For years the approach was backwards: cut calories hard on Monday, feel starving by Wednesday, and undo the whole week on Saturday. Burning fat correctly turned out to be less dramatic than that.
The first real change was tracking food for two weeks without altering anything, just to see the actual number. It was almost always higher than expected — an extra 300 calories a day from things that don't feel like "eating," coffee with syrup, a few biscuits standing at the counter, the last bites off someone else's plate.
The second change was smaller, steadier cuts instead of drastic ones. Dropping 400 calories below maintenance instead of 1,000 meant no afternoon shakiness and no all-or-nothing collapse by the weekend.
The third was replacing the 4pm biscuit run with two or three dates and a glass of water. Not because dates "burn fat," they don't do anything special metabolically, but because 150 calories of fruit and fibre is a fixed amount, and it's hard to eat four dates without noticing, unlike a sleeve of biscuits.
Strength training twice a week mattered more than expected too. The scale moved slower some weeks, but the mirror changed faster, because the deficit was coming from fat and not from muscle.
None of this is fast. Twelve weeks is when it actually started to show. But it held, because none of it depended on willpower running at full strength every single day.
More on how dates work as a daily food, not a miracle one, in our Dates Fruit section, and general everyday eating notes under healthy food.