Soldato
Your NEAT can go down even with a mild deficit... which can then become not a deficit and your weight will maintain, so it's not a guaranteed solution. It's the same when trying to gain weight; you can try and think you're clever only eating a small surplus so fat gain will be minimised but between NEAT going up (which goes back to the body and homeostasis) and an increase in training volume/intensity, your surplus can easily be wiped out.
Speed of dieting/weight-loss depends how lean you are at the start (leaner people need to diet more slowly to avoid loss of fat-free mass) and how much you have to lose. I'd rather diet hard for 8 weeks than more moderately for 16 because that's 8 weeks I could spend trying to grow/get stronger but I have good willpower when it comes to hunger and dietary adherence. Some people do much better taking a slow approach because they fall off the wagon less, but then you need patience because it's going to take that much longer. Horses for courses.
It also depends on how active you are - if you're sedentary outside of the gym often you have no choice but to diet on low calories to see results, where as a lovely indirect bonus of having an active lifestyle is getting to eat more food whatever you're trying to achieve.
