2 ways to deal with plateau - work harder or wait it out?

Either:

1. increase your calorie intake for a couple of weeks (i'll leave it for others to explain how/why this works - i'm no nutritional expert).

2. Swap some of the cardio for some resistance training.

Whats your weight range and needs of weight loss?

If you are overweight or obese ignore the "you have to eat back your exercise calories, thats bogus" I personally use Diet to create half the deficit and Exercise to create the other half on a given day and it has worked for the most part, to begin with i was just going nuts exercising vigorusly 2 times a day plus undereating and lost a hell of a lot of weight reall quick but then it plateaud after 15 Kilo's lost, since then i've been through 2 more (major ones) i call major anything over a 10 days

Both times i just reset by recalculating goals and eating a bit more but still a deficit. Most recently i cut back on the going stupid at the gym as it was being more detrimental on my joints then doing good, drinking alot more water increasing protein and reducing carbs (not low carbs, just more protein instead of alot of carbs) 30/40/30 Carbs/Proteins/Fats but thats for me not necessarily you.

My recent plateau was just over 2 weeks then 1.1Kilo's dropped overnight but the whole time my fat% was going down a bit each couple of days and visually there's a huge difference so once again ignore the scales that doesn't tell you what's going underneath, just gives you a basic idea

The plateau will pass within 3 weeks i've been through 3 now.

Just mix it up in what you do, don't always eat low calories or always go nuts at the gym every day.
Cardio and Weight/Core/Resistance training is a must, your body gets too use to Cardio too quick so it will have less effect
and above all just forget about the scales and concentrate on looking in the mirror, if you see change to hell with what the scales say.

I don't do either! lol.

Whenever I plateau, I "cheat" for about three days... gain like, 3 pounds, and then back on track! I've done it about three times and it's worked! It wasn't intentional... When I plateau, I get depressed and give up. Hence, the "cheating." Then I get sick of pigging out and just go back to my regular dieting and exercise. And then the weight comes off like normal and I get past that darn plateau.

My TDEE is already calculated including exercise, so I'm not sure eating back the calories will work? I've lost almost 19lbs so far not eating back the exercise calories.

So you ARE already eating back your exercise calories as you have included them in your TDEE calculation.
Don't confuse the two methods.

Adding more of the same exercise may work if it increases your deficit but you are more likely to see better results from adding in a different activity - strength training is the obvious one!

If you are confident you are actually in deficit then you will lose weight eventually. Most likely reason for not being in deficit is inaccuracy in calculating your calorie intake. Weigh and measure everything and be really accurate with your calorie goal over a period of time and you will then know if your current goal is correct or not.

Have you recalculated your goal recently based on your current stats?

Well done on the 19lb loss by the way. :flowerforyou:

How long has it been since you've seen a drop on the scale? 1-2 weeks is perfectly normal for normal weight fluctuations. It isn't usually considered a plateau until you've been 4-6 weeks without a loss. You could simply be holding onto some extra water weight thanks to the exercise, hormones, stress, etc.

Yep. Just what I was going to say.

How long has it been since you've seen a drop on the scale? 1-2 weeks is perfectly normal for normal weight fluctuations. It isn't usually considered a plateau until you've been 4-6 weeks without a loss. You could simply be holding onto some extra water weight thanks to the exercise, hormones, stress, etc.

This.
And you are not far away from your goal weight. The closer you get, the slower it will be to get there. Also, are you weighing all your food and logging accurately?

Eating back at maintenance calories for a few days works for me. Don't eat **** food but just hit your maintenance calories. You will see some weight gain but it will come off again as easily as it came on and you should be able to break through it again.