Here's the deal: take in fewer calories than you burn.
Two methods therefore, best in combination: eat less and exercise more.
There is no wiggling out of that principle.
You can eat lower caloric foods in the same quantity or eat high calorie foods in smaller quantities. You can do more intense activity when you do exercise or you can do lower intensity activity for longer and/or more often.
There is no trick about this. No magic formula.
Except – aha! – the same ideas that work for Discardia over time also can apply here. You don't have to change everything all at once, you just have to start changing things in the right direction more often than the wrong.
Running less of a caloric overflow than you do now is still better than no reduction at all. If you can't get yourself down to a caloric deficit right away, at least move in that direction.
Making sure you walk 6000 steps a day instead of 4000 is better than nothing. Aim for 10000, but don't give up if you don't get there right away.
(All this can be adapted for those who need to gain instead of lose weight, of course. Switching to a healthy high calorie substitute for something you currently eat regularly, for example. Or starting to work in higher fat accompaniments to your meals such as nuts, avocados, and cheeses could help tilt the scale the way you want to be heading.)
Discardia 
Seems to me that equation “take in less than you let go” applies to getting rid of useless kipple/cruft/junk that accumulates in living spaces as well.
It also applies to (for example) pollution/the environment, or well, anything that is undesirable and to be eliminated or at least reduced to a tolerable level.
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I’m definitely on a permanent yarn diet so things don’t get scary around here. While I occasionally succumb to the $4 a skein bin, I have a storage ottoman and a tote bag and that’s it. I make myself pull yarn out of the stash and find a good purpose for it by only letting myself buy new yarn when I’ve been good and cleared out a little space. Unless it’s a really special project, there’s no need for me to go out and buy yarn when I have plenty. I’m supposed to be knitting and making cool objects, not collecting yarn…
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Regarding your tip about tracking steps: This has been extremely valuable to me. I was a skeptic about wearing a pedometer. I have been doing weight training and cardio for most of my life and thought that my exercise ‘sessions’ at the gym or taking hikes were the answer. Well, doing any kind of exercise is part of the equation, but a person REALLY should get an idea of their EVERYDAY activity level, and the pedometer is the perfect tool for doing this.
I knew that my job, sitting in a cubicle most of the day or attending meetings, put me in the sedentary category, so that’s why I’d always make the effort to exercise. But once I started using the pedometer, I realized that my total number of steps were quite low on days I didn’t go to the gym. So, it got me walking at the end of the day (even if I’d already gone to the gym) to make sure I’d hit my 10K steps.
This has boosted my overall activity since I started doing this two months ago, and now I’ve lost those stubborn five pounds. Oh definitely, you have to combine exercise with a SENSIBLE eating plan that is described so well in this tip — along with my perspective: you do have to be disciplined….especially if you were a person who could eat just about anything when you were a young person. As you age, you just can’t get away with that. Sorry, but that’s the truth. The flip side of NOT getting to eat cookies, candy, and cake every day when you’re older is that –yes– you’re wiser (you know you are!). Wiser is great!!!
You can get a simple pedometer for under $20, and mine required no set-up or programming. I just look at the number of steps. I don’t hassle about the mileage (you have to measure your stride to do that). Just do the simple monitoring of your number of steps every day. I’ve been slowly bumping up the daily average per week (yes, some DAYS you just won’t get your goal — due to external forces — so shoot for an average per week). My goal for the four weeks is to have a daily average of 12K.
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Bertanna, I think you’ve just inspired me to move “get a new battery for my pedometer” from the “oh, I really ought to do this soon” list (where it has languished since late last year) to the “do tomorrow” list. Thanks!
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There’s a fun little pedometer community called Walker Tracker – you can keep track of your steps, write a step blog, and see how your pals are doing. It keeps stats which has been a source of motivation for me.
(fortunately, I live close enough to work that I can walk, so I’m now averaging almost 11,500 steps/day. yay!)
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Edward, thanks for the tip for the site http://walk.ideacog.net/index.php?page=about
I was looking for something like this, and it’s even better than what I assumed would be available for free.
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