If you do intermittent fasting and stay busy throughout the day, you can eat pretty fucking liberally.
I'm doing contracting work right now and spend a lot of time running around. If I don't eat all day, workout, I can spend the last 6 hours of my evening eating anything I want and I stay shredded.
Minimal amounts of gear (a bit of test and mast), do the occasional caffeine and ephedrine to stay really tight and that's about it. If you're already a fat ass, you'll just stay in blimp territory and never shred down. Shred down FIRST, put in the work, and then maintain. It's a lot easier... I don't know why everyone just doesn't do one brutal cut of a life time, gets in shape and then stays in decent shape. It's a lot easy to do a mini two-week cut than it is spending a year weighing your chicken salads and crying to sleep every night.