Eating over calorie goals on purpose?

Really? Your body can plateau for a few different reasons. It could be that you are holding water and it seems to be a plateau or and it is much more likely you are eating at maintenance. Your body doesn't adapt. Yes your metabolism can slow drastically if you eat so little that you screw up your hormones. That would probably be sub 1000 calories for a women. You you are talking about is a refeed. It is used by people with very low levels of body fat, and it is used to reset their hormones. To do it correctly it can take up to 2 weeks. This doesn't effect most people. This doesn't happen to obese people. When you lose weight your caloric requirements decrease. You weigh less so your body needs less to maintain weight. You can exercise more or eat less. In most every case of a plateau, it is simply that the person thinks they are eating X and they are actually eating more then they think. At the beginning of a cut, just cutting out the obvious junk and using this program will get you on the right path. So you lose weight. For example, you think you are eating 1500 calories but you miss stuff, don't count everything or aren't selecting what you are really eating from the MFP pulldown list. You really are eating 2000 calories but you still lose weight because you are still in a deficit. Eventually your TDEE can reach 2000 and magically your weight loss ceases. What everyone needs to do is serious make sure everything that goes in the pie hole is counted. Everything. Amazingly, it solves the problem 99% of the time. Recheck everything you are eating. Google it, check the packaging again, weigh everything. This is much more important if your are female and or small. You require fewer calories and have less room for errors during your cut.

I don't think this is a problem for me. I have OCD, and so I am fairly maniacal about logging EVERYTHING. Case in point, yesterday my son got a banana milkshake from Checkers, which he was raving about. Having never tried it before, I had one big sip and gave it back. I logged onto MFP and put in 1/10th of the milkshake, the smallest increment it would allow (which is probably still more than I had). I used to measure all foods, until I discovered the discrepancy between weighing/measuring (I was eating 1c of cereal which turned out to be 2 servings due to the weight, even though it all fit in the cup), and now I weigh everything. The reason I try not to eat all of my exercise calories is partly I am not hungry and don't feel the need, and partly I feel like it leaves cushion for anything that is underestimated in the MFP database, or to allow for inaccuracies in my HRM.

I'm not really having a problem with plateau at the moment. I was a couple of months ago but then I decreased my goal from 1.5 to 1 pounds per week which upped my daily calories, and now I'm losing 1+ pounds per week, and showing decreases in inches in the right places.

FWIW, I'm not actually using this guy as a personal trainer. The assessment was a freebie offered by gym, in part to sell the personal training which is too steep for me considering I'm doing quite well on my own at the moment. I just found it to be interesting and slightly counter-intuitive advice. I have never really felt the need for 'cheat' days because I allow myself to have things that I enjoy on a regular basis so long as they fit. But there are definitely those days that come up where it is near to impossible to stay on target (parties, etc.), so I can see where it might be nice to know you can/should do this once in a while.

Prolonged elevated cortisol adversely effects the body;s ability to process fat stores for energy. When this happens, energy must be utilized from other sources. These sources include muscle tissue and recent foods ingested. If you work out, the muscle tissue is less available as a source of energy, thus leaving the body mainly using recently ingested food.

If the body does not get enough calories to fuel activity (this includes being unable to take enough calories from fat stores), then the body will spend fewer calories throughout the day, simply adapting to what is available (this is why we don't drop dead from being short a single calorie).

Cortisol levels slowly increase based on prolonged caloric deficits, lack of sleep, and other forms of stress.

Fat loss is indeed calories in versus calories out. However, what you eat, and your hormone balance can greatly affect calories out.

Insufficient protein and/or fat, macro makeup, excess exercise, lack of sleep, VLCD, and much more can effect weight loss.

The idea of the "cheat day" is to offset the slowly built up stress caused by constantly eating in deficit. It plays off the idea that if you can only take 4 steps forward, the only way to go 10 steps is 4 forward, 1 backs, 4 forward, 1 back, 4 forward.

Many "BROs" have fairly decent advice for certain situations, but they lack a scientific understanding for the purpose of their advice, which sometimes causes them to give it in the incorrect spot.

I'm not *entirely* sure you're saying you are in favor of the trainer's advice, or no?