A lot of people assume humans are mechanistic, unfeeling CICO convertors and exclude psychological and physiological realities of losing weight. I've grown used to it. It took several tries for me to drop 50lbs and most of it was psychological and good habit formation. it took about 3 years to complete that journey.

I think the point is rather to communicate that there is no trick to around cico.

Instead, they are reinforcing that the path is clear, and the the barriers Are entirely psychological. Effort to build habits, effort to exert self control, effort to find solutions when you stumble.

If people are looking and waiting for a strategy that makes weight loss easier than inaction, they are bound for disappointment.

Some rare people find a passion that makes the process of getting healthy and fit more fun and easy than getting fatter, but that is exceedingly rare.

Exactly; when I fast for 24 hours, I feel a compulsion to consume every single calorie within a 3 block radius afterwards.

People who do this regularly tell me it gets a lot easier after a while.

Yep. You can't eat your way to weight loss. There there isn't any easy trick to beat the laws of physics.

Just eat less and burn more calories.

"just" is doing a lot of work here.

And keep track of the calories in the meals they do eat to make sure they are not compensating is going to take nonzero time.