Porridge, almonds, honey 
From August 2018 to date, April 2019, I have lost 3.5 stone weight. And the most important thing I have learned from the exercise has not been about the food I eat or the exercise I take.
No, these things are important, alright, but they are not the most important thing. The most important thing I will tell you later but first I will tell you how I managed it.
There is no mystery, no huge secret, no fad diet, no ‘Hollywood’ diet; I followed the RTE Operation Transformation programme. I stuck rigidly with the eating plans and the exercise and the weight slowly but inexorably reduced.
The Operation Transformation programme was the tool I used, and I could not recommend it highly enough.
Habit formation
My target is to lose 4 stone and I am confident I will achieve this provided I apply the one lesson I have learned-that is, the weight loss is less about what I eat and all about something else: habit(s).
Habit formation is the key.
Losing bad habits, developing good ones. This is the one critically important lesson I have learned and taken from the exercise.
It is a lesson that is applicable in all parts of life and there have been countless books written about habits, getting rid of destructive ones and creating new, useful ones. Two popular and well-regarded books dealing with habits are:
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change by Charles Duhigg
- Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear
The takeaway for me is often you must look for the “thing under the thing” to alter your behaviour and win the outcome you are seeking.
In my case it was the development of good habits and the eradication of destructive habits around food that was the primary step in losing the weight, and not an all-consuming focus on calorie counting or other method of score keeping what I was consuming.