Hello. I need some diet advice.

I'm 34, M, 5"9, 195lbs, 29% body fat, down from 250lbs.

I lift weights 5x a week and walk for a hour at a decently fast pace 5x a week. On weekends I still get a hour of exercise walking while disc golfing. I started off completely untrained and have been lifting for 6 months. Much of my weight loss came from giving up drinking in 2023 before I started training.

My goal is to get down to ~170lbs and then start to recomp and build proper muscle.

On my lifting days I eat between 1800-2000 calories and 150-160g protein. I eat lots of lean meat, veggies, Whole grains, and whole foods. Non lifting days I have 1 day where I eat 2700 and another where I'll splurge up to 3000-3500. My BMR is about 1880 calories a day and with my lifting and walking, lifestyle etc my estimated calories burned on workout days is roughly 2700.

I'm trying to lose roughly 1lb per week and keep the muscle that I build. I really want to avoid having loose skin when I get down to my goal weight.

My questions are:

Is my diet considered a cut or a recomp at the defecit that I'm at?

With my goal in mind, should I increase my calories to ~2500 per day to get more out of my lifts? Or should I wait until I'm closer to the 175lbs to do this?

Any tips that you learned that can help me while cutting?

>>76416619 (OP)
If you're trying to get more out of your lifts, try focusing your carb intake around your lifting. It's technically more efficient to take in most of your carbs during and after training, but some people have trouble reaching the necessary intensity without some carbs before training. Most people recommend more calories on lifting days, but I find I'm always hungrier the day after training. Different strokes.
As for calories, just make sure your scale weight is trending down and adjust based on that. BMR and adjusting calories for exercise can be kind of tough because of the variability in your activity and the need to accurately assess it. It's easier to check how much weight you lost over the last couple of weeks and adjust calories accordingly.
Keep up the good work, and do yourself a favor when you get to that goal weight: bring the calories back up slowly (like add 50 calories to your diet once per week). It sounds kind of tedious, but it'll help rebuild your metabolism and mitigate the rebound when you stop losing weight. It's easy to regain a bunch of weight, which is both very demoralizing and a detriment to any recomp/muscle-building that comes afterwards.