59 years young newbie here

Start a food diary and never stop. Get a food scale to crunch the numbers. Measuring cups are for liquids only. Log everything no matter what. When you get around to calculating a calorie target there will be times when you go over your number. These are errors, lapses and mistakes. Over your number- log it. Wildly over- log that too. Weight loss is mostly about problem solving and persistence. Going over is a problem to solve. Keep your food diary long enough and you will see a tendency to repeat the same mistakes. These are the problems to solve. Solve enough problems and you will get to goal weight. So long as you keep your diary going you will never have to start over.

Know this- calorie counting works. It has to work because of how our bodies are designed. We are built to store extra calories as fat to help us survive hard times. Fortunately hard times have not arrived for most of us. Mother Nature did not contemplate this much readily available food. But we still have bodies where the eye sees food and the brain says eat. What do you suppose would happen if we took a caveman to Old Country Buffet? As you’ve found out, gaining is fairly easy given enough time. The good news is that with concentration and effort, given enough time, the process can be reversed.

But there are some issues. Calorie counting has a significant learning curve. It involves a lot of trial and error. The frustration drives a lot of people to quit. But consider this- have you ever tried to play music? Did you throw up your hands and walk away when you played a wrong note? Ever try to shoot baskets? Did you quit the first time you missed? That’s what people do counting calories.

Start by just making lists of what you eat. Then start adding the calorie count. When you have that going use the MFP calculator to find a calorie target to lose 1 lb per week. Try to hit your number. You’ll soon find that you have a better chance to hit your number if you have a plan. When starting out I used to plan by the week. I also had an official weekly weigh in and suggest you try the same. Make a chart. What you want is a downward trend. Try not to worry about how much you have to lose past the next 5 lbs. Every .2 lb loss is a step in the right direction.

Try not to get caught up with the time factor. The calendar is not a weight loss tool. Try to avoid the X lbs by Y date goal setting. Unfortunately MFP encourages that very thing. But time driven weight loss is an invitation to turn weight loss success (losses) into failure (not fast enough.). I’ve lost 100+ lbs. How long did it take? Exactly as long as it did. It would have been too slow for a lot of people. But now I’ve been at goal longer that I was losing and longer than I was obese. How long it took to get to goal doesn’t matter to me now.

Some things to watch out for. The calculators and gadgets. The calculators put out numbers based on averages and statistics. But no one is exactly average. We really don’t know how many calories we are using unless hooked up in a lab. Read this board much and you’ll see people going crazy when the numbers don’t seem to work out. The calculators provide starting points to try to find a calorie deficit. But we need to find what works for us individually. That means trial and error, a time consuming and frustrating process. Plus, calorie counting involves a lot of gray areas. Unless we make everything we eat at home from scratch, at some point we are relying on what menus or NI on packages tell us. Like I said, gray areas. The good news is calorie counting doesn’t have to be perfect to work, but it does help to be consistent.

Watch out for your own brain. Parts of our brains will resist change of any kind. But I think our brains hate weight loss in particular. Watch for your brain to latch onto every misstep and call it failure. It isn’t failure unless you quit. It will tell you every loss is too small. Any exercise it too little. This is all a trap to try to get you to make your life miserable while losing weight. Then it will encourage you to quit to end the misery. Don’t fall for it. Weight loss has 2 parts- eating in a calorie deficit and living with it. There’s a tendency to go all in on the deficit and try to beat ourselves into living with it. Generally doesn’t work. The best plan is one that we will actually stick to so long as it results in losses.

And beware your brain exaggerating. I quit telling myself I was starving even when uncomfortably hungry. It wasn’t true. I wasn’t starving, I had missed lunch. Likewise, I quit telling myself that I love food or eating. I have a conditioned response to a lot of food but that’s not love. I love my family, not pizza.

Last thing- you can do this. And you can start today. Track your next meal. Goal for next week is track every meal. Its not that hard to start. My tracking was just a crude list with the numbers kept with pen and paper. I didn’t like using the computer except to crunch the numbers, reminded me of bing at work. And the number crunching gets easier as you go along. Try it and you’ll see. Never quit. Good luck.