I mean, you kinda came here asking US what your goal should be… its’ typically the other way around. For example: I came here with a goal of cutting and learning about AAS for potential future use. Through my posting and reading, i have learned and taken steps towards this goal. It’s hard to give strong advice towards an unspecific goal 
I guess this wasn’t clear… From my OP:
Current Weight: 175lbs
Goal Weight: 165lbs (maybe lower? this cut is easy-ish)
Goal: To transition into being a fit older dude rather than a fat-ass old man. I want to set my diet on auto-pilot as much as is possible (basically what I’ve done for this cut)
Advice, anecdotes, articles all very welcome.
Here are some examples of what I was looking for:
The Long Cut
This is a diet that lasts a long time. This can be anything over 3 months to years of being in a deficit. This is a normal situation for people who are trying to lose large amounts of body fat. This cut doesn’t necessarily end with being extremely lean. This situation is not the same as contest-prep diets. Its goal is to get to healthy or relatively lean levels of body fat. The difference between this and the standard cut is simply its length. A cut this long is tough and it involves being disciplined for a long period of time. It may require taking some breaks and you will run into a number of plateaus along the way. You will have a significantly slower metabolism coming out of a long cut. Some of this is related to metabolic slowdown, but most of it is simply a result of losing a lot of weight.
Gradual Increase
For this reason, a different approach must be taken to transition to maintenance calories or a surplus. I suggest a gradual increase of calories, primarily as carbohydrate, but the amount should be half of what I suggested for the standard cut. Also, the goal is not to return to your prior intake, but to find what intake is required to maintain your ideal weight. So, slowly increase your calories until you start to gain weight again and stop. Beware, you will gain weight when increasing carbohydrates, this is water weight. For every gram of glycogen stored in the body, it brings with it ~3g of water.
Another example:
After a successful cutting phase, it is important to prepare your body for the new calorie increases to come. When ending a long cut period, your metabolism is often slower than it was early in the cut, your hormones and appetite are slightly altered, and your mental state may also be ready for a change.
It is advised that you first enter a maintenance period (typically lasting 25-50% the length of your cutting phase) following a long cut in order to stabilize your hunger and hormone levels. By increasing your caloric intake by 300-500 calories more than your end stage cut numbers, you can help nudge the body into the recovery process and set the stage for successful bulk.
From there, you can increase your calories on a weekly basis based on your rate of weekly weight gain (see below) to initiate muscle hypertrophy and minimize excessive fat gain during the bulk
In this article, we will discuss eight ways you can ensure a successful bulk following a long cut, and offer you sample annual bulking and cutting schedules for beginner and more advanced lifters.
Another example
ADDING BACK FOOD, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
So now I have told you to “add food back” and that you should be eating a “normal amount” and having treats in “moderation”. So what exactly does that mean in practical terms? How do you do this? As I mentioned it is difficult to set exact guidelines for a phase that is purposefully loose, but here are some general instructions!
Add in about 200-500 calories per day at the end of the diet (more if you are a bigger person, less if you are a smaller person).
Add this amount back every 3-4 weeks. If you start to lose weight, add back sooner.
If fats have been low (less than 1 serving per day in template speak) for a prolonged period, add your calories via fats first. If carbs were cut, add these back next, and then more fats after that.
Have one celebratory cheat meal at the end of the diet if you can handle that and not have it turn into a three-day binge.
From there, give it about 3-4 weeks before starting to have a cheat meal once every week or so or when a nice occasion comes up
Select your off-diet treats carefully – don’t jump on every donut that is offered, wait for treats you truly love or crave.
Learn to indulge when it will be most satisfying to you – save it for a cool event or date night, or a treat at your favorite dessert place rather than grabbing candy bars that were free at work just because they were there even though they aren’t your favorite. Don’t eat treats just because you can.
IIFYM is fine for maintaining body composition, it’s not fully optimal as macronutrient timing is a detail that affects results to a small extent. In terms of health, you probably want to make sure the sources of your macros are primarily healthy sources. Learning to eyeball your (primarily healthy) macros and sticking roughly to your template timings most days is a great compromise.
Tons of great stuff in this article, I just picked one part.
https://renaissanceperiodization.com/everything-need-know-maintenance/
And here’s one that seems to disagree with earlier advice:
FAQ #4: How do I transition from a cut to a bulk?
Many people think that you need to gradually “come out” of a cut by incrementally increasing your daily calorie intake each week until you reach maintenance—a method that’s known as reverse dieting .
