I’ve never been significantly overweight fortunately, but over the pandemic I got about 20 lbs too pudgy, which proved frustratingly hard to lose. What finally worked was combining the Apple Watch (Fitbit is fine too) and a calorie counting app that track calories. The app (Yazio, there are others) took into account caloric expenditures beyond basic metabolic needs. That is, if one walks a mile as tracked by the Apple Watch, that’s an extra ~ 100 calories to eat.

Armed with these tools, I set a modest goal of 3-4lbs fat loss per month in Yazio. It worked. An unexpected positive outcome from this experience, is that I developed a much better intuitive sense of the caloric and nutritional value of foods and what activity levels I needed to maintain to stay at my desired weight. I recommend to give this approach a try.

Edit to add: These apps make an educated guess as to one’s basic metabolic daily expenditure. For reasons that aren’t clear, this estimate can vary as much as ~25% between persons. Therefore you may have to tweak the daily calorie goal. Second, weigh yourself every day. The weight loss goal of ~ 1lb/week is less than the daily variance in body weight due to hydration levels and so forth, so you will need to use a three or four day rolling average to keep track of your progress.