Hope you all don't mind me gatecrashing your thread a bit. I just wanted to say that in February 2012 I was exactly where you all are: 5 ft 4, 42 years old, 15 stones. I knew I needed to lose weight for health reasons but I also knew that a) I couldn't exclude any foods (eg my favourite ice cream!) and b) I couldn't go too low calorie: both would have made me feel miserably deprived (food is my hobby and my entire family are foodies and love cooking) and I'd have fallen off the wagon.
With this in mind I worked out my TDEE (the amount of calories needed to maintain my 15 stones weight) then calculated my 10-15% reduction of that. I joined MyFitnessPal but refused to eat at its recommended 1200. My TDEE minus 10/15% gave me 1800-1900 cals a day to play with. Much more like it! I manually adjusted MyFitnessPal to that goal and ignored it when it kept telling me it would take me 5 weeks to lose 1 lb!!! By the end of 2012 I'd lost 3 stones on minimal exercise (just a bit of walking here and there). Still eating around 1800 cals and eating whatever I wanted (just less of it).
By the end of the 11 months I realised I didn't need to count calories any longer as I'd finally learned to "eyeball" normal, healthy portions. I was finally eating like a slim person, I guess.
In 2013 I shifted to 5:2 (eating 500 cals twice a week and average 2000 cals the rest of the time). I lost the final 3 stones. I finally have my appetite under control and physically cannot overeat too much as my tummy begins to hurt.
6 stones lost. My photos are in my profile (though my "after" shot is still BMI 24 and now I'm BMI 21 so I need to update the photo).
I hope my story can inspire you.
Good luck! And remember, it's all about patience and consistency. Keep chugging away and you'll get there!