In my experience, losing weight is very hard if you follow fad diets. In the NY tech scene, nearly every tech event has free pizza and beer. I gained a ton of weight from 2008-2012 and have finally lost it. I'm weighing in at 165 pounds now.

In 2012, I was weighing in at 215 pounds. In May of that year, I started on Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body Slow Carb diet. It worked for a while but I plateued at 195 pounds. I figured that was it for me - that I wasn't going to be able to lose any more weight.

I told my primary care doctor about this in January of 2015 and he recommended ditching the Slow Carb Diet and tracking my calorie consumption in the app My Fitness Pal. He said to continue using My Fitness Pal until I figured out the right balance of food and exercise I needed to eat to drive weight loss or maintain my weight.

Just by guessing calories of the food I was eating, I was able to lose 30 pounds

This may seem like a pain in the ass, but it only added on 5 minutes to my daily routine.

I got a good scale (the WiThings WS-50). It not only tracks your weight, but it tracks your weight loss / weight gain trend over the last 30 days in its app.

In 2015 from CES to SXSW I dropped from 195 to 182 pounds.

From SXSW to June 1st I dropped from 182 to 169 pounds.

I stopped using the app in July and am now weighing 165 pounds.

I've put a few of my friends on to this, and they've also lost weight.

Hope this can help someone else who wants to cut through the noise of fad weight loss advice.