It's been said already in this thread, but I'll echo my experience too.

At first I was leaning into the sense of urgency and tried to play immersively. I was managing my resources, planning ahead, limiting short rests and conserving spell slots, often taking on fights with my whole team already bloodied.

Mechanically, this was very enjoyable to me, both the sense of pressing on through straining circumstances and the added challenge and resource management.

As others have said, though, BG3 anchors an absolute TON of story and companion events to Long Rests, and I consequently missed out on an incredible amount of content, some of which seem to have permanently locked me out of progressing certain companion relationships, as well as missing out on the owlbear cub joining the camp and probably a lot more too.

I really wish there was a day/night cycle that would naturally force you to set up camp frequently in a more natural fashion, but as it is I recommend to basically take Long Rests as often as possible, especially in Act 1.

I was doing the same thing initially. My natural instinct was to horde supplies because I'll definitely need then later, and just barely make it through a few fights before finally resting. I was also avoiding expending spell slots on anything that wasn't absolutely necessary, so I could last longer before needing to rest. Then I noticed I was having issues with my carrying capacity. What am I carrying around that's so heavy? Ah, yes, the massive buffet I'm dragging around everywhere I go. That's when I finally accepted that there is no food shortage in the area. The game is actually a lot more enjoyable now that I can just blast out all those spells. I also learned that you can just send all of that food to camp, and when you go to the campfire to rest it'll just pull it out of the camp storage box. No need to drag any of it around with you.

I tried to play this game the way I play DnD at first, conserving resources and long resting only after multiple fights. I missed a lot of dialogue in Act 1 and had a hard time in combat.

The combat and camp events are balanced around using long rests frequently. There are a few quests that you can fail by resting (such as the inn burning down or the situation in Grymforge), but generally things are much less urgent than the game makes them sound. Don't be afraid to dump all your resources into one or two fights and then rest.

Rested like 3 times Act1 top side and 2 times underdark. Didn't see a need to rest more, but the game is kinda small or one big ass dungeon where there are no clear breaks.

A lot of sense of urgency though.

There should be a system to help player rest more. It so easy to miss camp stuff. I had to power rest 4 times in row to get the owlbear cub yo show up, before leaving the area.

I try to make it pretty balanced. Dnd isn't really balanced around constantly long resting, and I think resource management is part of the fun. Low level spells are pretty meaningless if you always have high level spells slots to blast through and such.

So my approach is this:

1. Only long rest after my 2 short rests
2. Short rest when reasonable, such as when the party has a good chunk of HP missing.
3. Generally aim for 3-4 encounters per long rest (encounters don't have be combat, can be anything you expend resources on, such as healing or charming an NPC)

So far it's worked out pretty nicely. It makes the game more challenging and rewarding, imo.

I long rest every time I'm out of spells and am about to do something stupid. So probably like 8-9 times in Act 1. Just use your camp supplies they're worthless if you don't use them.

My player hint is to NEVER use the long rest button if you want to long rest. Just go to camp and click the bags while there. I've clicked the long rest button and been told when I entered camp that something time sensitive would happen if I rested but then the game would not let me leave camp, I guess because I had committed to a long rest with the button.