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Another way to lose weight, and the only way that works for me, is to increase your metabolic needs by building muscle. It's easy to work this into the corners of your day, by having a couple of 5 or 7 pound weights laying around your living room, and doing weight things while you watch a little TV. The sit ups and push-ups help build muscle too, but spending money on weights makes them more important, somehow.
As far as dieting, I think the best thing I ever did was to declare a day off about every 10 days. If you're exercising regularly, even if it's not much, and eating reasonably the rst of the time, you can afford a certain amount of over-indulgence once in a while, and it helps prevent that deprived feeling.
Also, if you can keep your over-all caloric rate steady, it's better to eat a little at a time but more often, than to have two or three full meals a day. The general advice against snacking is becuase that's usually a good way to increase your calorie count. But if you split your breakfast in half, eat half at 6:30 and half at 9:30, and then split your lunch in half and eat half at noon, and half at 3, and then split your dinner in half and eat half at 6 and half at 9, you will actually lose a little weight.
One thing that has worked for me sometimes is to just spend a month losing 5 pounds and then try to hold steady for a month. Then try to lose 5 more, then hold for a while. That's still 30 pounds over a year, which isn't bad.
The most important thing is to not gain something back once you've lost it. That's where I fail miserably. If anyone has any secrets in this regard, let me know.
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