Tips for success?

There's only one tip you need:

Never give up.

for you to be successful you have to realize that it isn't a diet so much as it is a lifestyle change. It's very important for you to understand that. You have to want it and you have to be disciplined enough to stick to it. You can do it.

I'm in the same boat.
I'd suggest making small changes that you actually want to make. Write down good ideas on how to lose weight and then rate them on how likely it is you'll follow them. Start at the most likely and start implementing them.

Do nothing.

Sit on your butt all day watching TV and shoving pizza in your face. Eventually you will spend the money on the CPAP machine. In time you will develop high blood pressure and possibly diabetes, spending even more money on medications and doctor visits. Don't exercise because it's not fun doing it all the time. For that matter don't bother brushing your teeth because that's not really fun either. Within a decade you will become a lethargic immovable mass with bad breath. You will ask yourself, who is responsible for my condition?

Too corny?

Do your own research.

Experiment with your body.

Stay consistent and push for constant improvement.

Ignore most of the advice you read here.

EDIT: Not this thread, the overall forums.

Someone else said it...ignore so much of what you read on here. People get on here talking about a tedd orxhyu or asdrt .... xyz...lmnop.....I have NO IDEA what any of that means or what a fitbit is..so yeah that kind of stuff drives me nuts. And that website to find your resting Calories was confusing as hell.

I have lost almost 60 pounds in total...only 23 since being on here. I still eat what I love, just less. I am not a crazy work out person, I walk and own a stat bike which I use watching TV. Has taken me almost a year...I suppose I could be further along but it is about my life style changing

I have about 100 more to go, it scares me that I wont make it. One day at a time I take it. If I mess up I move on.It is amazing the difference 10lbs can make, that is how I look at it.!

Make sure you log every thing that you eat and drink even if it's only a spoon full it all adds to the calories at the end of the day if you want to see your progress take photos once a month that will keep you inspired to carry on

So much great advice here already! About a year or a year and a half ago, my husband and I decided to get healthier. We bought a food scale, joined MFP, and got serious. I started experimenting with different kinds of exercise to find activities I loved. I got creative in the kitchen (a lifelong passion for me already), so eating healthy didn't feel like a chore. My husband and I both bought FitBits (essentially fancy pedometers) to get a more accurate measurement of our TDEE so we could create manageable deficits.

A year and a half later, I'm in the best shape of my life. I haven't lost much scale weight, but I'm stronger, leaner, and more confident. My husband, however, has lost just shy of 100 pounds, down to 230 from 320-and-change. No fad diets, no off-limits food, no insane exercise programs.

The best advice I can give you is to make small changes that you're certain you can sustain. Don't make this a punishment- try to find ways to make it fun. If you're exercising yourself to death, you're going to be sore and exhausted. If you're extremely restrictive with your calories, you're going to be hungry and lethargic and miserable. Try to learn something new every day that's relevant to YOUR health and fitness goals.

Like so many other posters have said: it's a lifestyle change, not a diet. Diets have no wiggle room. You can't have banana split sundaes or double bacon cheeseburgers on a diet. Lifestyles have more flexibility, because they're forever. You CAN get away with having a lazy week or a crazy dessert every now and then, because it'll balance out in the long run.

I wish you the best; I know you can do it!

I don't want to fall for some fad unrealistic diet that will rock for 4-8 weeks and not be sustainable. I guess I'd like some tips from people who have lost over 40 pounds and kept it off for years.

Current Weight - 270 pounds
Age: 29
Quite out of shape
Low tolerance for corny marketing/fitness coach type people

Agreeing with davert123 here..

Not to get too 'zen' about it, but it's not about the weight or how to lose it at this stage. Weight loss is just physics.
You know how to lose weight. We all do. It's the easy part.

Saw a great quote the other day: "There's no cheating on a diet because eating isn't a test"

So, the hard part here is arriving at that 'place' where you're REALLY ready to make the kind of changes that become a part of your life.
For me, when that realization happened, my 'diet' stopped being a diet. My 'exercise program' stopped being that too.
I decided to change my lifestyle. There was no diet, there was no fitness routine. That was how I had to look at it if i was going to get serious. I found being on a diet, or going to the gym to get healthy implied there was a finish line out there somewhere. There wasn't for me. There was no 'done'. There was just how I was going to live from then on.
Weight? Whatever. I stopped thinking about it. It wasn't the point. Sure, I lost fat and built muscle and kept it off (going on 2 years) but the point, or my motivation, was to live in a way that gave me what I wanted out of my body. I wanted to be stronger. I wanted to feel vibrant and wear clothes I liked. There was totally a vanity component. But truly, I just liked feeling I was treating myself in a way that was going to help me later in life rather than hurt me or the ones I love.

And until it's worth it enough to you, it'll always feel like it's boring or that there's a finish line. Or that you'll beat yourself up because you did or didn't do something that was or wasn't on your 'program' . Get to a better place.

There is no finish line - no final weight if you're to be successful in achieving what you want. That's what I've learned.
There's just you making a decision that you're finally ready to change your lifestyle. Whether it's worth it to you, or not, is something nobody here can help you with. Good luck.

Don't think of this as a diet, it is a lifestyle change. Everything others have said about logging, measuring, weighing, not denying yourself foods, etc is important, but for me it boils down to getting up each morning and setting myself two goals:
1) I will stay under my calorie goal
2) I will exercise at least 30 minutes

Each day is a new day. Whether I succeeded or failed yesterday doesn't matter. I only have to focus on achieving those goals today. If I do those two things I know the scale will move downward, the inches will come off and I will be healthier.