Was all my hard work pointless?

I've been working out since January 26th of this year and I'm getting closer to my 1 month mark but I lost 12 pounds within the first 3 weeks and I was very happy about it but I was confused bc It just looked like as if my stomach wasn't bloated until someone said that if I lost that much within that short of time then it wasn't body fat and it was just water weight and it kinda brought my self esteem down and I kept thinking that maybe what I'm doing is all for nothing bc if I'm just now losing weight only to find out that it wasn't even body fat The whole reason I'm doing this is bc I'm going on vacation September 19th this year and I'm going to a festival and I wanna wear some cute outfits but I wanna feel good in my own skin and my goal weight is at least 165-170 lbs and right now I weigh 220lbs and I started out as 232lbs and I'm a little upset bc I thought i was losing body fat and I only have like 8 months to get to my goal weight and I don't even know if it's possible or not Can someone help me?? I've been doing a calorie deficit and have a strict workout routine and idk how to tell what is just water weight and what is body fat that I'm losing, is there a certain amount of water weight that I would need to lose before actually burning fat??