A picture paints a thousand words. Your text description exemplifies only a few dozen guessable dozen, guessable till the cows come home. A video would actually show the real thing... Fortunately, we...
There's a highly reflective device commonly used in your bathroom. "The Loo", perhaps. Spending some quality time in that area with a box of doughnuts may provide an answer as to whether cutting or...
Well for deep squats, our good pal, Mr. Bowie times pretty well with putting a few plates in the workout log. Up/Down/Up/Down ... Be that alligator -- a Rock'n'Rollin' bitch for you:
They still advise searing -- for flavour and fond development via the Maillard Reaction (fond = browned bits in the pan for sauces). New, enriching flavours are created by the application of heat to...
For the level where you're at, relative to your lifts, there's not enough frequency in that routine. A program such as Starting Strength as "HARRY12345" suggested would work much better.
Monitoring and making corrections to either phase is easier. Less chance of "fulking". Better chance of LBM retention taking off small bits of fat along the way, instead of one big chunk on an...
Assuming your 180lb/15% stats are correct (and your progress pics do indeed look like this is about right), you've got about 9lbs of LBM to gain and about 9lbs of fat to lose. I think you'll have...
... and it'll be different tonight. And it'll be different tomorrow morning when you wake up. (Try it). What you can rely on with consistency, is cal deficit. As long as that's in order, fat will...
The bio-impedance devices can be accurate, but body fat is a moving target anyway. One of those numbers between 16.9-19.x may be the right one, but you really have no way of knowing which "one" in...
I'd recommend not worrying about overtraining till you're lifting a couple multiples of your bodyweight. That and "hardgainer" are the two most misunderstood and overly fraught subjects on this site.