FWIW I had a coworker once who lost a fair bit of weight swimming. He had also been injured, and gained a lot of weight, so swimming worked for him at losing weight without reinjuring himself.

Re: motivation in general, I'd suggest getting a Fitbit or similar watch, along with their automated scale. Weigh yourself regularly and let their system keep track of what you are gaining and losing. Similarly, keep track of how many steps you are taking and how active you are.

Personally I've found that the most effective way for me to lose weight has been to incorporate it into a commute with cycling... I was a lot skinnier when I had a 9-5 office job and biked to work. Unfortunately, that's not easy to replicate for many people, including myself!

Secondly, in general I've found that exercise is much more effective for me than diet. I already eat reasonably healthy, and don't lose weight; specialty diets like carnivore are just too limiting to stick too. But every time I consistently exercise for awhile, I quickly lose weight as long as I keep that up. Doesn't even take much: just running reasonably hard for 15 minutes a few times a week is enough.

Good luck!

Being an athlete and competitive soccer player, most would assume that I have always been in shape and have been happy with my overall body composition, but for the longest time I actually struggled with being able to achieve peak performance, and also lose stubborn body fat. However, after understanding the reasons and science as to why even though I live a very active lifestyle, I would always maintain a rather high body fat percentage and not feel the best during game time, I am now in a position where I am in the best form and health of my life!

The main, huge change I made was drastically lowering the amount of carbs I eat. Many athletes use carb loading as a term used to refer to eating a crap ton of carbs before training sessions or games, and this is very prominent in the sport I play, soccer, as we are wrongly taught that carbs are the primary source of fuel and energy for our body. Sure, carbs can have a moderate to minimal place in our diet, but nowadays carbs make up the majority of our daily calories, which in short can cause more detriment to our body than good. Therefore, after shifting away from carbs being my main source of energy, and making quality fats my main source of energy, I have been able to shed off the stubborn fat and perform at a much more consistent, and high level.

The physiology of why this works comes down to understanding insulin resistance and how we operate better being fat adapted than carb dependent. I can honestly talk hours about this rabbit hole, but I will instead link a few videos that really made me understand the why and then the how to tackle the issues of say losing body weight effectively, and in a more low time preference manner instead of the yo yo diets of the fiat world.

(Just click the links and watch on YouTube since they're blocked on here)

What Is Insulin Resistance? (Diet Is Very Important!)

What If You Stop Eating Sugar For 30 Days?

I've been binge watching Dr. Ekberg's videos for a few months now, as he is very nuanced, and in my opinion is a great teacher on the topic of optimizing health.

For me, once I could understand and enhance my knowledge on the exact physiology and science of health, it became much simpler to work towards improving it, and as my health got better because of the knowledge I acquired, staying motivated and consistent became much easier. All the best!

For motivation - one thing that may help is this.

If you're slender to normal weight nowadays (and by normal, I mean normal as of maybe 50 years ago, and not the "average" weight of people nowadays) - you are honestly one of a rare few. The vast majority of people are overweight or obese.

Simply being slender and healthy looking gives you a huge boost. It's like a superpower. People respect and trust you more. They will think you have it together.

Despite the fat-acceptance propaganda, this is true.

Goals!

Write them down, look at them. Make it a priority. You’ve got this if you belive and work at it! Embrace the suck. Nothing worth achieving is ever easy!

Not all people get motivated by the same incentives. When it comes to losing weight, I've learnt this from personal experience. Which is to say: what worked for me hasn't worked for most of the people who've asked me how I did it. (And still do to this day 20+ years later, without becoming overweight again, as many people unfortunately do.)

At first - and I'm talking many years ago here - this caught me by surprise. Why would it not work for everyone when it so obviously worked for me?

Turns out I was just fortunate enough to stumble on to a piece of weight loss advice from a like-minded internet stranger at the exact right time that resonated with me - probably because we were in the same profession.

Of course, I didn't realize that at the time. It was only in retrospect that I put two and two together and concluded that this stranger and I were probably just motivated by similar incentives: engineering incentives, no less. Simple math. Not medical. Not health. Certainly not dietary.

So, what was this piece of advice? Remember, I already know that it doesn't work for many people. But I also know that it works for some - including myself.

Only three things (rules, if you like) to constantly keep in mind:

To recap: I know this only works for certain types of people. And I don't know what type of person you are. But maybe, I'm that "internet stranger" today for you - or someone, somewhere...

Eliminate sugar as much as possible and make small lifestyle adjustments. In about a year, see where you are.

Here's a BIG motivation if you're a bitcoiner:

Being active, keeping at a healthy weight, increases the probability for a long, and healthy, life.

We've got a great ringside seat. Surely you don't want to miss all the fun? Get that popcorn ready!¹

I don't have weight problems but sometimes i can get a little more weight. Not a big deal and what it works for me is fasting, eat until lunch or close to It and nothing at dinner, the rest just eat what you want as much as you want but I cut carbs to the max on those also. So no carbs, no snacks with sugars, fasting. It works for me because I don't enjoy workout that much, if you cut your intake hours your body will consume the extra fuel even if you do nothing. As for workout just some walks can be very beneficial. Just my 2 sats.

You were born to not have that weight. The weight isn’t you. You are inside the weight but it will take discomfort to get out.