As an older guy I've finally figured out weight-loss

I don't believe 'the science' is consistent about this at all.

Tim Ferris cites lots of science when writing 'The Four Hour Body' a decade ago, and decades before that Atkins had a fair amount of science to back up similar observations & claims -- not all calories are equal.

Eschewing carbohydrates (a word that doesn't appear in TFA) and filling up on proteins (appears once in relation to a supplement) and fats (appears only twice - once referring to being fat as a child, the other as an adjective for yogurt) will get you most of the way 'there', if 'there' is gentle weight loss / management that's easier to maintain than calorie counting.

I did some calorie counting at the beginning but dropped it once I had convinced myself that I was indeed eating fewer calories.

One other thing I do is to delay breakfast until after I have done my morning walk. Experience tells me that my appetite will be sharpened by the exercise so I will be tempted to eat again. So getting dressed and walking straight out of the house for an hour of brisk walking saves me that temptation or perhaps puts it to good use.

But well done, whatever works is good.

1) How many calories do you need at your target weight? 2) What is your basal metabolic rate? 3) As you cut out calories and lose weight, how much is your basal metabolic rate changing?

The problem is that for people who are predisposed to store excess energy as fat rather than burning it off, as we cut back on our calories, our body reacts by becoming more efficient to try to avoid emptying out our fat stores.

This means that for some people losing a pound a week could require cutting out anywhere from 500-1000 calories per day. --So when people suggest cutting out 500 calories per day, and you either don't see any loss or you see a much lower loss than the pound per week, that can be even more demoralizing than trying to cut out 1000 calories per day if you knew that would allow you to average that pound a week of loss.