People talk a lot about meat, but not enough about dairy. My prayers were answered at the altars of feta, greek yogurt, half and half, butter, cottage cheese, etc. They made salads not suck. They opened up a ton of lower carb dessert options. My gut health improved. All of my health improved.
I no longer treat these humble foods as optional extras. They perfectly fill the gap in my daily protein needs. They were never unwelcome, just forgotten.
I'm not advocating for a crazy diet. I'm just saying people ignore the basics and assume that healthy food has to be miserable. Small changes add up and make a big impact.
Calorie counting diets had no restrictions on what they ate, as long as the participants didn't exceed the calorie target.
Low carb (Atkins) had no calorie restriction but had to restrict carbs.
High protein also didn't have calorie restriction but participants had to ensure at least 20% of the calories in meals were proteins.
They found that while all helped people lose weight, only the high-protein made it stick reliably.
I used that as basis for my own weight loss and it worked very well for me. As you said it made me full in a different way. YMMV.
There is also the variable that you can work out too much. I did a brutal 30 minute glycolytic conditioning session on Friday and it just doesn't matter how much protein I consume the next day. Something with ghrelin goes off the chart and the next day takes huge will power to not just eat everything.
I think it is even worse with max effort weight lifting.
Night and day, stopped always being hungry... I've tried Noom before (eating highly filling, low calorie foods, but filling, not satiating), but that only worked while I was tracking (and always forcing myself to keep it up)...
Losing weight required work on top of that, but the protein just made my hunger response start working properly again.