Is it true that you can diet down and build a great physique and then reverse diet and keep a great physique while ending up with a higher caloric intake than your original maintenance?

It a real fitness dream or is it all a pipe dream? Start with a bad physique and average caloric maintenance.. end up with dream physique that can handle more calories than your original bad physique.. seems so good, good physique AND you can eat more now? how does this picture look, is constant cardio and fat burnign supps involved in order to handle more calories?