You're absolutely right, and this is essentially what I meant.

But dieting doesn't have to suck at all. You can diet on food you enjoy no problem.

They key for me was to design a diet to my liking as opposed to one that sucked all the enjoyment out of food. Here are some of the ways I accomplished this:

0. My BMR is about 2000 for reference. I used myfitnesspal w a kitchen scale to count calories and a fitbit(charge 4) to estimate my metabolic rate. I weighed in daily, not weekly, and then went by the weekly average to see progress. I found that weight could often fluctuate by as much as a kg daily due to variables like bowel movements, hydration and imprecision of the scale. Weighing in daily helped control for that.

1. Dinner is sacred. It should be filling and tasty. One of the dinners I made the most was chicken breast with brown rice and a variety of delicious sauces. I managed to make a recipe that included 1 chicken breast sliced up, brown rice and creme fraiche and butter added to the sauce, often with lots of mushrooms, at about 1000kcal pr meal. That's pretty much a full-blown dinner with a very high protein content. And absolutely delicious.

2. To make room for dinner, my breakfast and lunch were quite spartan, about 2-300 calories each. And I would eat maybe 200 calories of nuts or something before bed, because it helped me sleep better. In total that leaves a total daily consumption of 1800kcal. This provides a buffer of 200 calories to my base metabolic rate. That's enough that any added physical activity is always a bonus. But I could sit on my ass all day and still break even at worst. Some days you just don't feel like going outside at all.

3. Insisted on at least 6, ideally 8 hrs of sleep every night. Took whatever steps necessary to make that happen without medication that worsen sleep quality. One thing that really helped here was to take a short walk after dinner. This prevented me from my natural dinner nap which made sleeping at night much easier. Adequate sleep is crucial for losing weight.

4. Incorporate a cheat day at most once a week, at least once a month, making sure it coincided with a lot of activity. So if I got a dinner invite, I would find some way to be really active that day. Maybe I'd walk most of the way to/from the restaurant, or get to public transport by taking a a forest trail in rough terrain. And then I would eat whatever the hell I wanted to that day, as long as I'm not straight up gluttonous about it. This meant in practice that it was pretty hard for me to actually eat more than I burned, because I still ate tiny meals before dinner.

5. Walk whenever possible. Find little ways to walk a bit more, walk one bus stop further than you need to. If you're overweight, just walking can burn a surprising amount of calories.

6. I never set foot in a gym, went jogging or any other "tryhard" forms of exercise. I just took enjoyable walks. More than adequate exercise for weight loss for me anyway.

With this set up I lost 0.5-1kg every week all the while enjoying my diet every day, and regularly allowing some guilty pleasures. And I never did or ate something I hated.

The reason I eventually failed was the bane of my existence: my ADHD, and winter depression. I was doing well with all this taking medication, which enabled me to have all these routines at all. But then the usual depressive episode happened and things got so bad I stopped taking medication, all routines ceased to exist and weight came back. I'm ramping up for another go, with a new plan. In the winter I will attempt to maintain weight, not lose it. This should be significantly easier. And I'm taking more steps to avoid another winter depression but that's a whole other rabbit hole.