Total caloric deficit is necessary

I agree with you. If you continue to eat at a caloric surplus or at maintenance, you will not lose weight (or you will require way too much exercise to burn off the additional calories). You are right in that it is far easier to achieve with diet.

...and that can be achieved by a combination of exercise and tracking macros (aka DIET).

Still not disagreeing with your main point that diet is a huge factor.

That combination is more heart healthy than not exercising and restricting calories even further.

This is one of my two points, and it is absolutely true. Sitting around on your ass and dieting is not as healthy as eating a hundred extra calories per day over your diet target and adding some exercise. You'll keep your heart healthy, your joints healthy, and your muscles stronger, which can prevent innury.

My second point is one that is often overlooked, your comments being a prime example: body composition is what people are usually after. They want to look good. I look better at 200lbs than a lot of my friends who are 20-30lbs lighter than me. That's because weight alone is not the ultimate factor in how you look, it's your fat:lbm ratio.

When you are obese, you are again right, in that you need to focus on shedding fat. I am saying that it would be a mistake to skip resistance training simultaneously.

If you take two people, one who diets, and one who both diets and exercises including resistance training, the second person will look better once they reach their target weight. Every. Time.

So tldr, I don't disagree with you that losing weight is 90% (ish) diet, but I do disagree with you that not exercising is just as healthy as exercising, and I do disagree with your notions that someone who doesn't exercise will look the same as someone who does after a period of dieting. That's fucking retarded.