Finding motivation

I agree with the "motivation is fleeting, seek sustainable habits" group above. Weight management, for anyone with a tendency toward overweight, is not a project with an end date. It's a forever thing, if that kind of person wants to stay at a healthy weight long term, I believe. The "project" part of it is experimenting, and finding:

* fun active things to do that increase fitness (and burn some calories) plus fit into one's overall life with good balance (enough time/energy for everything else that's important to a person),
* daily life habits that increase movement through the day (and burn some calories), and
* eating habits that involve consuming a sensible calorie level while getting reasonable overall nutrition, using foods the person finds tasty and filling, and that are affordable/practical to cook and eat.

The only thing that distinguishes weight loss (temporary) from weight maintenance (ideally permanent) is a moderate, manageable calorie deficit. Don't try to make loss fast (unless your health is so threatened by weight alone that speed is essential), instead look for ways to make it easy (relatively, anyway).

To answer your specific question: If I have motivation, it's independence and quality of life. I've been obese and inactive, obese and active, most recently healthy-weight and active.

The "healthy-weight and active" beats both of the other options big time for maximizing pleasure in my life (and I'm a hedonist). Calorie counting lets me balance immediate pleasure (eating/drinking all the yummy fun things) against overall long-term pleasure (feeling good, strong, healthy). I get to eat every delicious calorie I can, while keeping it at a level that keeps me on the good side of the health odds.

On top of that, I'm already 65 (60 when I reached a healthy weight, after decades of overweight/obesity). I can look around me and see that friends around my age (+/- 10 years or so for sure) on average have better quality lives if they've been active and maintained a reasonable body weight. They can do what they like (including fun things that involve lots of walking, stairs, etc.), eat/drink what they like, aren't sick very often, and recover faster when they do have illness or injury.

By contrast, friends who've stayed inactive, become significantly overweight, are limited in their activities. (They're lovely people, though, whom I value in my life!). They aren't able to do the fun things as much. (There's too much walking at art fairs, music festivals; too many stairs at stadium events; etc.). They need to have their children do more of their normal home-maintenance chores (or pay someone to do them). They can't eat/drink what they'd like, because of medical conditions, or the multiple medications they need to take for those health conditions. They need more surgeries, get sick more often, recover more slowly. Sometimes they even have chronic unpleasantness from drugs they need to stay alive, or from the combinations of drugs.

That contrast is pretty motivating, too, for me. I feel like I still have a chance at the better odds, for the better quality of life. I think for people who are younger, this can be pretty abstract or distant. But if a person looks around, I think it's also kind of obvious. YMMV.

I hope you find your groove: It's very worthwhile!