What is your strategy?

I have a series of habits that are part of my day. That includes

• morning weigh ins most days
• planning out my food, most often a day or more in advance
• frequent use of food scale, so logging can be accurate
• allowing myself permission to make changes (to food choices) on the fly if necessary
• being more active
• setting goals***

The setting goals is a big one. Not just goals about weight loss and calorie intake. But about fitness. My goals presently include moving enough (combination of daily stuff & exercise) to burn 1900+ daily according to my Fitbit, drinking 60 oz of water per day, getting 100 grams+ protein per day, strength training 4+ days per week, getting 10k steps daily, eating a minimum of 1400 calories daily.

Oh, and sharing your goals with other people. I am more likely to work toward my goals if I don't want other people to be aware that I am slacking.

I update my goals from time to time. Back in June, after months of inactivity, my initial activity goal was 5k steps per day and 1700 total calories burned daily.

Keeping my head engaged in every step of the process. There's no such thing as the Finish Line.

Honestly, no grand strategy. I ate/eat mostly the same foods, on the same schedule, and have pretty much the same activity level (exercise level for sure), obese steady-state, during weight loss, or in maintenance. What differs is portion size, proportions of the foods, and relative frequency of some very calorie-dense foods.

I:
* calorie count (most every day for 5+ years now, 5 years at a healthy weight, most of a year of weight loss).
* use my food scale. j
* don't do well with fasted workouts, so I eat before working out.
* need a solid breakfast with plenty of protein, or I'll be comatose for hours, then cravings-filled for the rest of the hours.
* eat similar breakfasts/lunches most days because morning is challenging for me.
* eat different number of meals/snacks depending on what my day is like.
* make up dinner on the spur of the moment.
* only prelog if I'm trying to tetris in something special, or to see if I have calories to fit a particular thing toward the end of the day.
* don't eat foods I don't like: Life is too short for that, in a context where I like quite a few things.
* am ovo-lacto vegetarian, and have been for 46 years, thin to fat to obese and back again.
* mostly stick with exercise activities I think are fun. I generally did the same exercise when obese - same activities, pretty close in duration & frequency. (I was the atypical pretty-fit fat person, even competing as an athlete while obese.
* weigh myself daily in the morning, and note the result. I've done this for over a decade, even when not trying to lose weight. (I'm a data geek, not a scale obsessive.) These days, I note my weight in a weight trending app. I used to put it on graph paper (x-axis date, y-axis pounds).

Probably my biggest belief about weight loss is that personalizing it (to be relatively easy for the individual) is very important, and that it's a good idea to spend all or a big chunk of the weight loss time period figuring out ways of eating and moving that will be sustainable permanently to stay at a healthy weight long term. Since I'm in year 5 of maintenance, after around 30 years previously of obesity, that's working pretty well, so far, for me.