Weight loss dilemma

Hi Guys,

I have a dilemma with the best way to approach my fat loss and the desire to gain mass.

As a bit of back ground I am 45, 6 foot 1 and was around 300 pounds at start of 2009. Decided I need to sort my life out and started to cycle and eat more healthy. Over the course of 2 years with a few ups and downs along the way I got down to 225 pounds and felt great. Over the last year I have had a change of role within my company and am finding myself spending 2 weeks in the UK and 2 weeks in the US each month. This has been hard living in hotels and entertaining clients, so over the last year my weight has crept up to 233 pounds.

At the start of this year I decided I need to focus on my weight again and have have made good progress over the last 21 days with eating less and sticking to healthy foods again (around 1000 less than my TDEE).

Now I also eventually want to gain some mass and have better definition, but I know I can't even think about doing that with a deficit of 1000 cals a day. My thought process is just to lose fat until I get down to around 25 BMI (need to lose around another 28 pounds for that) and then follow scooby's beginner plan while eating 10% less than my TDEE to start adding muscle while still losing a little bit more fat. At my current weight loss and if things go well I am looking at another 14 weeks of dieting to get to BMI 25 before I start scooby's beginner program.

Now my dilemma is that I part of me thinks I will be losing 3 months worth of possible muscle gain by not starting the program now and eating 10% less than my TDEE as Scooby's recommends on his lose fat gain, muscle page, but at my current fat levels I think I should focus on the fat loss first. That way when I do start to add mass I will see it more due to less fat and this will keep me motivated to carry on.

So I guess my question is does my plan make sense and is that the best way for me to attack this or should I just jump straight in to the beginner program and up my food intake.

Thanks for reading and any advice.

XG