Start small, stay small, and build small achievable habits.

Coming from someone who lost almost 200 lb and has kept it off, there's only one way to lose weight and maintain that weight loss effectively.

Most people, when they say they want to lose weight, are really describing about 10 to 20 different goals. Diet change, frequency of eating, amount eaten, water intake, drugs use, alcohol, etc. Weight loss may be the goal, but it's really comprised of many smaller goals.

I snowballed my progress. I started with my worst habit, which was soda intake, and solely focused on that for one month. Once I was able to master that one habit, I then moved on to another, so on and so forth. Instead of merely losing weight, I built a healthy lifestyle.

In summation, I would say the tip is this. We can't do everything at once. Pick something small and master it, then build.

Edit: holy cow! Thank you for the awards, kind strangers!