Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss

I think you need to make it sustainable. I never had to do it consistently but even I know... Nobody is going to live hungry all the time. Nobody is going to grow old counting calories every damn day.

So rather than just eating less make sure to work out some. Consistently. Id suggest strength training. I did a full body strength training workout 2-3 times a week. Some may suggest doing leg days, arm days, etc but going there takes time on itself and i have other places to be than the gym.

To match that strength training eat more protein. Things like chicken are your friend. This tends to be higher on the satiety index so you'll feel full faster and you'll eat less without it being so painfull. Eat a bit of protein with every meal Really there's a whole lot of other stuff that you can fill yourself up with that won't be too bad for ya. And when you go for a carb? Get the complex one if it's a choice. It'll dampen that peak in insulin.

Avoid the sugary stuff. It's addictive for sure but taper off. Eat before going to the store. Make the hard decisions there not with the easy snack within reach in the evening.

Do a bit of everything that works until it becomes second nature. Overfocusing on one silver bullet doesn't tend to work.

This is advice people often give, but unfortunately it's wrong. Exercise and working out are useful and healthy, but it's not a sufficient tool for losing weight in most situations. The core problem is that the amount of calories you eat is in the ballpark of thousands, while a workout will burn in the order of hundreds (excluding athletes and such). This along with metabolic adaptation means that it's always easier to out eat what you burn extra. In other words, you can't outrun your fork. Exercise is healthy for a wide array of reasons, but it's only a small part of losing weight. Nearly all of it has to come from your eating habits.

Oh for sure. But it helps to spread the effort and to have to fight hunger and cravings less. If one fails there it makes sense to put at least minimum effort to alleviate that strain.

Also i mentioned strength training specifically since other than what you burn at a workout resting metabolic rate also increases and helps. I assume the average person on this website is notably rather sedentary and would see above average results depending on age and such.[1] (Even more so if he's a guy which I believed he was based on his name.) You'll always need a base and you're reducing your intake anything so something like a 15% difference is gigantic when you're struggling and super helpfull (even just 5% is worthwile).

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8030593/

edit: and I'll acknowledge it would take a while before that increased resting metabolic rate starts to play more but again....it needs to be sustainable so whatever you're doing you need to be able to keep up anyway.

Yes. One summer my friends asked me to join in a running program with them. We went from basically sedentary to running 5k a day within several weeks. They hoped to lose weight. I didn't expect to, because we weren't eating any differently, but I did it because I wanted to get stronger and less out-of-breath.

I was right; we didn't lose any weight, but we did get much better at running without gasping to a stop within a couple minutes.

You can’t outrun a bad diet but you can outrun a mediocre one.