From the other side of the consultation, briefly. Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then measure again under the same conditions.

TinaHashiRN said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

Adding a me-too, because a thread of one person's experience is not much use.

TinaHashiRN said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. Training does two things here and only one of them is on the scale. It protects lean mass — which is the reason to do it — and it contributes modestly to the deficit, which is the reason people start and then quit when the arithmetic disappoints them. In a deep deficit, resistance work is the priority and high-volume cardio competes with recovery.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine. Half the figures circulating in this community trace back to a secondary summary that dropped a qualifier.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

What training is actually for during a large deficit, because framing it as calorie burn sets people up to quit when the arithmetic disappoints them?