Are you not constantly in a surplus after every meal and deficit prior to meals?
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A day is a convenient time unit to use because most of our activities are based around a 24 hour cycle. During the day we have peaks and valley in our intakes and expenditures of energy, so the daily numbers are sort of an average of the entire day.
And because of those peaks and valleys, measuring hourly wouldn’t make much sense. It’d difficult to say that you need X amount of calories per hour because each hour is filled filled with different activities. However, you can sort of average the entire day out and measure daily.
What matters is the long-term balance. Throughout the day you’re constantly expending energy (on daily activities or simply on keeping yourself live), and your metabolism is constantly working breaking down food and turning it into compounds your body can use to produce energy. Production and expenditure of energy is something that happens continually, not something that happens for a short time after the meal.
You could just as well measure weekly.
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