Keep cutting or lean bulking?

[Wabakifitness]

Hey guys, I'm 20 year old male and I have been fat all my life until I decided to lose fat about a year and a half ago. I lost 60lbs and I am now 143lbs at 5.7''. Unfortunately I'm at a dead end because I feel like I have more fat to lose, but I think I lost a good amount of muscle mass as well and I'm not sure what to do now. I think I'm around 13-14% body fat? What do you think I should do? Lose some more fat or lean bulk to add some muscle mass?

[SuffolkPunch]

This is a very very common issue. If you have been dieting for a long time, it's time to do some mass gain. You don't have to bulk but you do have to raise calories up to maintenance or slightly higher.

The problem is that people expect to get to their end goal with just one phase of fat loss and muscle gain. In reality this doesn't happen and it's actually better to switch between them now and again because you become adapted after spending too long doing one thing.

[Wabakifitness]

Thank you for the advice! I will up my calories to the maintenance level and will keep hitting the gym hard! One question though, since I haven't been doing any cardio when I was on a cut in order not to lose muscle mass, do you think I should start doing some cardio now?

[SuffolkPunch]

Cardio isn't a cause of muscle loss - only an excessive calorie deficit or poor performance in the gym can cause that - these could happen indirectly because of excessive cardio.

Do cardio if you want to improve your conditioning but that's the only real reason. IMO, resistance training is good enough for general health.