The "it's just" crowd entirely miss what really needs to be addressed by the targets of their pithiness: the satiation mechanism. For everyone who gets upset at the "it's simple...", "it's just..." (CICO, eat less, stay out of the kitchen, etc.) tone-deaf preachiness, remember that their satiation mechanism works very different from yours.
Figure out how to hack your satiation (it is very different for different people), and you have started to unwind the stack on how to address your intake challenges. Start your rabbit hole research with the search string "long term induced satiety" (but without the quotes), and branch off from there. That starts you off with physical and chemically-constrained satiety, but there are cultural, mental, social, financial, and many other factors at play as well that might be dominant in your particular situation so go in those directions if it makes sense to you. YMMV.
A well-balanced diet will certainly make you healthier and feel better! If you are eating more energy than you're expending, you will gain weight. If you are eating less energy than you're expending, you will lose weight. This is well-researched.
I think, from my experience and from the experiences I've read of people who have lost weight and kept it off, the key is finding a sustainable diet. One that your future, goal-weight self can be trusted to follow even after you're done losing the weight. People tend to get to that point and then go back to eating like they did when they were overweight, which reverses all the hard work they did.
You do know that when you eat less, the amount hungrier you get is greater than the amount you’re eating less, right? You do know that it’s been proven again and again that willpower doesn’t work?
Telling someone to eat less to lose weight is technically correct, but in reality is useless advice. And no, it really is hard.
Maybe if you got lucky with a great metabolism it might be easy, but a lot of people don’t have that and will struggle.
It’s not about eating less and more about eating correct.
Personally (I'm not that fat) I tried eating less to get a nicer body, but whenever I do so I feel tired or dizzy when exercising. Yes, I lose some weight, but it also feels that my powers are gone. I now eat whenever I am hungry as much as I want, but exercise more. I no longer have the dizzy problems.
Good write-up and all, but it really these 'all it takes to be a millionaire is hard work' stories really bug me.
Yes, it does take hard work, but I bet this guy was already at least a little wealthy, and could dedicate all his time to his book.
Also, for this one guy that made it, how many didn't?