ZOMG my first big cut is over

Thx. Hope it provides inspiration\motivation for others.

That's some really good work. Phenomenal job in getting that stomach flat and trimmed. I know that's not easy to do. I'm still trying to cut down a bit too and totally feel you on the reduced calorie bit. It would be nice to enjoy a peanut butter sandwich more often but I'm still just over 15% and would like to drop it down closer to 10%.

Do you have a specific limit on what you're going to let your body fat get to before you cut again? Just think next time we do this we can put in the same work and get even more ripped if we don't let ourselves get so far out of shape.

Well the good rule of thumb i have seen is cut to 10 bulk to 15 and repeat. I think I have only gotten down to 11-12 at this point, so I might get up around 17% or so. It will be my first real bulk, so i will have to see how it goes. I do know that I will be able to drop fat much faster next time now that I am much more educated and have experienced it once and got the food scale and started using this site.

Very cool. I'm at a similar point. Weighing in at 156 and taped myself this morning - came out to 13.6% BF (average between USN and Bailey methods). I wanted to get down to 12% before switching to bulk, but waist (widest) is already <32" and I'm not seeing the point in cutting further. I may switch to no calorie deficit for a couple of weeks and see what happens, but think starting the bulk/cut cycle may be the way to go.

Have you set a target weekly weight gain or % over TDEE? I'm not sure where to go with this.

Honestly I have never done a lot of hardcore calculating tdee, bmr, etc. Way back in Nov of last year I calculated a general "maintenance" amount of cals it took for me to maintain my weight (~190 at the time) and had meals planned around that, but was not weighing and measuring stuff exactly, so was underestimating here and overestimating there. I'm sure it was always in the ballpark though. When I decided to cut I just started dropping carbs out of what I had been eating (like 1 sandwich instead of 2 but with all the meat of 2, switched to chicken salad vs chicken wrap, used a spoon for my ground turkey+cottage cheese nachos instead of backed scoops, etc.) Eventually at a stall and with carbs so low that my energy sucked, and with a better understanding of how to properly construct a nutrition plan, I redid all my macros dropping some protein (was at like 250 per day) and also stopped using so much powder (was doing 75g pro powder on w/o days and 25 on non w/o days) in favor of real food. It is a lot easier to deal with a calorie deficit when you drink no calories and instead get them all from solid food. Now I just do one 24g scoop on w/o days even though I don't have to, I have gotten attached to my strawberry banana smoothies.

As far as going over maintenance for bulking, what I am doing is this. I have been eating at 800 cals under my long ago calculated maintenance. While cutting I was lifting as much weight as I could. To switch to bulking, I dropped the weight I am lifting by an amount that will put me back to where I was in my 4th week adding 5lbs per lift to everything every w/o except deadlifts which will be 10lbs per w/o. I have been increasing cals by 200 each week with an assumption that maintenance is a bit less at my current weight, so I will start going over in week 3 (this week) or week 4, and keep going up until it looks like there is a bit of fat gain going on, with the assumption that it will be somewhere in the 400-600 over range.

This might help too http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/686963-large-collection-of-info-for-beginners