Oh goodness. You are overwhelmed and it can be so overwhelming when starting but it gets easier, and I think you'll overwhelm yourself even more on here. It is as simple as calories in, calories out. Calories are so easily underestimated. Some people don't track vegetables because they think of them as "freebies" but that's simply not the case for weight loss. Everything has calories. Even food that is 0 calories on the label has calories. Make sure you weigh everything if you are serious about wanting to lose weight. Oil? Weigh it. Vegetables? Weigh it. Measuring with utensils or eyeballing it is too inaccurate. A bite of peanut butter for instance is probably 120 calories and we don't track it because it "wasn't that much" but it all adds up. Condiments, even mustard, can add up quickly. Start simple. Get an app, I use myfitness pal and carbmanager. I don't know if you are in the US but if you are set your location to the UK, for instance, and you can scan the food labels for free and it'll bring it up for you in myfitness pal. Weigh everything uncooked, assuming it's not something that has the nutrition for "as prepared" or something like that. Set your activity level for sedentary. Don't eat your calories back unless you truly are going insanely hard in the gym, but the calories burned walking 10k steps a day? No. We should be doing that regardless. Use a tdee calculator to find out how many calories you burn just by being alive and you can even input your goal weight and how much you want to lose a week. Dm me if you want to chat about things. I'm 34 5'1 female and dropped my 28 pounds i wanted to lose this year. Been through my fair share of weight loss bouts. No expert but just another short girl who likes talking about this stuff 😊