Some advice please

At 5'6" and 148lbs, I can't imagine where you could possibly cut from??? But anyway it sounds like a recomp is what you want to do.

I'd suggest maintaining/recomping for a few months and then reassess. It's a long process to improve your body composition either way you go. Coming off such a long and significant loss phase figuring out maintenance (and letting your body figure out maintenance in terms of hunger-related hormones, etc.) would likely be very beneficial. It's definitely a hard mental shift to gain or even maintain after focusing on losing for so don't be hard on yourself for not wanting to jump right into a bulk.

I gave a pretty in-depth description of my path over the last 6 years on this thread linked below. After growing up mild/moderately overweight and only getting to a healthy weight at 17 it wasn't until last fall that I finally embarked on a truly intentional massing cycle. Even then it was a fairly conservative lean bulk (<10 lbs over 5 months) but I've been very happy that I did and look to repeat that process this fall/winter.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10835919/thin-guy-looking-to-gain-muscle/p1

The_evildead wrote: »

steveko89 wrote: »

I'd suggest maintaining/recomping for a few months and then reassess. It's a long process to improve your body composition either way you go. Coming off such a long and significant loss phase figuring out maintenance (and letting your body figure out maintenance in terms of hunger-related hormones, etc.) would likely be very beneficial. It's definitely a hard mental shift to gain or even maintain after focusing on losing for so don't be hard on yourself for not wanting to jump right into a bulk.

I gave a pretty in-depth description of my path over the last 6 years on this thread linked below. After growing up mild/moderately overweight and only getting to a healthy weight at 17 it wasn't until last fall that I finally embarked on a truly intentional massing cycle. Even then it was a fairly conservative lean bulk (<10 lbs over 5 months) but I've been very happy that I did and look to repeat that process this fall/winter.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10835919/thin-guy-looking-to-gain-muscle/p1

Thank you that makes a lot of sense so if I just eat at around maintainance and lift heavy I should lose the last few bodyfat % as I build muscle slowly ?

In a nutshell. Cover the basics; ensure you're getting sufficient protein to support the muscle growth (0.6-0.8 g/lb), adequate recovery, and put in the work getting consistent progressive overload.

Mechanism-wise, you can lose fat faster than you build muscle so I wouldn't freak out if the scale goes down by happenstance but I'd advise against aggressively pursuing weight loss for a bit.

Food quality is a pretty self-defined metric, for me I look for a "good enough" approach focusing on lean protein sources, carbs from whole grains or fruit, etc. but I'm also not shy about slamming some pizza every once in a while.

Looking to drop the body fat % as much as possible