Diet/Excercise goal change question

SLippi

I've been reading a lot of different topics here and other places online and decided to change my "goals" in hopes it will yield better results at the end. My real goal is to look better which to me means get rid of the gut and extra chins and have some muscles but don't want to be bulky. I find cardio really easy and was doing daily high intensity interval cardio for an hour plus some strength training every other day plus eating 500 cals under/day. I did manage to lose weight and inches from my gut but after reading some different topics and articles I'm wondering if I should change it up.

While I know I still have a long way to go before I can say I eat healthy I think the general consensus is you won't build enough lean muscle doing lots of cardio or eating at a deficit. So I dropped some cardio and am focusing more on lifting weights and am trying to eat all my calories vs eating at a deficit. I've actually gone over every day this week so far also. But I'm thinking if I eat all my cals for a couple months and focus on weights I'll build lean muscle quicker and then after I'm happy with my muscle mass I can incorporate cardio to help burn the excess fat. Does that make sense? Is that a better way to do it vs losing the fat then trying to build muscle back?

Thanks