eating at maintenance and exercise

This method will be a lot harder to control your deficit with. Might as well just figure out your regular exercise schedule, include it into your TDEE estimate, and then subtract 20% from that. If your TDEE without exercise is 2200 and you eat 1800 then you will lose weight and 1800 will probably not feel too low because you are not working out and don't need as much food. If you eat 2200 and exercise, your TDEE might actually increase only to maybe 2400 on average. And it will be harder for you to figure out how much you need to eat if you wind up unable to exercise, or if you switch to maintenance.

Your reasons for having less control can be eliminated or significantly reduced, very easily. Don't eat out as much when doing social things. Eat beforehand so you have a reason to say no to food. Ask ahead of time what will be consumed, or if you go out to a restaurant pre-log what you plan to order. I have no idea what "inaccuracies with calorie counts" means but it's likely something that is easily resolved as well.

If you choose to use exercise to create your deficit, you'll probably need to do a lot of cardio since most people only eat back 50% of the calories, assuming that MFP is overestimating the caloric burn by up to 50%. So that 400 calorie burn from cycling might only be 180, or 220, etc.