Good luck OP!
I’m 5ft 2 and was almost 13 stone in 2022. It was the heaviest I’d been but it was obvious how I’d got there - consistently overeating , sugar binges and lack of activity over the 5 years leading up to it. Things especially spiralled during the pandemic.
I’m no expert but these are some of things that have worked for me: Reducing the amount of takeaways I’d have from almost every day to a couple of times a week and cutting back on things like cakes and chocolate had a big impact in the first month and I lost my first half a stone.
I now rarely eat takeaways and mainly just cook my own food. My typical dinner is Salmon, mackerel, chicken, or turkey mince with veg and brown rice. I try and stick to two meals a day, the first meal is often something like oats, eggs and sourdough or french toast. Smoothies and Greek yoghurt fruit bowls are good for my sweet tooth, so I usually have them later on during the day.
I’m now 10 stone 7 and really want to lose another stone this summer. My weight loss has been slow with ups and downs and plateaus but I’ve done it without weight loss injections etc and have really had to confront and unpick my emotions since I was an emotional eater.
Listening to what’s really going on beneath the hunger pangs has been so invaluable. I feel more confident in myself as well in the sense that I’m able to say no to consuming things that feel good but aren’t good in the long term.
If I get a bad sleep my cravings are often out of control so sometimes I’ve just had to use sheer willpower to fight the cravings!
I give myself grace as well, yesterday I was so sleep deprived and I ate a lot of the biscuits that I had in for guests. It is what it is - today is going to be better!
ETA: I’m not currently attending the gym and haven’t for a couple of years now, but I hope to start back soon. For now I do very low impact home workouts or use my walking pad. I get about 6K steps a day but I’d like to be doing 10K.