A few years ago I finally managed to lose (and keep off) about 70 lbs after years of trying and failing. I think understanding nutrition is the biggest tool you can give yourself, which echos what most of the others here have said.
Track your calories for a few days. For me what was really helpful was trying to do the whole if it gets you the macros "diet". You should avoid thinking about it as a diet though. Diets are things people do briefly to lose one or two pounds and tend to be things like Atkins, etc. You're looking for a lifestyle change.
Understanding what you currently eat is hugely helpful in this. I went through a phase where I weighed everything I ate with a food scale and entered it in to MyFitnessPal, aiming for 50% carbs, 20% protein, 30% fat and a loss of ~1 lb a week. Pretty quickly I started to find myself surprised at things that in hindsight seem very obvious: fibrous veggies have very little calories, and especially if you steam them or prepare them in a reasonably healthy way, they can make you feel full without going over your daily calories, oils are incredibly calorie dense, 93% lean ground beef is much higher in fat than you think it is, etc.
Paying attention and tracking your calories for a few weeks is a great tool at understanding your current habits and how you can make an avalanche of small changes. Cutting out one can of soda every day is the difference between losing .5 lb a week and maintaining your weight.
You don't have to do the calorie tracking forever - within a few weeks I'd started to make small modifications to a lot of recipes that I cook or things that I eat out to make them much healthier.
Also, get a good scale that does BMI and measure your weight every morning after you go to the bathroom but before you eat anything. Ignore small daily changes, you're looking for the trend over a week or so. Seeing your progress in real numbers helps immensely at keeping you on track.
Track your calories for a few days. For me what was really helpful was trying to do the whole if it gets you the macros "diet". You should avoid thinking about it as a diet though. Diets are things people do briefly to lose one or two pounds and tend to be things like Atkins, etc. You're looking for a lifestyle change.
Understanding what you currently eat is hugely helpful in this. I went through a phase where I weighed everything I ate with a food scale and entered it in to MyFitnessPal, aiming for 50% carbs, 20% protein, 30% fat and a loss of ~1 lb a week. Pretty quickly I started to find myself surprised at things that in hindsight seem very obvious: fibrous veggies have very little calories, and especially if you steam them or prepare them in a reasonably healthy way, they can make you feel full without going over your daily calories, oils are incredibly calorie dense, 93% lean ground beef is much higher in fat than you think it is, etc.
Paying attention and tracking your calories for a few weeks is a great tool at understanding your current habits and how you can make an avalanche of small changes. Cutting out one can of soda every day is the difference between losing .5 lb a week and maintaining your weight.
You don't have to do the calorie tracking forever - within a few weeks I'd started to make small modifications to a lot of recipes that I cook or things that I eat out to make them much healthier.
Also, get a good scale that does BMI and measure your weight every morning after you go to the bathroom but before you eat anything. Ignore small daily changes, you're looking for the trend over a week or so. Seeing your progress in real numbers helps immensely at keeping you on track.