Fitness!

I know muscle weighs more than fat, but have you tried reducing the quantity of your lifts?
I follow this fitness person on IG who was doing a mini cut over 8 weeks or so and I straight out asked them if in a cut, were they doing the same strength training routine and was told no. They said they would reduce sets/reps.
Absolutely; volume cannot be safely maintained in a calorie deficit. The point is to move from additive to subtractive while targeting what is subtracted. Since you are no longer additive you shouldn't expect muscle to be repaired as quickly so you stop the wholesale breakdown.

There's lot of permutations on how to restructure the set rep schemes but the overall idea is a reduction in volume with volume being defined as total weight moved expressed in Weight * Reps. So, if you were to keep the same rep/set scheme you necessarily drop the resistance. One can easily increase resistance while also decreasing volume, however. Typical powerlifting meet cuts still involve peaking on intensity with sets of 1 to 3 of near max effort resistance.

Ultimately, it depends on your goals but the paradigm of lowering volume while cutting calories is near constant.
Yes! In fairness I have pushed hard on volume because I was also looking to reshape and redistribute. I have also been doing intermittent fasting for a couple of months now in an attempt to keep the calorie consumption under control. At some point soon I need to hone in on what a more productive long-term plan is and figure out what mix of volume, intensity and frequency best achieves my goals

What I've learned about myself is that all the logic in the world doesn't matter if I can't keep it simple and make it work with my lifestyle. I'm starting to get a sense of that and hopefully can strike the right balance going forward. But it's still an adjustment from the straight "I need to lose 10 pounds" mentality.
 
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