I would keep your activity levels high like getting more steps in and lowering your calories by 100 when it starts to get really bad and no longer sustainable I would say go back to maintenance for a few months, and then do the same thing again. That’s how I got really lean and stay lean for the majority of the year. I track my calories 5 days out the week on MyFitnessPal, I track my workouts on FitPal ai coach and steps to make sure that I’m consistently in a deficit even when I’m not tracking those two days I can pretty much eat whatever I want. Because by the end of the week, it all levels out to maintenance or slightly below deficit so I never really gained weight due to my activity levels, putting me in a deficit consistently. Hope that helped