles the Week 4 puzzle (waist down, fat up) the way I said it would: noise. Muscle has sat between 43.7 and 44.3 kg (96.3 and 97.7 lbs) for 6 weeks of deficit, on a week where I gave it only 1.7 g/kg of protein and 2 sessions to hold on with. It held. I do not expect it to keep holding on those numbers, which is why the protein line is the first one I fix.
Resting heart rate 94, 88, 80 bpm in 6 weeks, read by the scale’s sensors at the Sunday weigh-in every time, is the quiet number I am happiest with.
The scan also splits the body into segments; I report that once. Legs 9.8% fat, torso 13.6%, arms 14.7 and 15.3%. The arms carry the most fat and the tape says they have not moved in 6 weeks. That is where the last kilos are, and it is not where I can send them from.
What it says about the goal
Not losing weight after 40 on schedule is a different problem from not losing it at all. The 78 kg (172 lbs) goal is 4.1 kg (9 lbs) away with 4 weeks left on the 10-week plan, which is the honest version of not losing weight after 40 fast enough, and at the rate of a week like this one it will not arrive on the date.
I am not moving the goal and I am not moving the date yet; I am moving the execution, and the next 2 Sundays will say whether that was enough.
If it was not, the plan gets extended, not rewritten. A cut that is broadly on track and under-executed needs weeks, not a new philosophy. Most men not losing weight after 40 are in exactly this position: the plan is fine, the weeks are not, and the fix is boring.
What changes next week
If you are not losing weight after 40, the audit is the plan. Mine changed the plan more than the scale did, and the biggest change is to an assumption I had not examined. My 2,200-calorie target is set as maintenance, with the deficit meant to come from training and steps on top.
That is true on a 4-session, 10,000-step week, when activity is worth 300 to 500 calories a day. On a 2-session week it is worth much less, and the deficit shrinks to whatever I under-eat the target by: this week, 225 calories. The plan works when executed; the mistake was treating activity as a constant.
So the first change is a rule, not a number: on a week where sessions are missed, calories are not cut to compensate. The deficit is earned by doing the plan, not by eating less of it.
The second change is the macro split, and it comes from the fat line. Fat goes from 40 g to 55 g, protein from 195 g to 180 g as a floor I actually hit rather than a ceiling I miss by 55, carbs from 265 g to about 245 g. Same 2,200 calories. A fat quota of 55 g survives until dinner, which means dinner can carry the protein, which is where the 140 g came from in the first place.
The third is the sessions and steps lines going green: 4 sessions logged in the app, no argument, and steps at 10,000 with no day under 8,000, because an average made of 2 long days is not the same as a habit.
The fourth is the one the other 3 depend on, and the one I can promise least: sleep. The deficit, the missed sessions and the low protein all trace back to the same short nights. There is no supplement for that; there is a bedtime, and next Sunday’s audit gets a line for it. Not losing weight after 40 on 6 hours of sleep is not a mystery, it is arithmetic.
Next Sunday, the same 5 lines, scored the same way. Three green would be a good week. Five would be the first since Week 5.
Frequently asked questions
Why am I not losing weight after 40 even in a calorie deficit?
Usually because the deficit is smaller than you think or the plan around it is not being executed: missed sessions, protein short, short sleep. All 3 stall the scale through water retention and lower daily energy expenditure before any true metabolic adaptation begins. Score the plan for 3 weeks before you conclude the body has changed; not losing weight after 40 for one bad week is not a diagnosis.
How do I know if it is a real plateau?
Not losing weight after 40 is a real plateau only after 3 green weeks on sessions, protein, steps and sleep, with the scale, the waist and a body composition scan all flat at the same time. If the waist or the fat percentage is still moving while the scale is not, it is water and timing, not a plateau. If the plan lines are red, it is not a plateau either; it is the plan.
Should I cut calories further when weight loss stalls?
Not as a first move, and never on a week the plan was not executed; not losing weight after 40 is rarely fixed by eating less. Fix protein, steps and sleep first; each is worth more than a 100-calorie cut and none of them costs muscle. A further cut is the last lever, and after 40 it is the one most likely to take muscle with the fat.
How much protein do men over 40 need while cutting?
Between 1.6 and 2.4 g per kg of bodyweight per day, with the higher end favoured after 40 because muscle responds less to each dose with age (2, 3). For an 82 kg (181 lbs) man that is 130 to 200 g. My floor from next week is 180 g; last week I averaged 173 g and this week 140 g.
Does resting heart rate fall during a cut?
It can, when the cut comes with regular training and lost weight: mine has gone 94 to 80 bpm in 6 weeks, read the same way each time. It is a rough proxy for cardiovascular fitness and recovery. A single high morning usually means poor sleep or a hard session the day before, not a trend.
Final thoughts
The plan stopped for a week and the honest 2-week scale change is 200 grams, and the first fact explains the second. The tape, the scan and the heart rate kept moving anyway, which is the most encouraging thing about a week I am not proud of: the deficit works even when I do not.
Not losing weight after 40 starts as a question about the plan, not the body. Next Sunday, the same 5 lines, and I expect more green. If you are not losing weight after 40 this week, score your own 5 lines before you touch the calories.
References
- Trexler, E. T., Smith-Ryan, A. E., & Norton, L. E. (2014). Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 11(1), 7.
- Helms, E. R., Zinn, C., Rowlands, D. S., & Brown, S. R. (2014). A systematic review of dietary protein during caloric restriction in resistance trained lean athletes: a case for higher intakes. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 24(2), 127-138.
- Moore, D. R., Churchward-Venne, T. A., Witard, O., Breen, L., Burd, N. A., Tipton, K. D., & Phillips, S. M. (2015). Protein ingestion to stimulate myofibrillar protein synthesis requires greater relative protein intakes in healthy older versus younger men. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 70(1), 57-62.
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