Hey Robert,
I'm reporting in with an update and a new question. I'll try to keep this as short as possible.
I did as you recommended and upped the carbs while cutting fat. I was only taking in around 100 grams of carbs so I doubled that to 200 to see how it goes and my squat strength stabilized to 225 lbs for 5 reps/4 sets on heavy day. That's 40 lbs down from my regular 265, but again it stabilized. So far so good.
I weigh myself almost every morning (I'm OCD about it right now so it just satisfies that) after I pee but before I eat or drink anything. It's been about 5 weeks now and I'm flunctuating anywhere from 199 to 202 lbs. I was 204 5 weeks ago so that means I've lost 5 lbs at the most and 2 lbs at the least in 5 weeks. The 199 lbs has only been observed a couple times, though, and I could have been dehydrated more than usual. That happens to me.
I actually wasn't going to have any problems with this. I was going to cut back just a little on the carbs again (that's the only thing I have left to cut) and see how the weight and strength goes, tweaking it. But now I've run into problem and here's the new question.
Ever since I cut calories and have been on this cut I started getting this pain in my left patellar tendon. It's the first time I've had this type of pain in my life, but it is my weaker knee that has had a prior childhood injury and have had other troubles with it ever since when lifting. The whole time all the way through my novice linear progression I have zero issues with my knees (which I found downright miraculous) but now all of a sudden boom.
Yesterday was light day and the pain now all of a sudden hit me on my first warm up set with only 50 lbs on the bar. It was quite pronounced all the way through my couple of light sets. I noticed I could shift the weight off of that leg just slightly and the pain could be avoided, but that was tricky and it is very sore afterwards, to the point it hurts moving around in bed, a chair and pressing on it to massage it (tendon around the kneecap). I know this type of soreness enough NOT to squat with this again, or I'll be left with months of doing nothing with this tendon. That's what happened with my elbow and has happened to various tendons before.
So now I'm left without even my bread and butter lift on top of no deadlift. What to do about that I'll save that for somewhere else as it isn't your focus here.
My question is, do you think this was caused by cutting calories? Would cutting calories generally affect tendon recovery, because I kept my protein intake as high as ever all this time.
Could this have been something waiting to happen ever since I switched to high bar and put more stress on my knees, or could it maybe a combination of the two?
I just find it odd I'd go down 40 lbs from a lift and that's when I started getting sore and then a potential injury. I should also mention the knees didn't feel GREAT when I switched to high bar, and I did always feel on edge, but I never had any kind of pain that got my attention until now.