160 lbs loss and that being half of your weight is a huge accomplishment. Congrats! I hope you did it in a healthy and sustainable way and now feel much better than before. If you don't mind me asking - how tall are you, how long did the weight loss last and for how long have you kept the new weight?
44 lbs is about 1/4 of what you needed to do, yes, but that doesn't mean that my accomplishment is not significant. I wouldn't call a 6-month-long starvation insignificant effort. And 1/4 from a billion dollars is still a lot of money, isn't it? In my case it was 19% of my body weight that I trimmed, I am 6ft 1 and I am about 6 lbs above that previous mark, 6 months after I finished my weight-loss sprint (and this year I will continue to go down).
As I said - I wouldn't exercise to create a deficit. I would do it after I have achieved a big-enough deficit, and would replenish any calories expended through it with food.
So I don't try to argue you should "work" instead of "starve" - I am arguing that you should "starve" to get that deficit in and then "work to preserve muscle; continue burning on a good rate; eat more". Does that make sense?