Today marks 1 month of maintenance after I completed my journey from 106 kg (233.7lbs) to 67 kg (147.7lbs)

On the latter half of 2023 I decided to lose weight and set my goal at 65 kg (143.3 lbs) from a starting point of 106 kg (233.7 lbs). While I was lucky to find science-based information on how to diet when I first started, I misapplied it in a rush to get results which did get me to lose a decent amount of weight but left me incredibly fatigued from dieting, made me lose a significant amount of what little muscle I had and made me prone to breaking the diet and binge-eating for weeks at a time. This lasted until early 2024, when I set out to learn more and improve my approach to dieting, focusing on sustainability. This is when it clicked, and I made it farthest towards my goal than I ever did before without feeling like I was losing my mind. Unfortunately, life-stuff happened that made it easier for me to lose track once again for months in which I reversed most of my progress. I had to start basically from scratch near the end of 2024, now resolved to learn even more and include exercise into the mix as, while my previous approach was better than my original one, it was still an improvement from "terrible" to "ok-ish" in hindsight since I was still losing muscle by not exercising while imposing a calorie deficit. My new approach boiled down to volume-eating nutritious foods that met certain macros (Which I mistakenly didn't care for before), ensuring I would get 15k steps per day (Which I reduced to 10k while adding 3 full body workouts at home per week since January) and allowing a small amount of "junk" that helped me practice portion-control and gave me something to look forward to each day while also encouraging creativity to get the most bang-for-my-buck. Strictly following this approach until near the end of April got me the results you see on the pic, but to be fair I *still* did some questionable things in order to rush the process like only allowing myself 1 month of maintenance in between all those months which made my fatigue sky-rocket which translated into a significant whiplash of hunger once I entered maintenance again a month ago and that was really thought to manage.

I'm content with my results for now and will back off from dieting for the rest of the year, but I look forward to losing a bit more next year in order to settle at 65kg (143.3 lbs) instead of the 67 kg (147.7 lbs) I'm currently at. I'm not too discouraged that my lowest weight after the diet did not translate to something I could still be at after maintenance, since I am aware that eating more brings more water weight in general and I do also take creatine which just magnifies it even more I think.

I'm no expert and I mostly learned what I needed as I needed it, but if I can help answer any questions with my current understanding I will be glad to.