Advice on weight loss

I'm just going to throw out a few points that may or may not suit you OP, but you could consider them:-

If you're training by yourself and your results so far haven't been what you expected, then what you could do is either hire a trainer or join a gym running group classes of some sort. The latter is going to be the most affordable option for most people. If you're in South Dublin, and particularly Dublin 6, then F45 has been mentioned, there's also Body Sculpt Dublin in Dundrum and probably several CrossFit gyms within striking distance. If you can get to Sandyford Industrial Estate there are probably 10+ gyms that might fit the bill at this stage.

The advantage of doing this is that you get at least some coaching from a fitness professional, and to an extent it's taken out of your hands. How good what you get is can be variable but even though people on here will complain about every fitness methodology out there, the reality is that if you went to CrossFit gym a few times a week for six months and made even rudimentary dietary changes your chances of losing quite a bit of weight are good, depending on the base you're beginning from.

It's worth mentioning that it doesn't necessarily have to be a conventional gym. A white collar boxing club, a brazilian jiu jitsu club, running club, outdoor boot camp... Anything where you're going and working hard several days a week could burn you the calories you want and encourage a healthier lifestyle.

Many of the type of settings we're talking about will point you in the right direction of some kind of reasonable dietary advice and there will be people there who can answer questions.

The main advantage over solo training is that if you like the people you're training with, and like the coaches, you start to feel at least some element of communtiy or buzz that might increase your adherence and attendance, which is what they want and also what you want (Because it'll generate results).

In terms of "fast results" to be honest I agree with Alf that it depends on how extreme you're prepared to go with your calorie deficit, if you were to go the route of immediately monitoring calories via an app. That can work if you're quite an "all or nothing" mindset, and a lot of men are. It's a grievance of my wife that I can cut several kilos by making a sudden decision and then following it obsessively for several weeks until I hit my target weight. It's more common for men to be successful in doing that than women I think, anecdotally speaking.

The downside of "fast results" and particularly a diet based approach is that you'll have to recognise that a new approach to eating is here to stay, and get comfortable with it, unless you want to see a rebound back to close to where you were. Sudden weight loss can also bring issues like stretched skin, and sometimes the aesthetics that people expect don't actually materialise. If you are fat and have no muscle mass then you would be surprised that dropping weight and then being "skinny fat" does not necessarily make you look better naked.

What I'd suggest personally is you find a way to train you enjoy and you hammer that hard, and you begin with your diet by making significant but manageable changes. The meal prep may be hard, but you start to do them for at least a chunk of your weak. You stop drinking unnecessary liquid calories. You limit drinking alcohol to maybe 2 nights a week, and you make it 2 drinks on those 2 nights. You stop eating bread more than once a day. You make sure you're eating a protein source with EVERY meal. You up your fruit and veg intake. You bias towards leaner sources of animal protein... Fish at least once or twice a week, and avoid fattier meats, and so on.

If you're training a few days a week and were to make these general changes then I think you could make decent progress in several months. Particularly, as I said, depending on the base you're beginning from.

I don't buy imported chicken because it's tasteless due to long cold temperature storage in transit, the injected water leeches out during cooking and it shrinks, and the animal welfare standards for the chickens are low in many countries of origin.

However, when it comes to Irish chicken, the whole poultry industry is pretty well regulated and frankly whether you pay for a low-end Irish chicken or a high-end Irish chicken you're getting something that would be considered premium in most of the world. All the breeders are monitored. Same story with our beef and pork. I'd like to think the whole horse meat entering the food chain scandal from a few years ago is not the norm and I'm just going to skate over that if it's ok with everyone, lol.

When you pay more for an organic Irish chicken or whatever, you might be getting a tastier animal, but it depends on breed, age, diet, it does just depend.

The main reason to pay more probably is higher animal welfare standards for the chicken.

Nutritionally, if it's Irish, it's not going to be that different.