This is the way. I don’t bother with them anymore, but when I was a fat fuck I frequented a few weight loss forums associated with apps I was trying out for calorie tracking. The people running those forums were pushing particular diets or supplements or whatever and I was, for the purposes of weight loss, very strongly about “calories in, calories out.” This always ended up in a “you’re not losing weight because you’re not following our method (paying us money)” versus my “you’re not losing weight because you’re eating too much” face off. Their forums, their rules, their moderation, so those always ended the same way.
Thirteen years ago, my doctor told me I was thisclose to high blood pressure meds. I was like, “oh, hell no” and when I left his office I sat in my car and downloaded My Fitness Pal and Map My Walk. Ordered a food scale and activity tracking band from Amazon. Ordered an activity I weighed 335 and not in a good way. Even at 6’9” I was right at obese level 2.
I’m a big fan of over-analyzing stuff and I love me some Excel, so you can imagine how that went. One of my daughters weighed 120 at the time, so I decided to shoot for losing 120 pounds. I started weighing the hell out of everything I ate. Tracked calories in, calories out, and weight every day. All kinds of charts. I walked every day, rain, sleet, snow, hail, heat, cold, whatever. I’ve always hated running, but did Couch to 10K just to say I did.
Went to the doctor the next year at 205. The PA told me someone mistakenly recorded me at 335 instead of 235 the previous year. “No, 335 was right.” Doctor said BP meds were off the table. Every crappy thing about my blood work, etc. was now good to go.
205 was probably a little low, so I settled around 220, which was still good enough for 34” waist pants. I put on a little weight after each summer and try to go a little harder on the weights, but I’m old AF so I don’t know that it makes much difference. I’m shooting to be back at 215-220 by tax day.
I have a 1200+ day streak of closing all rings on my Apple Watch — it would be about double that, but for a day and a half the damned thing refused to register that I was standing up — that I want to keep going for the rest of the year. Also intend to walk 2000 miles this year and run 0 miles.
TLDR: I lost 120+ pounds over a decade ago and have kept it off since then. If I can do that, y’all can hit your goals, too, just by being too fucking stubborn to fail.