@made2worship For me, it took going to a weight management center and working with a RD and NP back in January. What worked was a 900 calorie budget, cutting down on alcohol, going low fat and low carb and focusing on veggies and healthy protein. Gamifying hitting the right proportions made it easy to think about my food choices.
I didn't see results until week 2, and some weeks my weight bounces all over the place before settling down, but overall I'm down a few ounces each week and am trending in the right direction. Officially, I'm down a shirt size, 2 pant sizes and am at a healthy level of visceral fat. The bonus is I can do all these things long term. The hardest part for me is getting enough sleep, that's huge component to my success as an insomniac for the past 2 decades.
I've done paleo in the past but found it unsustainable (we gave it a solid try for like 2 years and it was just all consuming). And I've gone the route of intermittent and alternate day fasting which was terrible and not worth how bad it messed up my relationship with food, so, I don't recommend those personally.
I should note that I'm training for a 10 miler and my plan included healthy fueling strategies for the long runs and cross training. I still measure my food but tend to consume closer to 1300 and still manage to improve my health, so I'm not mad at it, and neither are my RD and NP.
And lastly, all of this works because I started limiting my social circle, social events were absolutely catastrophic for any deficit I had, and they were expensive. Being in a good mental state where you prioritize your health and well being does help with motivation to handle the bad days where everything feels futile.
(FWIW, 35f, 5'0", SW 154, CW 138, goal weight unknown
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