"why is this taking so long?"
I often hear things like, “I started eating better and working out but I don’t notice any changes!”
Our bodies are OBSESSED with remaining the same. Evolutionarily, fat loss is highly dangerous for humans. Only in cultures of abundance are weight loss goals even a thing.
So. To alter your appearance/body composition it’s often best to make drastic (but safe) changes. It will probably be frustrating and hard and painful and you’ll wanna give up and it will feel pointless. Yep.

But if you aren’t used to eating healthily or pushing yourself regularly in exercise, you’re like a ballpoint pen that hasn’t been used in a while.
Without use, certain types of pens sit and dry up. To get them to work again, we have to press really hard, going around in ridiculous circles at the edge of the page while being annoyed that nothing is happening. Once you get it going though, you have all that frustrating, messy, hideous stuff out of the way and it’s easy going from there on out as long as you stick to it. At that point, you get to be in “maintenance mode” and it is glorious.
Press hard in workouts, make radically healthy choices (no I don’t mean low calorie), and act like you know there isn’t another pen to choose from.