How Do I Avoid Plateaus?

Don't set your initial caloric deficit too low, you will see results even eating 100 or 200 cal below your BMR and it won't be any better than an extreme deficit of 500+ cal under. Once your weight loss plateaus, you'll have the option to continue your progress by decreasing your deficit another 1 or 200 cal. You can also change other variables like increasing exercise/expenditure by duration, intensity, volume or frequency. The point is to not go too extreme when starting out so you don't burn out and can have continued linear progression.

If you are utilizing carbohydrate moderation, be sure to include a refeed/higher carb day once a week so the parameters in your body have a chance to reset. Plateauing is just your body adapting to the changes you are putting it under, it's inevitable but if you give yourself more options you can delay it.

Not sure about avoiding them but you can do a lot of things to overcome them.

Quite simply, I'd advise changing things up a bit - your exercise routine (duration, type, intensity etc...), the types of food you're eating and changing your calorie goals. I just reduced mine for a week and overcame a 3 month plateau.
Change things every few weeks (giving the last change time to see if it's working) - it'll also make things more interesting for yourself as well

The best thing you can do is to log accurately (weigh food, measure liquids, create your own recipes, double check database entries), set a reasonable calorie goal (TDEE-20% works well for most people), and get some exercise.

You say you "keep" having them, but you've only been here a maximum of 18 days. What are you considering a plateau?

what i dont understand is the people on survivor. theyre hardly eating ANYTHING, yet they all become skeletal as the weeks go by. how do you explain that? why do we plateau when they clearly dont.

they're exercising, competing in physical challenges etc. they probably don't get much carbs either