I also gain weight when I eat more and train, what's the confusing bit here?
It's not sustainable to maintain a calorie deficit indefinitely. No-one claims that. That would be anorexia.
What is sustainable is to eat in a calorie deficit for a period of time until you reach a weight you're happy with and then maintain.
I think what you're describing is probably accurate for reasonably lean people trying to cut 10lbs. But for the severely obese (I briefly hit morbidly, in my case) that strategy doesn't help very much. Getting from 300 to 290lbs isn't nothing, but it's not enough.
I believe that you only get to severe obesity by something being seriously wrong with your metabolism. Therefore you need to identify that issue and fix it, probably with some pretty severe intervention, to get back to healthy.
Having done that for two years, why was it unsustainable to eat at maintenance from then on? You felt hungry? Lost interest? I lose interest in goals all of the time. But what happened?
I wasn't even doing anything - just eating keto to satiety every day. Then I moved back to the US and slowly began gaining it all back (also over about 2 years).
I tried various things to slow down or reverse the gain, including lifting, other methods of working out, dieting more or harder.. nothing worked. Until this :) With the heavy cream. Down 45lbs again so far. Yay!