re: Timing Deficit Calories vs Maintenance Calories

What's the difference between the "quicker" timeline and the longer one? I would think it comes down to how good you are at adhering to a deficit and how tolerable you find that. If you can stick to it and it's not torture just do it slower.

I suck at cutting fat weight and I hate it, so I'm always tempted to do things fast and "just get it over with" but that leads to a more aggressive deficit and that makes me miserable and what usually happens is I can't stick with it and then I rebound with extreme hunger/cravings and then eat myself into reversal. I just ended a planned 12 week cut today and I'm 5lbs heavier than when I started, and that's after a week and a half of actually losing a few pounds and a lot of water weight with it.

On the other hand, the thought of adhering to a less aggressive cutting deficit for a longer period of time sounds impossible to me, and miserable. But you may not be me. As shitty as I am at fat loss, I'm an A1 Maintenance Man, I can maintain weight very well, and I can gain weight like a BOSS, which is why I'm significantly overfat. I don't know you or how you feel about those 3 different phases of body comp, (gain, maintain, loss), but you sound like you're pretty good at cutting. I don't know if there would be a lot of difference between the two methods for you, other than the time it takes you to get to your goal. I still feel that it's generally wiser to go slower because it gives you more time to build stronger habits to serve you in the future, where I'd assume you would be in maintenance mode for the long term.