I agree with your point in general, but I think the paragraph below is the most important:
> The rest is just finding eating patterns that work for you that help keep calorie levels low enough. There's a lot of advice about ways to do that, and most need to be taken with a grain of salt, but it's probably true that you can min/max at the margins by increasing fiber intake, increasing protein intake, drinking more water, eating more raw plants, intermittent fasting, and that sort of thing. But you'll mostly see fractional improvements on top of the bottom line math: calories burned need to exceed calories consumed.
It's "easy" to lose a ton of weight if you don't eat anything at all. But that's obviously not sustainable. However, what I've found works, is that those things "at the margins" as you say actually have a huge effect on adherence to the "diet". Some foods require a tremendous amount of willpower to only consume in "reasonable" quantities. Think candy bars, chips, the like.
The point is to take note about how you feel after a given meal. Some foods, even though the meal would bring enough calories, leave you with a feeling of wanting more. Avoid these. Others leave you feeling full for hours. Go for those. What I've noticed is that sometimes, the effect may come from "secondary" ingredients, like the dressing on a salad, whereas the salad itself will leave you feeling full for the whole afternoon.
There are things you may enjoy quite a lot, so if they're of the "can't stop eating them sort", you'll have to forego them entirely. It's actually much easier to not eat them at all (and, ideally, not even have them in the house) than hoping you'll be reasonable. With time, these foods will lose their appeal, and you won't randomly crave them every day. Getting over this first step is what I find hardest.