Please don’t
First, diets don’t work in the long term: http://janetto.bol.ucla.edu/index_files/Mannetal2007AP.pdf
It’s not in this study, but I’ve heard that as little as 5% of people who lose weight on a diet keep it off in the long term. If you have managed to do this,* you are the exception*, not the rule
Anecdotal point: As I was growing up I watched my mother go on every single diet that came down the pike. WW, Atkins, Ayds candies, and lots whose names are lost in the mists of time. She gained the weight back every single time… and a bit more, if not every time, then many times. She never exercised, and I blame her lack of mobility on this factor.
Second, losing weight is an indirect goal, not a direct one. This is a concept that I learned at one of the software companies I worked at, and it works like this - an indirect goal is not something that you can address specifically - like customer satisfaction. You can’t go hit a customer and say “Be satisfied, dammit”. But you can identify what will contribute to customer satisfaction, like improved software performance, and make that your direct goal.
So, instead of making your goal “Lose weight”, make your goal “Eat more healthily, and exercise more”. With those goals, you can make even more specific goals “Eat an apple instead of a candy bar when I want a sweet” and “Work out 3 times a week”
Then you can celebrate meeting those goals, even if you don’t lose weight.
And, let’s make that the third point. Losing weight is highly unpredictable, and subject to a lot of different variables. What works for one person will fail for another and what work this month will fail next month. Every person whose been on more than one diet knows about the plateau, and knows that men lose weight more easily than women. There are medicines that will cause you to gain weight, and medicines that will cause you to lose weight.
Fourth point - there are actions that can cause you to lose weight that are unhealthy, and there are actions that you can take that will make you healthier, and will not help you lose weight.
If all you want to do is lose weight, you could pick up a cocaine habit. Your health will be terrible, but you will lose weight. Or you could try anorexia or bulimia.
Conversely, at least a couple of studies have shown that working out 3 times a week will not help you lose weight. But you will be healthier than the person who isn’t working out that much, no matter that the other person is skinnier than you.
I’ve lost 15 pounds this past year… because I was taking a medicine that left me on just this side of sick to my stomach. I didn’t feel like eating, so I didn’t eat much, but what I did eat was crap, because when I don’t feel like eating, that’s all I eat. I was also quite depressed, because food is one of the few pleasures I still have, and that had been taken away from me. (It took me several months to figure out that the medicine was causing this, because everything makes me queasy)
Fifth - yo-yo diets have been shown to be worse for your health than just never dieting at all. So if you do something to lose weight, once you hit that goal, you’re going to stop, gain the weight back, and be in a worse position than you were before.
So, instead of resolving to lose weight, resolve to make healthy choices that you are working to make a lifetime habit. You’ll be better off for it, for years to come.