Both my wife and I consume slightly below or equal to maintenance. At this age I personally think will be overkill to have bodybuilding aspirations (although, frankly, with the treasure trove of information here it does not sound far fetched...). What we both find absolutely precious is the reversal (or stale) of some typical aging symptoms - her per-menopusal hot flashes and regular period are in the past, as well as my ED is gone at 5-6 months mark (but I am on TRT as well).
You have seen my other post about nutrition diet. Nothing have changed since I posted... well something did - the difference - from the apeshit keto we went for 6-10 months to carb cycling (wife more than me since she now trains for... well... perhaps I will tell you later next year
but if you look her BF chart, you can guess:
I am stuck at home at present to so much work that literally cannot go to the gym, just walking the dog and hop on treadmill between meetings. Sometimes I have time for some bench weight lifting too (we converted one of the rooms in the house to a "gym"). So, for me just clean home cooked meals where I know what's in it.
I still maintain the biggest enemy of 50+ people are the estrogens and sugars in our food which leads to body fat deposit, which in turn makes life shitty as hell. That's about sums is all.
The main reason of total joy for both of us is the absolutely excellent blood work results. Only one "thing" left to fix -wife's PCOS.
As you see, the lean (or muscle) mass, especially in my case, do not play significant role in terms of metabolism. This is what I was asking Chester at what point HGH will "stop" playing role in BF loss. After all, if HGH the role in lipolysis was indefinite, one might expect to... die at some point since there is a min % of body fat necessary for a human organism to function.