I’ll make this simple: you don’t.
Reverse dieting has no advantages over simply raising calories immediately back to maintenance (and may even be counterproductive).
Thus, when you’re finished cutting, recalculate your maintenance calories and increase your daily calorie intake accordingly by increasing carbs and fat as you prefer. And when you’re ready to start cutting, you can drop your calories again just as fast—no transition period needed.
+ Scientific References
@throwawayfitness made a couple pretty solid responses that already seem (mostly) in line with the articles you posted
It also seems that you’ve done pretty well in regard to researching on your own, rather than having forum members reiterate (with marginally less accuracy) points that were already made in other articles… Articles (probably) written by professionals, rather than enthusiasts.
Can I ask why you didn’t start by researching on your own? 
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I think maybe you didn’t read my OP at all… from my OP
Many thanks to T Nation over the years. I found such great advice here. I came back as an old man to ask for advice and articles about how to optimally transition out of a long cut. I couldn’t find any good articles when I searched, so feel free to give me shit about being too old to computer properly.
I read it, and was the first to respond as well. Again, it seems that you have no problem being able to “computer properly”, but maybe you just dug a bit deeper when you weren’t handed the information you wanted? I don’t mean this to be combative in any sense. The people on this forum have widely been helpful in nature, but it is very hard to help someone reach a goal when they aren’t all to clear about what that goal is.
From posts above…
- You want to cut down, then get healthy
- You questioned about aesthetics, but also linked them to health and strength… Those are actually 3 different goals, so more detail would be helpful
- You edited your OP to ask about Maximum Muscular Potential, but the main ‘theme’ of this thread was reliant on what you wanted to do until this was updated (i never saw the thread update, so i assume others didn’t either)
If your goal is to cut down and be lean, then shoot for max muscle potential - you will need to bulk. Timeframe is dependent on how you wish to do this, because you won’t reach your max potential for muscle any time soon - but it depends what you’re willing to do to get there…
This is probably the best article i can provide regarding this, and your goals/path forward will likely align with something in this. How Much to Eat For Muscle Growth
Personally, i recommend getting down to 10-12% BF (dont measure, just gauge by look and feel), then give yourself a little bit of time at maintenance (maybe 2-4 weeks?). After that, work a 200-500cal daily surplus and track your progress for training, diet, weight, and any other pertinent measurements you want (I like arms, waist at navel, and thighs). When you’ve built enough muscle to be happy, or decide you want to cut down some of the fat you’ve just put on, cut back down. Rinse and repeat. Don’t take anything I say as more important than what is in that article - I am certainly no CT.
I’d suggest adding in some conditioning into your routine (if not already) - enough of this ‘old’ talk too… as that makes me feel older! 
Just read through this whole thread, and I also have a question of clarification. Hopefully I can ask in a specific way that gets the response I’m looking for…
The only concrete goal I’m seeing is ‘I want to weigh 165 lbs’. So my question is, is that both a short term AND long term goal, meaning you want to hit that and stay there indefinitely, while likely recomping your body to a more muscular version at that weight over time, or do you eventually want to be bigger than that, while still being lean?
At 5’7, if you just want to look fucking awesome, you could do it a 165ish, no question. For reference, my avatar pic is me at probably 190-195, and I’m 5’11. So take off 4 inches of height, and if you got this lean, you could POTENTIALLY look similar. Meaning, there’s a lot of progress that you could make at your desired goal/height.
So that being said, unless you tell me otherwise, I’m going to assume that ultimately, based on everything you’ve said here, you wouldn’t mind ending up, long term, in the 165-175 range. IF that’s the case, I would not increase calories now. If I were you, I would continue to diet to the desired bodyweight, not the bodyfat %, and recomp from there. I would NOT increase calories now if your long term goals don’t have you at a bodyweight of 180+. And if you want to be really lean, 180+ probably shouldn’t be happening in the next 5+ years, if ever.
So: continue to diet to 165. And then eat such that you hold that weight for awhile, let your body acclimate to it, and continue to lift/workout to make yourself a better version of 165. If/when you get to a point where you’re as lean as you want to be, and you’re still at that bodyweight, and you decide you want to get bigger/stronger, you can then change course. But that’s probably years away, not something that necessarily needs to be on your radar right now.
Also: I’m not particularly happy that you’re calling yourself old, lol. I’m 38, we’re pretty much the same age. And I would prefer not to think of myself as an old dude, yet.
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