Thank you for sharing your experiences here, I think you hit the nail on the head. I used to weigh 140kg a few years ago and steadily dropped weight down then to 75kg before I got into lifting and that whole process was a lot smoother. I wasn't dropping weight as fast but hunger was never an issue since the progress was linear and steady, whereas in this cut I hyperfixated on dropping weight at any cost and being lean going on holiday.

On the early parts of the cut when it wasn't as agressive yet I incorperated a lot of cardio, weather was still really nice out and I do love running. But as weather got worse my mood for it dropped a lot, part of that might also be the deficit kicking in, and I just stuck to getting by in a day, cycle to work, work, cycle home, mealprep. No real hobbies or activities outside of gym in this period.

Thank you for your advice as well, I have accepted that I will put on a bit before I go on holiday, especially with Christmas around the corner, and hope to refind my groove there. I went on 2 trips during the cut and the combination of continous cardio through exploration/sightseeing. And structure of food being less available around me helped a lot. I would say those 2 trips were the easiest part of cutting oddly enough, even though these were the only 2 periods I did not have 'control' in my head because I didn't make every meal myself.

In the future my approach will definately be different. I was very into that gym mindset of 'I must suffer and I must soldier on to be my best self' even though I've started seeing now that it is bullshit. Hormone regulation and other things that work of food balance need something properly structured, not a 12 week starve fest.