Transition phase?

[maxattack]

Is there a general guideline or time period for switching from above maintenance eating to dieting?

I ask this because I am just about done completing my first successful muscle gaining phase. Over the past 6-7 months I have been lifting hard and eating a surplus of calories, and now I need to lose a few pounds of fat that I have accumulated over the past few months. I'd like to get to get back to 9-10% bf while keeping what muscle I have now.....right now I'm 12-13% I think.
Currently I have increased my strength is all my lifts, and increased my weight from 160lb to around 180lb. I have not gained much fat and was fairly lean when I started 6 months ago, but I'm not at that point anymore. I'm 23 years old and 6'1"
I was, and still am, lacking the desired muscle mass but I'm going to start back slowly after this.

Should I follow some sort of transition phase (diet wise) before I take a big drop in calories? I plan on taking a few days off from lifting before I start a fat loss program, but was wondering if that was enough?

[galya]

It depends on which route to lowering calories you take.
If you go with a set lower amount of calories that are the same for all days of the week, then just cut them gradually on all days, anywhere from 10 to 20% of all calories is very reasonable. The other way you can go is to lower calories on non training days, and stay the same on training days, maybe with some carbohydrate manipulation, so your overall weekly intake would still be the same as in scenario 1, but you hit a major deficit on non training days. You could also go with intermittent fasting, if your lifestyle allows for it.
A big drop in calories is never immediately and dramatically necessary, unless you want to keep going up and down like crazy

[maxattack]

Originally Posted by galya

It depends on which route to lowering calories you take.
If you go with a set lower amount of calories that are the same for all days of the week, then just cut them gradually on all days, anywhere from 10 to 20% of all calories is very reasonable. The other way you can go is to lower calories on non training days, and stay the same on training days, maybe with some carbohydrate manipulation, so your overall weekly intake would still be the same as in scenario 1, but you hit a major deficit on non training days. You could also go with intermittent fasting, if your lifestyle allows for it.
A big drop in calories is never immediately and dramatically necessary, unless you want to keep going up and down like crazy

Thanks galya, I understand what you're saying. I am pretty familiar with carb and calorie cycling because I tried to focus on this the past 6 months while trying to gain muscle.

I think I might try staying at maintenance or so on days I lift, with much lower carbohydrate and calories on non-lifting/cardio days. Never really tried losing weight like that before.....I have always been trying gain it.