This whole idea about exercising to lose weight is unhelpful when the truth is that no amount of exercise is going to compensate for eating more calories than you have to.
And yes, you will go to bed slightly hungry for weeks or even months if you want to lose a lot of weight.
Fast food doesn’t necessarily mean high calorie either. Almost all fast food places have meals for under 600 calories, yes even McDonald’s.
When I quit smoking, the hardest days were the stressful ones. It didn't matter that just the previous day I swore I would never have a cigarette again. I'm sitting in my car, I'm down on myself, and I would give anything in that moment for just a hit of release.
We're not robots. We're not efficient, we're not productive, we just kind of... do. Our systems don't make sense, they're not linear, they're not necessarily predictable. How the mind feels isn't the kind of thing we can just land a dart on.
A better way to be thinking about this is at what point will you stop gaining weight? If you are someone who burns 2000 calorie a day but eats 2170 calories a day, you will be gaining 170 calories on that first day. But then you will add some fat, and you will burn 2001 calories, and only gain 169 calories the next day. Eventually you will reach equilibrium where you burn 2170 calories. But fat isn't like muscle, it's very efficient because that is it's main purpose - it just sits there. So it actually takes a lot to reach that new equilibrium.
The rule of thumb is 100 calories surplus will lead to a long run gain of about 15 pounds. So the 177 calorie average would end up yielding about 25 pounds of fat above what they should have.
Then the next question is if you will ever reach equilibrium, or if when you start burning 2001 calories, you start eating 2171 calories...
When people say they "don't have the time" this is often what they mean.
It's like the joke from Airplaine!: "Guess I picked a bad time to quit smoking", "Guess I picked a bad time to quit drinking", "Guess I picked a bad time to quit sniffing glue", "Guess I picked a bad time to quit amphetamines", etc.
So they are busy but it's because of a lack of time management which then plays into their inability to make good dietary choices. Being "busy" is their excuse and they make it happen by not managing their time.
Things like having to hit up starbucks before work, which wastes 10-15 minutes. Then going to grab lunch instead of bringing it from home, which wastes 45 minutes. Then they spend a large amount of time doing their outfit for the day, which wastes time in the morning. 30 minutes on social media before/after bed. Etc. These things add up to hours every day. And then "I'm too busy to eat healthy" comes out.
I say this cuz I know plenty of people who are "busy" but still manage to make great choices. I've noticed it has more to do with how people manage their time and the priorities they make throughout that time management. Time management is a skill that needs to be worked on. When one avoids managing their time well then of course they're going to be so inefficient that things get difficult.
A huge part of eating healthy is eating less.
I found the best weight loss success eating about 1200 or 1300 measured calories a day and using a fairly strict routine, but it left me on edge and distractible. And that kind of diet has social costs too - much more of a pain to eat with coworkers at lunch, for instance.
CICO is easy to say, but the trick is actually knowing both of those measurements and being able to control them.
A small amount of hunger will completely distract some people, cause them to become overly emotional and overspend.