I would advice to stick with what you normally eat and write it down (in the evening for example) for about two weeks. Every now and again (every three days), you look up all the info you have and write down how many calories they were.
I prefer a method were you count the calories in several food groups, otherwise you have a tendency to stop using one food group altogether and that's worse: you need your fats, your carbs AND your proteins. If you stop either of these, your body will react as if it's starving and will start building fat out of thin air.

Compare what you wrote down on a day-to-day basis to a realistic (!) set of calorie needs (for you gender, age and life style). Realistic is important, because losing weight on a 1000- cal diet will jojo you back faster than you can say "deep-fat fried chicken breast".

Then, after you have made an inventory for two weeks, see were you can realistically cut away. For me: I stopped drinking alcohol during the week, no desserts during the week, I only needed half the lunch I used at that time. And I started weighing the amount of pasta, potatoes and rice (can you believe you only need 125 gr of pasta/rice for two persons?). This had the added advantage of needing less sauce automatically, so I made less. I also stopped snacking during the day and Lately I stopped buying snacks.
I did NOT start making everything lo-cal, lo-fat, lo-carb or whatever, as those things tend to be lo-taste, and you want to enjoy your food, don't you?

The first two weeks were horrid, then you get used to it and adept. I lost my first 5 kilos in 1 month. That's motivation, baby!

One of the most effective ways of losing weight for me was buying my groceries once a week, instead of every day. That way you eliminate the moments of impulse buying. Friday nights we make a list of what we're going to eat the next day, on Sat morning I get it all. After breakfast: never shop hungry!

THE most effective way was doing it together with Mrs Artsapat and having a good reason: we were going to get married and wanted to look our best on that day. We both did and never got it back.

Dieting won't help squat, life style change will.