Alcohol

Starting at 285lbs, not drinking alcohol, adding slow ramp up modest exercise and eating within some reasonable limits, I lost from 285 lbs to around 230 lbs in 18 months. Part of that was just dumping the empty calories, part was dumping the attitude of not caring.

If it’s on your mind, try it. It was a big relief. I just filled in drinking after work with exercise.
It felt odd for a week or two but that passed.

I have never lost any weight if I drink much at all. I can get away with a beer or two on the weekend if I've had a lot of exercise that day.

I stopped drinking a while back for health and ‘sober curious’ lifestyle reasons and it has definitely helped with weight loss. I have lost almost 50 lbs in the past year (obviously not all from not drinking!!) But drinking really adds calories, made me lazy, keeps you from burning fat consumed because your body has to burn off the alcohol first, increases triglycerides especially, makes you inattentive to what you are eating, forgetful about what you are eating, uninhibited about what you are eating, and thus erodes your will to make good nutritional choices. Also when you start seriously tracking calorie and nutritional choices you see how bad the choices you make are if you want to build in room for a drink calorie wise.

Finally, unrelated to weight loss, the studies that used to suggest some small incremental heart benefits might accrue from moderate wine consumption are being revised and drs are saying that any amount of drinking is dangerous for your heart, brain and overall health including various cancer risks.

I have found decent replacements for adult drinks even including wine (and I used to help European wine importers organize tasting dinners for distributors etc. so am fairly snobbish about wine) for the times when I don’t want to be sipping seltzer at a party and the calorie load of those tend to be between 20-45kcal/glass.