I've gone through a lot of trial and error on this, and ultimately this is what has worked best for me:

Eating Plan -- I do a leangains style carb/calorie cycling plan where I eat at least 1 g protein per 1 LBM bodyweight, eat low carbs (50 or less) on rest days and high carb (200+) on lifting days to facilitate recovery from my heavy lifting sessions. I will sometimes incorporate a hybrid 5:2 fasting into this where two of my rest days, I fast like in 5:2 and up my overall calories on the other 5 days. I find this 5:2 leangains hybrid works best for me, but sometimes I just don't want to fast, so I'll switch back to a non-fasting leangains style cal/carb cycling.

I tend to do best with a 4000-5500 weekly deficit (1.14-1.57 lb loss per week)

Food Choice -- I started doing a strict Paleo diet and found I did much better on it. I then added back in dairy with no problems and so eat essentially Primal now. And that's like strict Paleo with dairy and 80/20 compliance. So I'll occasionally have non-Paleo foods, but they're pretty rare. I personally found that I do much better without highly processed foods and most grains in my life. I can't say whether that's due to the gluten or other issues in highly processed foods, but whatever it is, it works best for me. Since gluten is a trigger for many autoimmune issues, that may be the major culprit.

Exercise -- I lift heavy 3x/week (Starting Strength and now an intermediate program), do lots of walking (45+ miles/week -- I have a treadmill desk at work so routinely walk 7-9 miles/day) and do one weekly HIIT session of hill sprints. Sometimes I'll throw in some yoga or meditation, but that's pure bonus. Since I do most of my walking on my treadmill desk at work, I'm really only doing the 3 lifting sessions and 1 hill sprint session per week, which is pretty darn manageable.

editorgrrl wrote: »

The best advice I ever received was to read the Sexypants post: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

I second this! I finally "get it" and am losing 1#/week on average over the past month or so after following the advice in that post!

I have finally hit my sweet spot in the ability to drop the pounds. It has been a few months getting here. For me I am doing Atkins Induction and staying o it. It is under 10 carbs a day moderate protein and fat to keep me from feeling hungry. I am not exercising other than all the house work ad yard work and taking care of hubby and our herd of animals.

This is a sustainable WOE for me. I did it for 10 years when I was younger then slowly drifted off. Sorry I did that. I hope I have learned my lesson. With the low carbs I no longer crave sweets or goodies.

Edit to add. I do not fast but some times at dinner time I am not hungry. Really not hungry. I might have a small handful of pork skins and call it good. Also I am no longer logging my foods here at MFP because the amounts given are too far off for me to lose weight. Some say it does not matter but it does to my system. So I do use another food tracking site that does not allow user input except in your own recipes to skew the whole food tracking system. I was losing and gaining the same flipping three or four pounds for three months until I switched to the other tracking site and now I have lost 8 pounds in one month and it is staying off. There might be a bump up of 2 or 3 tenths of a pound from one day to the next or my weight might hold steady for a day or two but then it continues to go down.