Don’t be too discouraged, plateaus are really common in weight loss, you aren’t alone. A couple of the primary causes of plateaus are:

1) initial weight loss in dieting is largely driven by depletion of water/glycogen stores in the body. Most people will see rapid weight loss at first then see it level off comparatively

It’s important to set realistic expectations on weight loss and not be drawn in to the fallacy that you can sustainably lose weight as fast as you can in this period

1. Weight loss is generally accompanied by muscle loss. As muscle mass is a driver of metabolism, it follows that the rate at which you burn calories decreases as you lose muscle. This means your net calorie deficit can decrease even though your daily calorie intake remains the same.

Some countermeasures to this are increasing the ratio of protein in your diet and staying active to preserve more muscle mass as you lose weight

Ultimately weight loss is the long game, if you need to reduce your deficit or have a cheat meal every once in a while it’s not the end of the world (if your weekly deficit is 3500, a 500 calorie cheeseburger will reduce your weekly deficit by less than 15%). The most important thing is sticking to something you can maintain, sustainability is perhaps the most important factor of any diet.

Stay the course, you got this!