Realistic Goals when Reducing Body Fat %

1-2% a month is reasonable, however @5'11 155, how much more do you expect to cut, sounds like you're pretty lean as is

Weight is no longer an obstacle, in either direction. If gaining a few pounds or a few dozen would help me shed that midsection ridge of fat, I'm all for it.

I'm trying not to sound like the ridiculously clueless amateur that I am, but what I'm really looking for is that "in shape" look.

What's your bf%?

I bought a caliper and did a test my girlfriend found online and we came out with a 13 or 14%.

You really have 3 options and all have pros and cons

Continue to cut
Bulk
Recomp

Hope I'm not hijacking the thread, but would you mind sharing the pros/cons of each option? I'm very interested in learning more!

Where he is now (which is probably pretty similar to where you are for a female, except for LBM, which it looks like you have more of relatively speaking)

Continuing to cut - He's into the slow area where you have to cut at a small deficit and have to expect some muscle loss. The pro is that he's not terribly far from a lot of muscle definition coming in, every BF% from this point forward is pretty noticable. The con is that there isn't much to see anyway, losing more of it isn't really a good thing. At that BF% he should be slim in clothes, but still lacking a lot of muscle definition. The other con is that he is still dieting, which does kinda suck.

Bulk - He's in the high efficiency area for gaining. As long as he has a reasonable surplus most weight gained will be muscle. Muscle weight comes back a little more efficiently than building it in the first place as well. Plus from the sound of it he is a total beginner to strength training. This means that with a moderate surplus he can probably gain virtually pure muscle weight for several months, the net effect of this will be to lower his BF% as well, fat isn't being burned, instead muscle is being gained. The obvious pro of this is that you are anti-dieting, purposely trying to gain weight. If you are used to months and months of dieting, being in a surplus will feel downright awesome, you will feel like you have tons of energy. The con is that some fat will be gained. For him it is likely to be minimal for quite a while, but that isn't guaranteed. Though he wouldn't notice it since he still has noob gains in his pocket, being in a surplus is good for progress in the weight room, once you've been at it a while it is the only way to progress in the weight room.

Recomp - I'm assuming this means taking a calorie cycling approach and trying to lose fat and gain muscle in the same time period. This means the scale will ideally not move very much at all, but BF% declines. Th pro of this is that you are maintaining a weight you are happy with (or slowly gaining/losing) and putting on muscle mass with no fat gain. The cons are that it is a fairly tedious process, taking calorie counting to a whole nother level, and it isn't a terribly efficient process. Combining gaining muscle with losing fat make the process less efficient than doing one than the other. You will almost surely make more progress bulking 12 weeks and cutting 12 weeks than you will using a calorie cycling approach for 24 weeks. But you do combine the pros of bulking/cutting without the cons of each. You just have to accept slow progress, fast progress on either the gaining muscle or losing fat front is generally sign that your daily calorie goals are too high or low.