5 lbs in first week - afraid of plateau hitting in a few wee

Keep doing what you're doing and when you hit plateau change exercise completely to shock your body. I was running and elliptical until plateau then started weights (lightly) and spinning. Broke the plateau and then I was able to go back to running and elliptical (my favorites) and keep losing. For me the change in exercise only took a few days before I saw loss again. Good luck and keep with it

Hi,
It's common in the first week to drop quite a lot of water weight, particularly if you have adopted a low-moderate carb intake.

You will probably find next week is more like 1-1.5lbs and that will be consistent.

It's hard to be accurate on the info give. Open your diary to all or add me as a friend and I will check it out.

I wouldn't worry about a plateau. That takes a long time and my experience is you can avoid it by having one day per week back at normal calorie levels. More important is going with a diet you can mentally stick with for the long haul.

Just make sure you are eating your net calories. I've got a similar amount to lose and I started to plateau after about 2 weeks of loosing about a pound a day but joined the site and found even though I was eating I wasn't eating enough, I was eating a net of about 600 calories a day. I was doing a fairly large amount of exercise and not eating the calories I was burning back, giving me the very low net intake. I started trying to eat most of the calories back, although I am still unable to eat all the calories back, and found that after a week I started losing weight again, although at a much slower rate.

Basically, make sure you haven't changed your eating habits to the extreme and loose the weight healthily. If you don't eat enough then you will stop losing weight but as long as you eat in a small deficit you will continue to lose weight.