@amandal I was around that low of calories I think though I didn't track super hard at 5'9.5 and 160 lbs at 12% bf. I wanna say I was targeting 16-1800 or less than 2k and at the end I had an arbitrary end goal I wanted to hit so I did some really low calorie days and basically fasted but had protein shakes sometimes to keep on track if I needed a boost. Or if I could handle it might do a 1200 calorie day once in a while. Thats not recommended and arbitrary date goals are kind of dumb for optimal Hypertrophy, but it was challenging and motivating and I wanted to prove I could do it, so I did. And I don't compete, so it doesn't really matter if I wasn't optimal. It was fun.
I took daily weigh ins and weekly averages and didn't put a ton of stock into a single weekly weigh in because if you for some reason held more water or were bloated or constipated 3 days of the week and it made you look like you hadn't lost fat when you had, then you may change something preemptively. I usually would give something 2 or 3 weeks at least before making big changes. If I can tell how it's going based on feel I may also just cut like 1 piece of cheese here and there, or lower a portion size a bit, or have less milk in my coffee or things like that out of kind of a general understanding and feel and experience.
I think I also usually end up seeing maintenance periods during bulks and cuts where body composition improves and eventually weight loss starts again without major changes, although minor changes may be needed to Kickstart it but usually that period helped to even things out so you don't gotta do a huge drop in calories afterwords to start it again if that makes sense. Just a small Deficit is usually more effective after a maintenence period. They are also recommended by some every like I think 6-8 weeks on bulks and cuts.
But even if you were eating at maintenance, that just means you'll be building muscle more optimally than you did on your cut and won't be gaining fat by definition, so you'll recomp some. Then once you have the data and make the change to the diet you'll start losing fat.
How committed are you to the cut? I'm curious if you'd considered getting about where you are now or like 15-18% and then maintaining and recomping some before deciding how to proceed?
