I have a scale that measures bodyfat, muscle mass, water, bmi, it even measures bone mass(idk how accurate) and visceral fat vs subcutaneous fat. But if I get consistent readings on it and change my diet for a week and the numbers change then I know what effect that diet is having on my weight/body. But for this to work you need to weigh yourself right after you wake up and go to the bathroom and naked. And always do it this way. You can begin to really understand and know exactly how your body works and how your eating. It’s been a game changer for me. I’m trying to bulk up and gain muscle, but now I can see how much of my gains are actually muscle. Before I’d gain ten pounds and still look pretty lean so I’d think I gained like 8 or 9 pounds of muscle, but now when I do that I can see on the scale it was really only about 4 pounds. I highly recommend it, you can learn exactly what your maintenance calories are and how effective your diet is.

As long as you are brutally honest about your actual energy expenditure, those calculators are a very good starting point. They have the advanced ones where you put how many minutes of each kind of exercise you do per week to give that calculation. You start off at the value it gives you for maintenance, subtract however many cals from it for your weight loss goal, then start dieting. If you’re losing weight, then keep on going until it stalls then drop cals. If you don’t drop weight from the start then you weren’t honest with the energy expenditure portion of the calculation, drop the cals by 200-300/day and reevaluate. If you hit a plateau during your journey, drop a few more cals and keep going. What you don’t want to do is put yourself in such an extreme deficit that your body goes into full starvation mode. Slow and steady wins this race, and you’ve got a long way to go based on the stats you posted (30-40% bf). Stay motivated, keep up with the exercise even when it sucks because you’re hungry, and count every single thing you put in your mouth every day. No little cheat nibbles here and there that don’t get logged. You’ll get there.