5 month progress with pics

what did you do to hit your goal?

I've been on this struggle my entire adult life. I'm really good at putting weight on, pretty good at taking it off, but I've never stayed in a maintenance for more then a month or two (and I turn 40 this month). I read a book called Made to Crave and it really helped me focus on God and take my focus off food. The author is Lysa TerKeurst.
I walk about 60-90 minutes a day and weight train twice a week.
I started out eating around 1300 calories for about the first month or two, but then started increasing my calorie intake each month for two reasons. 1 - to help me transition to my maintenance phase and 2 - because as I got thinner the cravings would get really strong if I didn't eat enough (plus my blood sugar was dropping when I stood up and needed to increase my calories and to eat every 2-3 hours). I'm now up to 1800 calories a day until I can figure out what my maintenance calories.
I ate a mostly paleo diet for the first 3 months because I wanted to see if the higher fat intake would help satiate better, which it did, but my cholesterol was too high so now I'm on a mostly vegetarian diet (no dairy, but I eat soy cheese, no red meat, only chicken, tilapia, salmon, and egg whites). I'll find out in 4 months if what I eat effects my cholesterol.

God bless,
Karen