i really need some advice guys, i've been going about this the completely wrong way. a bit of background info, i started out skinnyfat. throughout my adolescence i always skipped breakfast and sometimes lunch and just ate a huge dinner. i never touched weights, and i did conditioning (abs/cardio) for the majority of high school, with a diet of sodas and fast foods.
well, after high school ended i decided to stop eating fast food and drinking sodas. i kicked all the unhealthy heavily processed snacks i had and only drink water and milk now. maybe i'll have a few beers every other weekend or a coke for a cheat meal, but i'm fairly strict on my diet.
i've been going to the gym 3-4 times a week for the past 5 months under the impression that i could make gains while on a deficit. and this was a huge mistake, i made nooby gains the first 2-3 months, but after they were exhausted i stalled on my lifts. i mean i was eating at no more than 1500 calories a day, and my lifts were just hitting novice on strstd.com.
so have i been doing this all wrong? it seems i wasted the past 3 months just trying to lose weight and gain muscle, but after losing 10 pounds i realized there's no point in having abs or low body fat if my the rest of my body looks small. i'm pretty much eating a few hundred calories within my TDEE now, i counted my calories for about a month, and i'm pretty confident with ball-parking calorie counts in a meal. it sounds a little naive for me to ask, but will i make gains just trying to eat around maintenance? i've only been trying this out for a few days now, but i definitely feel more energy in the gym. maybe i'm just asking for reassurance, or maybe i just want to be told that i'll make progress.
but here's a question that i'd like to have answered by anyone doing candito's linear progression program. is there a big difference between strength/control and strength/hypertrophy? in the pdf, he says the musculature growth between the two are fairly similar, but i want to know from everyone else. i'd rather be doing 4x8's than 6x4's, but he also says that pause reps are still utilized even by elite lifters. my form's pretty solid because i was always worried it was my form affecting my lifts during those 3 months of stalling, when it was really my nutrition. hypertrophy or control, which is more suitable if you want to increase strength while focusing on aesthetics?