I’ve been at this since January 2022.
First cut was July-October that year. Then did a rebound till end of november, cruised till January 2023.
Then I really started ramping up the food to try and grow. And my food intake is now much higher to start for my second cut. Yes my total muscle is higher, but I also think it has something to do with the fact I’ve gotten my metabolism up from trying to grow and push food so hard.
I have only 4 days per week to train temporarily right now unfortunately sunday-Wednesday, but they are long 2hr 15 minute sessions so I can hit every muscle twice per week still. I have to do an upper body(minus shoulders) /lower body ( plus shoulders) split to accomplish that.
On those training days, I’m consuming 3300-3700 calories and still getting a deficit of about -700 to -1000 calories on those days. While it’s impossible to be that exact to know my exact deficit, I look to be about where I expect progress wise for being 6 weeks into cutting.
Off days I walk 18k steps and work in a mall, so it’s perfect for not being fatigued but still expending energy. Those days I consume 2400-2800 calories.
Last year, I was cutting on these same approximate calories on training days, but was making much slower fat loss progress and was in less of a deficit.
TLDR: doing growing and cutting phases back to back absolutely are the basis for this increasing metabolic rate. Even when muscle mass is the same, somebody can get their metabolism up.
If I’m ever coaching somebody who wants to cut, and they haven’t been very very active, I am actually going to increasing their calories over the maintenance they had when they came to me. I’ll going to Hold them at their new higher calorie level for some time and get their metabolism up before going into the actual deficit part of the cutting.
If they want to get actually ripped, not just lean out some then plateau at 1800 calories it’s going to give a much greater success rate pushing their metabolism up first so there is greater room to pull calories down, and more room to add in energy to burn via cardio/training. Even something like adding in neglected muscle groups people neglect training to increase energy expenditure is useful before adding in more/longer cardio sessions. Train abs more, calves more, hell-forearms even. Forearms won’t burn much, but at least that’s an extra 15 minutes somebody could spend being active with an elevated heart rate.
As for all the biological mechanisms behind this, there are tons, but many of them not completely understood( At least not completely understood by me), but this effect is noticeable and very real.