DataDave said:

Genuine plateaus happen too, and the mechanism is metabolic adaptation plus a smaller body.

Plateau breaking story with a stall: I stalled at 202 lbs for 6 weeks. Tried everything — calorie cycling, increased exercise, more water. Nothing worked.

What finally broke the plateau: increasing protein to 150g/day. Lost 5 lbs in the next 2 weeks. Plateaus are temporary — they always break if you stay consistent.

DataDave said:

Genuine plateaus happen too, and the mechanism is metabolic adaptation plus a smaller body.

Filing a mild objection. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit. The "it is your intake" reflex here gets tiring. Some people genuinely stop responding at a dose that worked, and telling them to track harder when they have already tracked is how people stop posting.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.

Answering the narrow version, because the broad one does not have a single answer. Most reported plateaus are not plateaus. Weight is a noisy signal — daily variation of one to two kilograms from glycogen, sodium and gut contents — so a fortnight of flat readings is well inside the noise band. Before concluding anything, look at a rolling weekly average over at least four weeks and at a tape measure, because recomposition shows up in circumference before it shows up in weight. Then track intake honestly for a week: appetite suppression fades unevenly, and intake creeping back up is the single commonest cause.

VendorMark said:

Plateau breaking story with a stall: I stalled at 202 lbs for 6 weeks.

Second this.