Hey Mr N, I know dat you is a Mike Mentzer fan, so I gots a question for you. Did you ever read his Heavy Duty Journal? FYI, he talks about his contest prep for the 79 Mr. O, and there were days when he ate super lo cals, like 600 cal days, and me thinks dat he had plenty of muscle on him 
My point is that one can do what I'm doing for a very short period of time (3 weeks max) and that the muscle that is lost won't be that much muscle, and that it will come back VERY QUICKLY, once a normal diet is started back up. So, basically my hypothesis is that a 3 week diet blitz will cause lots of fat to be lost without losing that much muscle, and that this muscle will quickly come back, WITHOUT THE FAT COMING BACK, after a normal diet is resumed.
Yes I am a Mike Mentzer fan I actually trained with him once in Venice right before he died. Now what I'm seeing is you are on kinda of a precontest diet constantly ie every 3 weeks depending on goals you wont build very much mass on a continous cycle as such. Interesting as such you will lose muscle on a restricted low cal diet being a natural, however things come into play as muscle memory and Gylogen restores. So question is would you prefer to lose the fat more slowly and retain muscle or drop muscle and have to rebuild? Merely a choice I always did best on the slow route to maintain muscle size because its tougher to build muscle than losing fat. Just my take.
