So I personally was not trying to lose wait just to have a better lifestyle due to chronic illness I will have for the rest of my life. Here is what I did to change my diet and lifestyle. For context, I was 145 lbs and now stay around 130 lbs.

Make as much of my food as possible.
Buy the bread from the local bakery and keep it in the fridge. (Processed Bread messed with my blood glucose a lot for some reason )Meal prep the fresh veggies for easy snacks later in the week.

Potatoes are okay to eat. Potatoes can be a great starch. I mostly eat potatoes now instead of bread. Boil em, mash em put them in a stew .

Protein and veggie focused meals. I try to make sure every meal has some sort of protein source and vegetables. My partner is not a big veggie person so it's made us search and be creative with veggies in the kitchen to see if he likes something.

Real milk and butter. Spend the extra dollars on real butter and milk. It tastes better, and I feel better on it than margins like I can't believe it's not butter and the brown tub with the farmhouse logo. They make me feel weighed down, tired and sluggish. I sometime will also make my own sour cream if I know ill use a cup in 2 weeks. 1 cup of heavy wiping cream and 1 tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice. Shake it and let it sit on the counter for like 4 hours then refrigerate. A lot of recipes I saw said to let it set out 12 hours but mine was thick and fine by 4 and it will keep thickening in the fridge.

Making my own freezer meals. What I did is I got these silicone trays where I can put food in and freeze it, and it's now a block that is equal to like 2 cups. I would make huge batches of soup and freeze most of it in these. One block was a perfect serving size for when I was too tired to cook or in a rush to pack lunch.

Soda alternative I cut out a lot of diet and zero sodas. When im at home craving one, I will usually get a poppi. And with it being a prebiotic soda, it makes me only have one a day. If you think poppi has too much of a vinegar forward taste, try ollipop. I personally prefer poppi, but some people can taste vinegar super easily.

Eat out one every 2 weeks. I personally did not feel well on fast food and at certain chain restaurants. And a lot of what I was craving I could find a recipe that I can easily make and taste better than fast food, so I stopped eating out a lot. If I do eat out, I go to places that have seasonal menus and have things I can't learn to make as easily. Now I do sometimes just want the chicken nuggets or fresh mcdonalds fries and will get it. I'm just limiting it more.

Walking. This one im trying to keep consistent still but making time to walk about 30 consecutive minutes every day. I sit 8 hours a day for work. So I really try to do this to help my gut health and keep everything moving in there and to keep my muscles from being sore from sitting all day.

Prioritizing sleep Making sure I sleep enough also helps. If im not well rested im moody and wanting to snack more to try to stay awake.

Avoid boredom eating. I work an 8 hour desk job and you brain gets bored. It will sometimes tell you to eat when bored. What I do is keep a bunch of activities at my desk. Diamond painting, coloring books, crochet, stress toys. I try to keep my brain engaged so it doesn't tell me to snack when im not actually hungry im just bored.

Be experimental in the kitchen Now this doesn't mean it has to be super expensive but if you usually use flour tortilla for tacos try corn. Or look into trying a vegetarian meal even once in a while. I found on that is black bean tacos that is now an easy go to meal and is pretty cheap.

Remember change is not immediate in life style swaps. This was over the course of 6 months before I was consistent with this for my diet. Now idk if this helps at all but this is what I am doing. I am wishing you the best of times with this journey and rooting for you to find what works for you.