i am not in favor of flushing....no one in their right mind is in favor of flushing....it just doesn't do what people think it does.
plants consume ions of nutrients, and most of those are permanently PERMANENTLY made a part of the plant. some of them can move within the plant, but no fucking force of nature will ever make that plant shit any of those ions back out....ever. if you completely starve a plant, how can it finish? it needs energy for those chemical and biological processes to occur. i do cut back, right when they finish their swell. that's usually two to three weeks before they're actually going to be done. for those two or three weeks i give them regular food at half strength. they don't startve, and they use up some of the food that's left in their medium.
a nice fade may be pretty....but that's all it is. it's an indicator that the plant is hungry, and a hungry plant can't function optimally