When you get the urge to want to follow a strict diet be it vegetarian, low carbs, kept, south beach, paleo because it's easier to just "eat this and avoid that", you should always ask yourself this first, "is this something I can do long term?" "can i never have donuts, alcohol, soda, meat, or eat after 6pm?" If the answer is no, don't even start because you're just setting yourself up for failure.
Eat flexibly.
Find out what your calorie requirement is for weight loss (everyone's different but not that different). Once you've tracked your calorie intake for a couple days, you'll get better at eyeballing food portions, esp with the type of food you really enjoy but always feel guilty eating (caloric dense, processed or fatty foods).
The bigger you are, the longer this will take but once you get there, you will no longer need to "eat less" and your diet become even more flexible than before.
If you have to have "eat days" or "cheat meals", it just means whatever diet you're on is probably not going to work long term. So avoid diets that comes with "cheats" because it's built around restriction and sacrifice instead of creativity and habit building.
As long as it's not rat poison, you can eat it. It's a matter of quantity of food. As long as you can get yourself to love eating more satiating foods (low to zero calorie liquid, fiber, lean meat), you'll have an easier time eating less and staying in shape.
You will get hungry from time to time but the more distracted you are from eating, like working, playing, exercising, and sleeping, you'll have an easier time not thinking about eating.
No food is "clean", no food is "super", all foods are made up of chemicals and if they are indeed "food", your body will find a way to use it, esp when you're in a caloric deficit. In fact, you'll use them even more efficiently. If you're overweight, you should focus on "eating less" than "eating healthy" because eating heathy won't always help you get to a healthy weight but eating less always do. For some people eating healthy (or "clean") might have helped them lose weight but it wasn't intentional. They accidentally ate less calories by following the latest fad diet or eating advice without budgeting their intake and output. You don't want your weight loss to be an accident, especially if you've tried many other diets in the past with no success. If you are going to put in the time and energy for it, you might as will guarantee that you will lose weight.
How do you track calories while eat flexibility? First, find out how many calories you need to lose weight at the rate of fat loss you're willing to shoot for, take your maintenance minus the deficit you get your target caloric intake. Then, fit the essential stuff first (protein and fat) and fill the rest with whatever foods you actually enjoy to make this a sustainable process. You can all the details by googling "flexible dieting" by Lyle McDonald and use apps like "Myfitnesspal" or "LoseIt" to start tracking today.
