I lost a bunch of weight awhile back. Did the calorie counting thing and just tried to get a good variety of foods.
No gimmicks, no fad diets, just eating better and getting a little exercise works. Didn't do anything crazy, tried to eat around 500 (1000 early on, but 500 once I got close) under my estimated daily calorie needs, kept the carbs, salts, and sugars low and got plenty of protein.
Ultimately it's not so much about dieting as changing the way you eat in general, and losing weight just becomes a side effect of that over time. If you can't see eating that way for the rest of your life while losing weight, it's probably not going to work because you'll just go back to your old habits as soon as you are "done".
I guess some random bits of advice:
- Learn to love cooking. Making your own meals (even unhealthy ones) tends to be healthier, plus you know exactly what's going into it and can make tweaks to make it healthier/etc.
- Lean chicken is your best friend. Filling, low calories, lots of protein, no carbs, and you can do a lot of really good things with it.
- Try to get most of your carbs from veggies and beans. If you go for pasta and rice, make it whole wheat.
- Get lots of fiber.
- Use veggies to bulk up your meals. Half a plate of green beans is like 80 calories, and makes the meal way more satisfying just by volume (plus they are good for you on their own..).
- Lean to read a nutrition label, and absolutely don't assume that the diet version of something is healthier or even healthy at all. In fact, if it says it's healthy, that's a good sign that it's probably not.