Yeah, Ive also tried to lose weight for 7 years. Just didnt work. I dont eat sweets. I dont eat over 2000 calories. I exercised somewhat regularly. Nothing worked. 7 fucking years. I asked my doctor. He kept saying just exercise and watch your diet which is what i was doing already.
Then in July of this year, I found some youtube videos on intermittent fasting. What stuck out to me was the coorelation between weight gain and pre-diebetes. Basically insulin resistance is when your body fails to break down sugar and stores everything as fat. Visceral fat, mostly around your belly. Doesnt matter if you arent eating sweets, all carbs will get turned into glucose which will turn into fat if you are insulin resistant. I finally asked my doctor to do a test and yep, my A1C was in the per-diabetic range. Every time I would eat, Id have a sweet craving or Id get MORE hungry. You can have the biggest meal in the world and still be hungry. Thats insulin resistance in a nut shell.
So I cut carbs to the bare minimum and started intermittent fasting. My last meal would be at 6PM. Then I would skip breakfast the next morning only having black coffee which doesnt break the fast due to having 0 calories. Eat lunch at 12. 18 hour fast. It was AWFUL for the first few days. My body had adjusted to crave late night snacks and snacks after dinner. I felt like having a drug withdrawl. Hungry, annoyed, and tired. Then in a couple of weeks, my body got used to it. Nights were much better. I could go longer during the day so pushed my lunch to 2PM. 20 hour fast. Then eventually 24 hour fast. No lunch. only dinner. That meant my body was functioning on reserved body fat 12 hours after my dinner, giving me a good 12 hours of fat burning.
Lost 10 pounds in 3 weeks. Mostly water weight, but have lost 5 pounds each in the last three months. Losing 25 pounds in less than 4 months is insane.
I also walked a lot. Like 10k steps a day. Walking burns fat whereas running burns carbs. It also doesnt tire me and it isnt boring like lifting weights so that was perfect. Still, if you want to lose weight fast, you have to build muscle which will burn more fat at night while you sleep, and weight lifting is the best for that. I still mostly stick to walking. Ive cut down on limiting carbs. Used to have fewer than 50 a day by using low carb breads and protein only diets. But now I have around 60-80 carbs. Some bread and rice. Weight loss has slowed but im still seeing results thanks to intermittent fasting. Im simply not hungry and I didnt have to completely stop eating sweets, fast food and my favorite rice dishes. Though if I had a big lunch from Mcdonalds I would simply skip dinner. IF made my body no longer crave dinner.
Exercise is only 15% of the equation. The rest is having a good diet. You will never be able to eat only vegetables or zero carb protein only diets so thats also impossible. Intermittent Fasting will train your body to not crave food. So at the very least, you wont be snacking at night or between lunch and dinner and you will be saving 300-400 calories by simply not snacking everyday.