Phentermine made it a lot easier because I didn't feel hungry, even when I was. But other than that, the same techniques applied: I used a calorie counter and tried to stick to the recommendation that it gave.
After using it a month or 2, I realized that its numbers were slightly high for me, and cut my max allowed calories a little further and started losing weight.
If you're wondering what your number is, the easiest way is probably just to follow what some tool tells you (I used Weight Watchers, then SparkPeople) and adjust the calories according to whether you are losing weight or not.
One caution: There is a rather large gap where you go from gaining weight to maintaining weight to losing weight. The area where you maintain weight is pretty broad. Finding that area is the first step, then slowly removing some calories until you start losing is the key, IMO. If you go too fast, you might remove too many calories and actually make it harder to lose weight than it should be. Your body will try to compensate for lack of calories.
1) Eat on regular intervals. Don't starve yourself, but don't overeat. Typically you stop while you are a tiny bit hungry. The body is a bit slow on registering that you've had enough.
2) Cut out all sugary stuff, chocolate, ice cream, candy.
If you live in the US, it might be harder. My experience from living in the US was that it was hard to stay healthy there because 1) Almost all food contains some sugar 2) Served portions are usually way too large. And you buy things in too large quantities.
This means you might have to focus on cooking food from scratch at home to avoid the added sugar, and getting too large portions.
Don't cook larger portions to have left overs for later. You'll just eat more.
But if you are like me and can't be bothered to make food yourself, then buy EXPENSIVE food. This sounds silly but the thing is that when you buy cheap food, it doesn't taste well unless it is unhealthy.
Healthy food that tastes good is often expensive food. If you go to nice restaurants you tend to get smaller and healthier portions.
I waste a lot of money on food this way but it is just a trade off I've made. I rather waste money than get more unhealthy.
http://www.thetraveltester.com/wp-content/uploads/mos-burger...
When you meet foreign travelers, ask them what they think about US serving sizes. Many of them find it shocking.