I am a big believer in that different things and diets work different for different people and its about finding what's right for you. I think a lot of times when discussing dieting and dieting strategies that people get so caught up in what they think or what they believe or what works best for them that they lose sight of that just because something works best for them or most people that they know doesn't mean it will work best for you. And I think that one of the worst mistakes people make is letting others tell them that something shouldn't be working and to change it; because to me, if its working, don't change it. Maybe optimize it or tweak it, but don't change something you respond well to because others think it shouldn't be working.
I for one have always had a lot of success with maintaining muscle while dieting by as you said, optimizing my diet for muscle preservation. I think the key though is for people to realize and respect that that may mean different things to different people. And also like you, I HATE dieting so when I do, I try to do it right for me do it and get it done and over with as quickly and efficiently as possible. I'm not saying that's right for others, but it works for me and from what you've said, it works for you as well. I think its very individualized and what works best for one person may not work best for the other. And I've never used Tren or any other AAS to do so.
One reason I don't comment a lot on dieting is because some of the most popular things that people often say to do don't work well for me at all. In fact, a lot of them work completely opposite for me. Fasting = feel like crap, brain fog, decreased strength, autoimmune flareups more common, etc. Keto = feel like walking death, brain fog; and yes, I've waited it out and I don't adapt haha. BUT you'll notice I never tell people these things aren't good, they just don't work for me. But also, there are things that do work for me that greatly accelerate my fat loss that I would never tell anyone else to do because a lot of it I've learned through trial and error and I know it works for me but have no idea if it would work for you or anyone else. So that's why when people ask me about my diet, I just normally avoid the question bc I'm not going to get into a science debate about what works or doesn't work for me when all I care about when it comes to my dieting is that it works for me haha.
There's a couple people on here that I have discussed my diet with that if they read this are probably laughing bc of some of the things that do work for me because some of it is so far out of the norm and a lot has been learned by accident over the years. Some of the best things I've ever learned about dieting strategies for me have actually came when I cheated on my diet or screwed up on it and then my body reacted in a certain way and I experimented with little tweaks to it the next go round.
Another great example of this is one of my best friends is 56 years old and has a physique that most people would kill for and he has never touched a steroid, prohormone, etc. He's 6'1 and 235 when he leans down for summer on average. People think he competes when they see him and he never has and has never had any interest in doing so. But all the time people ask him how he trains and how he eats and he always tells them that instead of asking him, they need to learn how they need to eat and how they need to train to work best for him. For example, he takes so long between sets that it would be useless for me to even train and doesn't train that heavy yet has endurance forever for no logical reason. And for diet, you'd think he'd count every calorie he took in when he doesn't count calories at all. His diet is 6 meals a day - a serving of protein and complex carbs at each of the first 4 meals and not at the last 2 when dieting; and when not dieting adds in complex carbs to each meal and a pint of ice cream before bedtime
(When people ask him about steroids, he always replies that he's all natural and it must be the ice cream haha)
