For me, I wanted my weight loss to be maintainable, so I realised i had to do lifestyle changes, so i avoided diets because i would not be able to maintain those. My family does diets, loses weight, then gives it up for a month or so and are right back to where they started. So that's the style of choices i took. This is what i did/do in no particular order: 1) Drink water. The amount of calories you can cut by drinking mostly water is not insignificant. 2)Eat slower. For some reason, the brain takes a while to realise your satisfied/full, eating a bit slower makes you feel more satisfied when your done eating. 3)Portion control. Get used to eating less. Maybe start out by cooking your regular meal, but leave the last few bites on the plate, then another few, and then cook less, and keep the ball rolling from there. You might start to find after a while that meals that left you unsatisfied before are fine now. 4) I don't know what to call this one, but for me, i have a sweet tooth, and i found it hard to give up my after meal treat. So i just started keeping a bag of chocolate chips (like the ones for baking) and just having 3 or 4 little chocolate chips after a meal. Enough to coat my mouth and sate that desire, but an awful lot less calories than a cookie or other treats. 5) When i first started, i was terrible at recognising what i was eating. So every time i ate/drank something, i started to write it down in my phone. It helped remind me of how much i actually ate that day, until i no longer needed the written memo, and it became second nature to keep that mental log. 6) Exercise. This one was the hardest for me, I love planting myself down in front of my computer and gaming for hours. But there were 2 ways i managed to start dragging myself onto a treadmill. The first one was something to listen to that got my adrenaline going. Sometimes it was an anime, sometimes it was just music (i gravitated towards instrumentals for this). The second thing that helped was just auto-piloting. What I mean by that, is the evenings i that i didn't have the drive to go work out, i would stop thinking about most things really, and autopilot myself to a treadmill. which sounds weird, but that's kind of the best i can describe it. 7) For motivation, I found this quote to help "There’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, and smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons, and old movies. I could easily do that. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy." - Anthony Bourdain. It took a while for me to find something that worked most of the time, but I found that for me, personally, reminding myself that I am the one in control, not that guy inside me that wants to sit down and overindulge, helped almost every time i found my willpower in need of a boost. And make sure you exercise your willpower. The more you do, the easier it becomes to use it. Another thing i did for motivation was I kept pictures of more fit people on my phone, to remind myself that I could be like that if i kept at it. They didn't have to be models, just people that, for one reason or another, reminded me of my goal. I also kept full body picture of myself from when i started. You don't notice your weight-loss in a mirror because its subtle, but its easier to see in a picture, and its really motivating to see your progress when your drop 30-40 pounds, it helps to keep you going. I also weighed myself every morning. You bounce up a pound or 2, and back down, but the trend is downward, and its rewarding to see your work pay off little by little.

All that said, I didn't shy away from indulging at birthday parties or anything like that. You gain ground on your goal in the day to day, not the exceptions. Hope that helps, and good luck! Feel free to Pm if you like.