It also just made me cognizant of my bad eating habits. I’d absent-mindedly snack on something, go to log it, then think “wait, why am I eating this right now?” and stop.
It’s essential educating yourself on nutrition through habit.
I actually aimed strictly for my maintenance calories as I was burning 700-900cal in exercise per workout day. Was very hard work, but rewarding.
It took about a year to drop that much weight, normally I think it would take longer but I had a very dedicated group trainer helping me stay on track.
I think that's something that a lot of people fail to account for when trying to lose weight that ultimately ruins their goals - you have to build habits to sustain the lifestyle you want. Weight loss surgery, eating at a large deficit or working out hard alone are going to get rid of some weight, but most people will gain all of that back within a year's time.
In the case of dieting/calorie counting - I don't think you can get away with not thinking about it, especially with inaccurate estimates.