Started at 212.6, currently 193.8. Twelve weeks. The first month was loud: appetite quiet, water weight falling, sleep improving. Weeks 5 through 9 were not. Scale wandered inside a 1.2 lb range and I started hunting for levers — sodium, meal timing, step count, bedtime, whether my phone was cursed. Classic optimization brain: changing five inputs because one output got boring.
I didn't. Kept food simple, 30g protein at breakfast, 8k steps, two lifts a week. Added nothing, removed nothing. Last 10 days: down 2.4 lb. The process was working; my impatience just had a shorter sampling window. If you're in the quiet part, what's the one variable you're tempted to tweak that probably isn't broken?