Will taking a week off from my workouts help my past my plateau?!

Actually, cheating may be just what you need. Calorie shifting is good but you also need to change it up even further. If your daily weight loss caloric intake is , lets say 2300, once a week you should bring your calorie intake up to your maintaining caloric intake.So maybe 32- 3500 calories. (I don't know what your intake is - this is just an example.)Eat something sweet, a desert, something bad. This throws your metabolism into high gear and burns calories like crazy. Its ok to cheat, in fact i recommend it. Once a week have a cheat day but keep your calories within your maintenance level, not beyond.

Working out 3-4 times a week is great. Why not try circuit training and combine your cardio and strength training into one, this has huge benefits, you will see a drastic change in your body fairly quickly. Do cardio and strength training together if you don't want to circuit train. 45 minutes on the treadmill and than half hour or so strength training, this works well. Changing up your routines is just as important as how often you train. You don't want to over train any one muscle group so be aware and educate yourself. You will reap maximum results. I highly recommend circuit training, it will get you to your goals the fastest.

Also, the most important thing is water intake, i can't stress this enough. You should at least be consuming half your weight in ounces of water daily. Example- if you weigh 150 pounds than you would drink at least 75 ounces of water daily. This has a drastic effect on weight loss and overall health. Many people overlook this. Just this one thing combined with everything above will boost your weight loss tremendously. Good luck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_training

If you are on a healthy diet, stay with it. Everyone hits plateaus as they lose weight. If you think you can reduce your meal portions a little more, try it. It gets harder to lose as you approach your goal weight but going completely off the diet and pigging out is bad. Weight control is in large part self control, so if you lose that self control with eating, you can lose the mental weight loss accomplishments you've already gained.

It should help some, but maybe just try 2 or 3 days at first, and see if that helps. Maybe try cutting your calorie content another 100 calories for this week. It's excellent you write everything down. Good luck!

no taking a time off will only prolong the plateau

A plateau in exercise just means that your body is used to or already expecting the certain types of cardio or strenth training you use. Your body could be improving so fast it needs something different in other areas. For example, you could do some kickboxing, sprinting or use incline.

As for the pound gained this week, it could be muscle mass(or water weight). If you are interested in keeping slim rather than building muscle do more reps with less weight (strength training). I've also heard that eating after doing cardio will burn fat and build lean muscle. But I don't have anything to back that up. :)