I have dieted very little in my lifetime. I am a 56 year old male who has led a pretty active lifestyle including regular resistance training most of my adult life. I never considered myself 'fat' even though my weight of 225 at 5'11'' was considered overweight, almost obese by BMI standards. I was aware though that I certainly could look better by dropping some pounds.

So, I decided to seriously undertake a program to cut the fat. It's really nothing complicated, it basically consisted of making my mind up that I would no longer eat 'bad' food, plus cutting back on quantity consumed. I did no food weighing, calorie counting, etc. I understood the principles of good nutrition even though I had not been following them very well. I just started to apply them. That was Part 1.

Part 2 consisted of undertaking a dedicated cardio program. That has been a 3 mile run almost every day that I do no matter how bad I don't want to. The only time I have skipped a day is to let my legs recover when I was feeling fatigue (weakness) in them. Now that my weight is nearing where I want to maintain it, I'm going to start cutting this routine back to 2-3 days a week and change it to more of a interval style workout (sprinting followed by brief rests).

Part 3 is my weight resistance workouts which I do usually 4 days a week.
I won't go into detail on this, but it is basically a one body part per week plan.

Now for the results: I have lost 27 pounds in 3 months and I must say the change is very noticeable. I have a much much leaner look through the mid section and my upper body has taken on a 'ripped' look. If I must say so myself I look as good if not better than a lot of the kids at my gym.
The real proof of that was just yesterday as I was leaving the gym one of the girls at the desk who knows me and had not seen me during this transformation, was amazed and went on and on about how great I looked. How's that for a reward? It does wonders for a 'old' man's ego.

So, I realize not everyone can does this the same way I did, but I have to believe the principles have got to be the same for everybody. That is - Willpower (control your eating) and Exercise (consistency is the key).