EmmaD: The way I understand it, when you first start weight training, you have a window of about 6 months in which you can build muscle more easily than someone who has been training for a while. If you eat above maintenance, you're going to build more; if you eat at maintenance, you're still likely to build some, if you're working hard enough & eating enough protein; and if you eat at a deficit, you still might get a little bit of newbie gains, though probably not a lot.
It's easier to
keep muscle than it is to
build it. So if you're eating a moderate deficit, getting enough protein, and doing strength training, you should be able to minimize muscle loss. Sadly, of course, it's even easier to lose it than to keep it... so being careful about these things when dieting down is a good idea.
You probably know all this, of course. I guess it comes down to the question of how long you can / will wait. I wonder sometimes if I would have been better off if I had spent the first ~6 months of my weight loss journey eating more at a maintenance level and really focusing in on strength training, to maximize muscle gain, and
then trying to lose the fat. But if my body fat estimations are to be believed, in losing ~42 pounds over the course of a year, I didn't lose any lean body mass; in fact, it appears that I might have built a pound or two. So eating at a reasonable deficit led to what I think was a pretty good outcome, all things considered.
Either way, I think you're going to get smaller. You'll get smaller faster while carefully eating at a deficit, but if you're not happy with the body you have when you're done, it's a bit of an uphill battle from there. I think I'm seeing a
little bit of muscle gain / fat loss so far in NROLFW, but it's really going to take time for me. You'll get smaller slower while eating at maintenance, but once you're done, if you want to lose more fat, you may end up happier at a higher weight, with more muscle, than you would have otherwise.
If that all makes any sense.
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