After all, shooting any significant amount of the planet's crust into space is definitely hungry work...
I've settled on
- Very lightweight breakfast (~100 cal)
- Light lunch (~700 cal)
- Heavy dinner (~1400 cal)
- Hard liquor only (tall single vodka/soda is my goto)
You'll notice that's over 2000~ a day. I also walk a lot, use an exercise bike instead of the couch when watching TV, and bicycle everywhere I can. On lazy days, I adjust downwards.
One thing I've done that's helped a lot is eating a low carb diet - I did keto, found it was incredible effective in losing weight, but kinda brutal. Instead, a low carb (non-ketosis) diet allows for some carbs but significantly reduces "empty calories".
Wait, which one is it? Simple or very difficult. Lol. I think you meant the calorie math is simple.
Simplicity has to do with the effort needed to understand something, difficulty has to do with the effort needed to perform an action. It's not unusual that something that requires little effort to understand requires a great deal of effort to execute.
More likely, you are miscounting calories - a common mistake that people trying to lose weight make. For example, you'd be surprised how many calories are in that packet of creamy sauce that came with your fast food!
CICO is hard to stick to, because we are biologically wired to enjoy high calorie diets. As a result, lots of people have come up with justifications as to why it wasn't their fault that they failed to adhere to it.
The reality is that weight loss is simple. It's very difficult, especially if you're not willing to completely overhaul your diet and relationship with food as an American.