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> I had been keeping a simple food log for years at that point > It is also fairly easy to keep a running net for the day

Right, so there it is: whatever you did to get to a calorie deficit you need to keep doing to be calorie neutral. If it's take a GLP-1 then that works. If it's using pen and paper or an app or even vibes-based reckoning to track everything you eat, then it's that. Regardless it just doesn't seem like a valid criticism of any given weight loss strategy when I have yet to hear of one that doesn't have that feature