Hi Gorjuss and welcome. Good luck on your weight loss journey, it sounds like you’re doing really well so far – keep up the good work. Sounds like (in total) you’re aiming to lose about the same as me and I can assure you that it is doable.
I still have 1 stone left to go until I’m comfortably in the ‘healthy’ BMI range and out of the ‘over-weight’ category but to be honest this last stone is going to be a tough one to shift (this is a personal problem and exercise related, so hopefully you won’t have the same issue) but I’d be quite happy at this weight forever anyway, so I’m happy 🙂 It took me 18 months to shift 4 stone, so I’m sure you’ll be in good shape for the wedding 😉

I started slimming world first and as I’m closer to my target its getting harder, so I thought I’d give 5:2 a whirl. You’re doing so well, I think exercise definitely helps weight loss.
I started running alongside my healthy eating and I don’t know whether it helped but it definitely changed my body shape for the better. I was a complete non-runner before and I love it now! Just an idea for you x

I may not be the best example, as I do not react well to exercise as a weight loss tool. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life lost weight by exercising more and for me those first 18 months really were all about concentrating on the diet and forgetting all about extra exercise (I actually did less exercise during those 18 months than I had BEFORE 5:2). I’ve spent the last 8-9 months on a total (ground to a halt) plateau due to joining a gym in February and upping my exercise level by roughly 300-400%. I’m going to continue with the exercise as I do feel stronger, more conditioned and I’m starting to feel more toned too. Either I’ll eventually reach a ‘tipping’ point and the weight loss will start up again or, worst case scenario, when my membership runs out I’ll go back to my old exercise level and re-start the weight loss just with diet again.

As far as 5:2 goes, I didn’t really know about TDEE etc. for the first year, so I lost most of the weight literally just by having 500 calories on fastdays and trying to stay on or slightly under 2000 on non-fastdays (my ‘actual’ TDEE would have allowed me to have way more than that on non-fastdays, so that probably accounts for my big early losses).

If I were you I’d do my TDEE calculation twice, be completely honest on both occasions except with the weight on one of them. Instead of your current weight, put in your goal weight. As long as your current BMR is more than your ‘goal’ TDEE number then just use your ‘goal’ BMR and TDEE numbers instead of your ‘real’ ones. This kicks off your weight loss big-time as long as you eat roughly but DEFINITELY between those 2 numbers on your non-fastdays. It also has the advantage of giving you a head start on figuring out what sort of eating/ portion sizing etc. is going to be maintainable for you long-term once you’ve reached your goal and are into maintenance.