I am doing it the real fuckin hard way.
When I started (May 7th) I weighed 270lbs. I am 5'5", so that makes me about as round as I was tall. I am in my 30s, so I was just an absolute ticking time bomb, heart on the brink of explosion. I was also having some less emergent but still very irritating physical issues such as not being able to properly clean myself (too fat to reach) and when I would lay back in my recliner I would feel my neck fat choking me. I reached a point where I had to do something right that second and no matter what it was or how "unhealthy" of a method, it's not worse than dying of a heart attack in my own living room with a tub of ice cream in my lap and a box of oreos on my end table.
So that day I basically cut to 1 very small meal per day. Less than 500 calories. I do that 6 days per week, but on Friday I eat whatever I want, a full 3 meals usually. Some weeks I've eaten 5000 calories on Friday, but my deficit is so strong it doesn't even matter. I also started walking. For the first few days it was no less than 10k steps, but I quickly jumped to 15k. After only about 3 weeks I jumped up to 25k as a goal and I achieved it most days. Eventually, and as of now, 25k is a hard and fast rule and I try to do 30k. I havnt gotten less than 25k since early June.
See the thing is, BMI tells me I need to weigh between 109 and 148. I do think that the top end of that is on the low end of what I actually think I should weigh, given my more muscular build, but regardless, I was twice that.
I only weigh on Fridays (it's a mental thing) and as of this past Friday I weighed 213.6. I am still on a very hard cut with my immediate goal being to get under 200, which I should reach before the end of August. Once I'm back in to 100s I'll reevaluate my calorie intake and the speed at which I'm losing.
Currently my estimated TDEE is around 3100 calories and I am losing 4ish pounds per week. If I dial that back to 2.5-3 lbs per week once I get under 200 then I think I can just coast on down to 165 which is what I am currently calling my "goal weight". I fully understand that when I get there I will likely want to keep going since I am guessing 150 or so is where I will be most pleased with how I look. I have not always been morbidly obese. 15 years or so ago 150 was the sweet spot so I imagine it's gonna be somewhere in that neighborhood, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Yea I know its not ideal but the problem is that adherence is the most important factor and I cant adhere unless I see very strong results. This is producing that, and I am adhering. I have fallen off the wagon a million times because 1 pound per week is not enough to keep me excited. 4lbs a week is, and its working. Best practice stops being best practice if you stop doing it altogether and human willpower is a massive part of it. In the end, it's one of those things that Im going to cross my arms like a 5 year old and say "i dont care, this is how im doing it" and no one can tell me different, for better or for worse.