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Hi gang - this issue is close to my heart - I struggled with diets for three decades. Actually lost 345 pounds! Problem is at the end of three decades, I was 24 pounds heavier than when I began the diet cycles. there are some details on the whole process I went through to finally dump about 65 pounds of fat and gain 18 pounds of muscle. The whole story is in a blog I keep somewhat regularly - but here's a bit from that blog:

"Here's the problem with diets. Dieting is all about deprivation. Weight watchers, lo carb, (Atkins was called Stillman's way back in the 70's), South Beach, cabbage soup, Jared and the Subway thing, the lists of diets out there on the front pages of the magazines you see at the checkout counters go on and on. Headlines shout out new ways to "lose 500 pounds in six days," in every issue. The basic principle is the same in every diet. Basically it's, "You can't have this, but you can have that." Actually, people do lose weight with whatever fad attempts. (Except for maybe those pills from mail order houses that promise to burn away your fat while you sleep. No need to exercise or diet.) A physician on NBC's Today Show commented that American's are good at losing weight - they just aren't good at keeping it off. That's because of the deprivation thing. Dieting doesn't work because how we eat is only one dimension of a lifestyle change. The Atkins craze is especially harmful (no serious athlete does "lo carb". Check the Atkins Alert link in my blog (address below) for the medical low down on the Atkins Diet from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. (If you are even thinking Atkins - visit this site. Atkins in the long term is a killer diet.) You don't really lose weight with Atkins - you are drying out. 

For me, at least, a lifestyle change is a kind of three legged stool. How I eat, how I give my cardio vascular system a proper workout and resistance training for the muscular skeletal system completes the stool. As a runner, I was eating okay, doing the cardio, but I'm thinking a part of my injury problem was that missing resistance training piece to build up the muscular/skeletal system. Lifestyle change, on the other hand, is about abundance. I have more energy, more stamina, more fun, more goals, a more positive attitude about life in general and more really great friends who share the joy of a healthy lifestyle."

Sorry for the long post here - but finally something worked and it wassn't "dieting" - check my blog at: http://couchtocompetition.blogspot.com/   There is a recipie page and it has stuff that helped me with the tripple whammy of overweight, diabetic, and high cholesterol.

You CAN crack this thing!