Keep cutting? Or start to build?

Bump

I decided to maintain but try recomp calorie cycling.
It's a whole new ball of wax

It really a personal preferance right now. If it was me I would keep cutting till I was happy with the leanness of my body then start a clean bulk so that I try to stay lean in the bulk process.

personal preference but IMO 24% body fat is still a little to high to consider a mass building phase.

I would get it down to sub 15%.

I lift while in a caloric deficit. I'm not building muscle per se but I'm keeping strength and losing fat percentage still. YOu are going to lose weight a lot lower but won't lose muscle with it

This is what I have been doing, with good results. Only difference is I have been losing muscle, but i've had strength gains. So while I have less LBM, I can lift more weight. Strength/lb lbm, that's power baby!

I say keep cutting, but keep consuming protein, I think a very attainable target for you would be 15%

I've been on a weight loss journey myself. It's hard to be accurate in the body fat % game so what I would go with is goal weight. If you are comfortable with your weight now, start building muscle and monitoring your macros. In order to lose weight, all you have to do is count calories (basically), but to maintain/build muscle while keeping lean is a much harder game. You must start keeping an eye on your protein/fat/carb numbers.
That was a bit of a rant. To answer your question:
Don't consider it a bulking or cutting phase. Do whatever weight lifting you feel like along with whatever cardio you feel like and eat right. You'll see fat melt (because of cardio and muscles burn more calories) and you'll see strength gain. That's what I've been doing for ~ 4 months.
Also, google CLA (tonalin). It's supposed to allow your muscles to use fat cells more readily for energy (more fat burned/more muscle gained).
Let me know if any of that was confusing.

The belly fat is the last place that it will disappear, because it's (biologically) your body's favorite place to store fat. After all, fat stored there doesn't interfere with your ability to run from a predator!

I've been working on losing fat while maintaining as much LBM as possible - meaning that I'm eating a fairly high protein diet... at least 1.6g per kg of body weight, I'm lifting 3 times a week, but still eating at a deficit. I do half hours of HIIT style cardio, I try to limit how much as too much cardio can burn muscle as well.

I'm losing slower, but I've been monitoring my LBM and so far have maintained it while losing almost 12 lbs... which is good because I know it's 12 lbs of fat. Without strength training up to 30% of the loss can be muscle.

Do you think it is the same for girls? I was sick of hearing the "getting too skinny" comments so I upped my calories and doing more weights. So far I am happy with the results but I had a dexa body scan done and found out I am still 20% body fat and my goal is to be 12-14%. They break it up to show WHERE the fat is...on my upper body it's 14% (wasn't happy w/it looked bony) but my lower body is 30%. Sigh. Do you just have to get skin and bones all over in order to get the lower body and then build back up in muscles?
I hate to think of the in between time when you look like skellitor (sp?)

Sorry for the threadjack but you guys seem to know what you're talking about.

20% is the upper range of "Athletic" for women. Women should have a slightly higher body fat percentage than men due to physiological differences. You shouldn't really go lower than 14%, and that's on the low end of athletic. 16-18% might be a more realistic target. However the range is adjusted based on age... as we get older, we gain more visceral and intramuscular fat - and we can't control that with exercise (only the amount of subcutaneous fat we have).

12% is in the underfat range, basically you're reaching the point of not having enough "essential fat" for your body to function correctly. It can disrupt hormones, prevent ovulation/TOM, and can also throw your metabolism out of whack. This is all from my personal research/reading on the internet though, for the best advice, perhaps you should contact a physician.

As far as the upper/lower body breakdown of fat storage, for women unfortunately the "best" place biologically is around your hips/thighs... Which means it generally will be skewed towards your lower body.

Edit: I love the builtlean website, I find a lot of really useful fitness info there... for example, this super awesome ideal body fat % chart:

http://www.builtlean.com/2010/08/03/ideal-body-fat-percentage-chart/