Make a diet plan. Eat for two weeks. Record result. If you are losing 2 lb a week good. If not adjust percentages. You will be hungry. The end.
Losing weight by counting kcal is a skill which requires practise and consciousness. I need to get to know what kinds of food work for me; how I handle certain situations like sickness or times with travel (anything off routine, really).
After quite a long time of doing it, I believe the reason it works for me personally, is that the accountability towards the calorie-app keeps me off chocolate (big candy-bowl at work which I pass multiple times a day).
My problem is: As soon as I stop counting, the accountability towards the counting-app is lost, and the junk-food is back on the plate. After several months I'm back to ~95 kg and it's on to counting again (usually triggered by too-tight pants).
2lb a week is very aggressive in the long run. That's a 1000 kCal deficit per day.
While it may work for some it's not generally regarded as a sustainable target deficit. It may work for a few weeks, but then it can't be maintained and weight rebounds. There are other side effects like constant tiredness, hunger, irritability, trouble sleeping, etc. that easily throw weight loss off the rails.
Again, might work for some people; but 1 Lb or 0.5kg per week is what I typically see recommended.
I recall reading about a study over the past couple years that indicated people on crash diets were more likely to hit their goals and not more likely to regain the weight. And that's much more aggressive. IMHO if somebody wants to lose weight, I would recommend they clear it with their doc and get after it with as much(little?) energy as they can muster!
Scott Alexander blogged about an hypothesis for the obesity crisis that points to high-reward, high-calorie, low-satiety foods as the problem [1]. I find this argument compelling, as it fits well with Paul Graham's compelling thesis that capitalism optimizes for addictiveness [2].
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry...
> In the 1970s, scientists wanted to develop new rat models of obesity. This was harder than it sounded; rats ate only as much as they needed and never got fat... Then, almost by accident, someone tried feeding the rats human snack food, and they ballooned up to be as fat as, well, humans.
The endocrinology and psychology of "why do we feel hungry?" and "why do we overeat?" are incredibly important to weight loss.
That's not to say that you can't lose weight with caloric restriction - of course you can. But noone in the CICO* crowd can explain why most people struggle with it. It's easy to chalk it up to "weak-minded fatties". The more interesting question is - could we bolster the weak-minded through nutritional adjustment, supplements or fecal transplants?
* Calories-in, calories-out