But surely if you’re hungry you need more calories? Why would you want to be burdened with semi-starvation for the rest of your life? Also wouldn't you end up too thin because of muscle loss from not eating enough or the wrong things? Sorry this probably sounds a bit negative but surely you shouldn't be hungry after maintenance. Shouldn't you be eating more protein and building muscle? I wouldn't suggest consuming masses of food and re-gaining weight. But I worry for anyone who has an obsessive personality taking this too far being too frightened to eat and ending up anorexic. 
No, it doesn't work like that. I'll try to explain. Your body setpoint is determined at a very young age (probably in the womb). That's the size your body wants to be as an adult. You can easily make the setpoint higher...not so easy to reduce it.
Your body will try to get to that setpoint using various hormones...leptin, insulin, ghrelin etc (there's many). Since those hormones control your brain and tell you what to eat and when, if your body wants to put on weight, it will guide you to high calorie foods and make you hungrier. It will also store as much fat as possible.
If your setpoint is less than you are now, you'll have little interest in food. You wont have to control it, or use self discipline, you just want think about it.
If you have a high setpoint because you've become big, or for genetic reasons, and you reduce your weight, your body will try to get back to that former weight by making you want food.
Eating the food causes the problems, but there's a physiological reason why we often eat too much in the first place.
Of course, this can all be overcome from making sure we ignore those signals and eat what we know we should eat..and no more, regardless...
Now...as for me, I eat the correct amount of calories for my age, weight etc. I also exercise. No way will I ever be anorexic
, but my body has got a higher setpoint. People who have been very overweight, usually have some level of leptin resistance, especially if you are a lady, post menopause, been overweight a long time etc.
So, though we have plenty of leptin to tell our brains what we really need, there is something that stops it being registered in the brain. Can't remember what it is without looking at my notes. I know it's complex though and involves lots of other hormones including insulin resistance, ghrelin etc.
So, I eat well, but my body will tell me I need more, because the leptin etc will try to get me back to my former weight. Not only that, if I over eat, it will store fat in preference to muscle (it's an evolutionary thing).
I eat more protein to avoid hunger, but food stays more interesting because my brain tells me I'm underweight (even though I'm not).
I don't feel starving. It's not where my body is in real terms. Just where it thinks it is. I know that, and I know that logically x amount of calories = maintenance and anything more than that is not needed to keep healthy. So, after that, it's just my brain not receiving a good signal.
I want to stay slim, so I use logic.
This isn't very new research. There's been something like 15,000 studies relating to it. They even made a leptin injection that worked really well, but it's incredibly expensive and other problems associated with it.
It's pretty much an excepted fact as far as I know, but regardless of what your set body weight is, you can overide it by adjusting your eating. Focus is always on that by those in the know, because it's the only way we have at the moment.
