There's evidence now that your cravings are dictated by your gut microbes. If you have a lot of microbes that prefer UFP ingredients with lots of unhealthy fats, sugar and salt then you will crave sweets, UPF ingredients, and greasy fast food.
Shifting the balance towards the health boosting microbes that convert fibre into short chain fatty acids while repairing the inner surface of the gut wall not only improves your health and mood, it also makes you start to actually prefer fresh fruits and vegetables.
I've been working on my gut microbiome since catching a Zoe food science podcast in February 2022 when I was crippled with the worst rheumatoid arthritis flare up of my entire life. Adding 6 small portions of fermented foods to my daily diet seemed a small price to pay if it really would lower my chronic inflammation levels by 20%.
Side effect was that I lost 10.5 kg the first month, and was 40 kgs lighter a year later. I incorporated their other advice into my diet and lifestyle. Whole foods, olive oil, nuts, an average of 30 different plants/week and a 14 hour overnight fast.
I got my BMI down from 62.5 to 33 under my own steam. As I was starting from consuming an average of 3900 calories/day I was able to lower my daily calorie intake by 100 or 200 whenever the weight loss slowed to less than 3kg month. Until I hit BMI 33 and 2300 calories/day. That was as far as I could get on my own, trying to reduce those calories left me constantly hungry and fixated on what I was going to eat next. So rather than push it and trigger binge eating I decided to accept that it was better to weigh 84kgs than 160kgs and to make the best of fitting into a size 24 instead of a size 36.
Then Mounjaro became available, and as so many other people have already mentioned, it is a miracle drug, and a complete game changer for people living with metabolic challenges (hypothyroidism, PMOS, type 2 diabetes etc).
I was easily able to reduce my calories, first down to 2200, then gradually (whenever the weight loss slowed) by another 1-200 calories. I just limbo danced my way under the goal line to a healthy BMI at 63 kg, and intend to keep plodding away until I get down to BMI 21.5, even if it takes another year. Something that would have been inconceivable without Mounjaro. I've had so many unexpected health improvements from Mounjaro, because of the way it lowers inflammation, so I'm happy to stay on it for life, though I'm hoping to reduce the dose from 15 to 5 mg once I'm in the middle of the healthy BMI range.
You could probably achieve a healthier weight without denying yourself too much just by adding loads of different varieties of plants and fermented foods to your plate several times a day. However, combining an improved diet with Mounjaro would make the process a lot easier and will almost certainly break the compulsion to eat too much sugar. It helps people resist their alcohol, drug and nicotine cravings, and they aren't even tied to blood glucose control. Mounjaro is designed to reduce insulin resistance and keep blood sugar stable, so it is even more likely to remove cravings for sugar.
Other posters have already mentioned the importance of resistance training and sufficient protein intake to preserve muscle and bone strength. People who don't protect their existing muscle mass will find that a significant amount of the weight they loose will be muscle. When they reach their target weight (without having retrained their eating habits into healthy eating and improving their gut microflora), their fat cells clamour to be refilled, the cravings come roaring back, and because they now have less muscle mass burning calories, they very quickly regain the lost weight.
It would be easy to blow over 300 quid/month on GLP-1 injections for a couple of years, only to end up with regaining all the lost fat, with extra on top, giving yourself a nasty case of sarcopenic obesity, if you fail to protect your muscle and bone mass and make no lasting changes to your gut microbiome. Because you'll still have all those bacteria that crave sickly sweet foods, UPFs, salt and unhealthy fats.
The mumsnet weight loss injection forums are a mine of information, you can learn a lot just reading what other people have learnt from their own mistakes.