But you realize, finding your macro deficit combined with an app like my fitness pal makes it SIGNIFICANTLY easier. Losing weight becomes simple arithmetic.
Alcohol is rough. So many people have no idea what a drink actually contains calorie wise. Even the new and popular alcoholic seltzers will list something like "100 calories", and then the nutrition facts will list something like "5 carbs". With 4 calories per carb ... 4 * 5 does not equal 100. It is more accurate to just take the calorie count of 100 and divide by 4. Now you have a 25g of carbs drink, which is fine, but you need to factor that into your daily tracking.
Alcohol has calories per gram, but it isn't required to be listed. This makes craft beers very interesting. Take a 16oz can of some double IPA at 8% and boom, you have around 320 calories in that one drink ... or 80 carbs if you look at it that way.
I've tried to simplify it a bit with this calculator that actually factors calories/g of alcohol.
I also hated the "if it fits your macros" type thing. I'm not a body builder, what do I care? But when you see the real impact of what you're about to eat it actually frees you quite a bit (assuming you generally eat well). I'm actually happy to grab that extra piece of cheese because I can easily take the calorie hit, I gotta eat something, and some protein and fat seems better than carbs.
I did the math on craft beer last winter, and cut back on beer for a bit, but it never stuck. 2.5cal per ounce per % abv. It would not be unheard of to drink half a POUND of calories in an afternoon, say, watching football. As I've switched to wine, even when I have more than I should and input the numbers, I simply cannot believe my eyes in terms of how FEW calories it has. I overestimate my consumption to be "conservative" and yet it still barely makes a dent in my diet. It's amazing.
I've done dry january a few times, and never saw a bit of benefit. But a month is a short time to see a trend, and it's not a time when I'm training for a race or doing much cycling; most of us are indoors a lot, maybe you have a dessert once or twice a week when normally you'd have none, and bam, you get discouraged and it feels like cutting out alcohol entirely makes no difference at all. Again, when you can see the data on a day-to-day (or even minute by minute) basis, it's so freeing.
Looking at myfitnesspal right now, my 'goal' is 2220kcal (which I think is a 500kcal deficit since I set it to lose 1lb/week). goal 2220, -470 food, +1141 excercise and I've got 2934 left to 'spend' for the rest of the day. It's amazing to get to work and have more than your entire BMR left to eat.
The first two times were a success as I was doing Weight Watchers and they stress always 'tracking' - meal logging and accounting for your meals before eating - and planning your meals ahead. All of my failures came after stopping Weight Watchers for one reason or another (inconvenience of weekly meetings, wanting to save some money instead of paying for the subscription, etc).
Moving into medically supported weight loss has changed my view toward some of the pseudo-science of Weight Watchers, but one thing both approaches have in common is keeping a food diary or accounting of what you are going to eat and holding yourself accountable to that. I'm down ten pounds over the last two months and well on my way thanks to getting back into using a food diary (in my case, MyFitnessPal).
I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to lose a lot of weight over the long term, but it's also good for generally accountability. After I lose the amount of weight I'm trying to I will continue to keep a food diary.
I started bike commuting over 3 months ago now, but my weight was only increasing, and I was pretty sure my diet was the same as ever -- healthy breakfast, fairly healthy lunch, healthy dinner -- mostly homemade, rarely eat out, etc. My only real "sin" was drinking, but it didn't seem to matter if I drank every night or cut back to weekends only (which I had when I started biking, working out more, and again seeing no real benefit).
So I finally broke down and started using one a few weeks ago and it's made all the difference in the world. The biggest advantage is the immediate metrics. I HATED the idea that I could work my ass off for a week or three and see my weight go up, or down, and really have no idea what was happening on a day to day basis. By tracking my meals (plus workouts and commuting between Strava and Apple Health sync), I can immediately see if I'm ahead or behind. It's the feedback I had been craving for years. Where I thought the point of one of these apps was to try to learn what's healthy to eat and to be calorically restrictive (which was unappealing.. again, I don't want to be "that guy"), it's really the realtime data that's useful.
In my particular case, I've learned I actually eat amazingly well for the most part, and it's very easy to run huge caloric deficits during the week. Without even trying I was seeing a deficit of perhaps 1500kcal/day (during the week). What was killing me was beer (on weekends, but then again, 3/7 days is almost half the days of the week) and the occasional big consumption day. You know, have a big breakfast on the weekend, a big lunch, some drinks, and pretty soon 1 day could almost kill a whole week's progress. The tracking has given me the ability to say actually, yeah, one more beer really WILL push me over the edge from a deficit to a gain. I don't really need that 3rd bagel. And so on. And given that I tend to consume more on weekends, and typically I only got a single short run in one weekend day, those weekends were just killing my progress.
On the other hand, it's made me mind snacking a bit less -- the deficits I run during the week are so big that a couple fun size bag of Skittles (we just ran out of halloween candy at work) make almost no difference in my daily progress.
I'm just starting out with it, but again, the realtime feedback has made me realize how much EASIER it's going to be than I ever expected. When I felt I had nothing left to easily cut or change, I actually found the solutions were far easier than I realized, and it's helped me to quantify things that I knew were bad but didn't really appreciate the magnitude of.
And because I no longer have to just "do my best" or a month and hope it shows up on the scale, there's no more disappointment/discouragement.