I found loosing weight was a lot easier than maintaining weight. When loosing weight you have a lot more wiggle room… As long as you are spending more calories than consuming you loose weight. It does not matter if you have a deficit of 20kcal or 200kcal.
Maintaining your weight requires one to have 0 deficit in either direction.
Maintaining exact calorie in = out every day is a fools errand. You only need net zero averaged over weeks.
Some days you have to allow eating more. Mainly because food is the original human social activity.
It's also a lot more fun to lose weight than maintain weight