the psychological reason weight loss is so hard

The psychological reason that weight loss is so hard is because you're trying to take behaviors that are automated and make them manual. Your eating is done pretty much on autopilot. You eat the same things day after day, week after week. And when you go on a diet, you're trying to change all of your eating all at once and you feel overwhelmed very quickly and you can't keep it up. So another way to approach changing your eating is to do it more strategically. Start by changing your breakfast, then move on to your lunch, then your dinners. And do it strategically and structurally so that you get long term changes that become automated. And instead of trying to change everything at once in a manual way.