IMO / IME weight loss is best tackled through diet - ultimately controlling energy intake. The only thing I've found that works is low carb; which (when I could stick to it) allowed me to lose around 0.5kg/wk. Ultimately I went from a high of 86kg to around 68kg over a period of maybe 2-3yrs doing low carb intermittently.. now life sucks I'm back to around 80kg but do have a bit more upper body muscle mass (however nowhere near enough to account for the extra weight) thanks to doing a limited weights routine whilst eating "normally" (rampantly binging on carbs).
I'm not convinced, my experience is pretty much the opposite.
Yo-yo dieters typically complain that dieting makes them feel miserable, and that's my experience: it feels like my body is trying to reduce my metabolic rate to match the lower calorie intake rather than burn fat to make up the deficit. This seems reasonable to me, in a time of famine, reducing your energy demand rather than burning up fat reserves would appear to be the better strategy for survival.
On the other hand, regular exercise is continually reminding your body that it needs its current metabolic rate as it is, and induces it to burn fat to fuel the exercise rather than trying to conserve energy. I note how many I've seen on TV who delight in the effortless loss of weight after taking up regular exercise.
In 2008 my weight had ballooned to 86kg, and all my attempts to reduce it had met with failure until I tried increasing my exercise level before reducing my calorie intake. Once I did that, the weight fell off without any difficulty, and I ended up at about 69kg
A year after I quit cycle touring in 2011 my weight was virtually unchanged, and yet my xylophone rib cage had disappeared under a thick layer of fat. AFAICT the weight of that fat had been offset by a loss of muscle, and that in spite of a large reduction in calorie intake. Twelve years on, my weight still is about 70kg, but it's been up to 80 and back down again since then, and again I got nowhere stopping the weight gain without some increase in exercise to go with the calorie reduction.
I eat a low fat diet, mainly because that's what healthy eating advice usually recommends, but I've noticed that my cholesterol levels seem to correlate better with exercise level than dietary fat though.
I lost about 18 kg (from 93 to 75) in 7 months......I simply balanced calories in vs calories out.
If you lost 18kg in 7 months your average daily calorie intake must have been about 660kcal less than you burnt.
