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Some people can quit cold turkey, most can't. Assume you're part of the majority and take away whatever emotional or social attachment you have to your addiction and gradually reduce whatever it is until it's completely under control.

It really depends on the person and the drug. People can and do quit cigarettes cold turkey and succeed relatively often. Harder drugs like benzos or opiates have a much smaller percentage who do that, and even then most dont do it by choice.

Alcohol and benzos.

Was that the fella who literally checked himself in at a hospital and just said, 'don't let me die,' then said year passed by?

I absolutely replaced cigarettes with food. 100% When I quit smoking I filled the void with food. I didn't even realize I was doing it at first because until that point in my life I just ate when I was hungry.

Can confirm. Eating healthy helps a lot. The first time I tried to lose weight, didn't change what I ate, just how much I ate. So I was still eating crappy, completely non-nutritious food. Just less of it. I plateaued well before reaching my target weight, was desperate to eat all the time, felt like shit, got frustrated, gave up, and gained all my weight back.

The second time, I did better. Ate healthier, but still not as well as I could. But I got down to my target weight and kept it off for a good long time.

Now, I keep my weight at my target weight mostly without thinking about it. I eat healthy, but not specifically for the purpose of keeping my weight at a good level per se. More because... well I want to be healthy.

Moral of the story, try not to fixate on your weight. Eat healthy for your health. Health is about more than just your weight. And being healthy will help you meet your weight goals more than losing weight will help you reach your health goals.

My final point. I'd say there are benefits to making sure your diet includes a lot (and by "a lot" I mean still within your calorie or portion sizes or whatever budget) of healthy fats and proteins. Those set off some triggers in your brain that make you register satiety. Sugar and carbs do that a lot less so.

And healthy food tends to be more fiber rich, which will make you feel fuller for longer

Should be first comment.

Wanna lose weight and still eat? Eat carrots and lettuce. Nothing but. You'll lose 10 kg a week.

Asdicted to crack? Stop doing crack.

This trend, where you feel initial motivation, but then motivation stalls and you fall off the wagon, is why calorie counting doesn't work for most people. You aren't a robot. You do not have an unstoppable iron will. You are human. You get hungry. You get bored. You get flat tires on the same day your friend invites you over for pizza and beer. Stalling out on calorie counting isn't strange - it is what we would expect any normal person to do.

A far better approach is to take a more wholistic approach to health, and let the fat loss follow naturally. Stop focusing on calories. Focus on eating whole foods, mostly food you cook at home. Eat more vegetables, eat more protein, drink more water. Avoid processed junk food. Avoid drinking your calories. Avoid added sugar, white flour, and vegetable oil. Find a couple different kinds of exercise that you find enjoyable, from soccar to hiking to zumba to powerlifting to mui thai, and do them regularly. Get good sleep, and get enough sleep. Reduce stress. Spend more time with friends, and meeting interesting new people. Spend time outside in the fresh air and sunshine.

You're far more likely to lose weight this way, because these aren't a goal to hit by a deadline. They are just little choices to make throughout the day, course corrections you can make now and again, and fun things to do that add to the quality of your life.

If you’re interested, here are some stats from the approval studies for semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound), so you can see how fast participants lost weight over the course of the studies.

In the semaglutide study, participants weighed ~105kg/230lbs at the start and lost about 500g/1lb per week for the first 20 weeks, then it started to level out slowly. (You can skip to figure 1.)

In the tirzepatide study, participants started around 94kg/207lbs and lost about 400g/0.9lbs per week for 24 weeks until the weight loss slowed down. (Reference figure 2).

(These studies aren’t directly comparable to each other since they had different study populations, but this should give you a ballpark idea of how fast people on these meds lose weight on average.)

Yeah not very crazy if they cut back on their daily intake of Big Gulps, 12 pack sodas and jerrycan of orange juice they suddenly have a significantly lower daily calorie intake. Obese people need more calories just to maintain their weight. Since even fat cells need to use energy to stay alive. Obese people can drop the first kilos very fast just by cutting calories.