I switched as well for a few reasons. After NROLFW I went back to SL but more of the 5x3 instead of doing 5x5 on a lot of the moves as at a certain point any increase is challenging, even got close to issues with squat and deadlift by then. I did a couple of lifts extra on occasion, like leg press or good mornings, but always kept to the A day and B day. While squats every day are fun, it felt like a good time to take a little break so that I didn't do them all of the time. Plus, with running being on maintenance instead of building up distance, I could lift 4 days a week. PHUL had a lot of things I liked to do, with a few extras that eh, I guessed I could put up with (biceps and calves).

I also like having the power days versus the hypertrophy even though I'm still working on the deficit. Not successful at the moment but will start focus and weighing foods in January. One day I'll be either maintenance or bulking, but for now it's the deficit and still liking the program.

My increases are slow, in particular with upper body, and that's okay. Would have been slow with either program. Plus, I kind of like doing front squats and working on my wrist strength because one day I want to learn snatch and jerk.

Bit late to the party here, but my two cents on this is that you gotta do what you can and will stick to.

The way you're shoving every lifts into every session makes it highly likely you'll burn out eventually, so you're going to have to make changes either way before you run yourself into a wall.

PHUL is not necessarily an intermediate program. You can still use linear progression with it and do the deloads when you can't hit a certain weight for a while on the big lifts. The hypertrophy days work a different energy system. You get a bit more recovery time due to it being a split. It would still take me 1.5+ hours to get through a session but as I have realized lately, I'm so used to pure strength work I don't really time my rests and I end up resting too long, lol.

There are plenty of other programs out there, too. None of them will be perfect, but they all have the potential to work if you put in the work. It depends on your goals, really. The way I see it, PHUL is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades in terms of muscle and strength building as well as fat loss. The one thing it DOESN'T do is overall conditioning & bodyweight proficiency. That can always be fixed, though. If that's what you're after then you should at least try it out (Just don't modify the program too much when first starting out. If you end up doing 3 more exercises per session, you might as well pick something else, y'know?)

Also: If this keeps up this group will be come PHUL for women hahaha xD