Here's the thing nobody tells you about fitness "failure": it's rarely a knowledge problem.
I've coached people in-person and online for years, and the pattern is always the same. The client who fails isn't the one who doesn't know what a calorie deficit is. It's the one with zero accountability structure — no one checking in, no one to answer to, no consequence for skipping three days in a row.
The client who succeeds usually isn't more disciplined by nature. They just built (or were given) a system where disappearing gets noticed.
That's the whole thesis behind what I'm building at Gareth David Fitness: less generic programming, more structured accountability. Weekly check-ins that actually get read. A community that notices when you go quiet.
If you've tried the macros-and-a-PDF approach before and it fizzled out by week 3, it probably wasn't a you problem. It was a missing-structure problem.