I am 5' 10". It took me about 14 to 15 months to drop 100lbs. What I did was, as much as possible, changed the way I approached eating. I was a habitual eater. If I sat down to watch a movie, I gotta have a back of chips. If I was bored, I had to munch on something. If I stayed up late night, then I wanted to have ice cream or chocolate at like 1AM. Coming from India, I was also hugely addicted to rice, flat breads etc, which have a lot of carbs and sugars. Most importantly, when I ate, I had to eat till I was absolutely stuffed.
So the habits and the psychological feeling of when eating came to an end had to be changed.
So I did the following:
a) Cut out eating sweet foods, desserts etc daily, but instead had it once a month., Reduced foods like rice, wheat, pasta, breads etc., Aka portion controlled them.Back then we did not have MyFitnessPal etc., So I just eyeballed it. Like 1 cup of rice, 2 Chapathis, or 2 slices of bread etc., What I did not do, is deny myself things or think that I would not eat something for the rest of my life.
b) To tackle my sweet cravings, I relied on fruits. Again portion controlled them.
c) Worked out with weights and cardio. One thing I noted was doing too much of cardio increased appetite greatly. So keep it to 20 to 30 mins per day. Do weights more.
So a typical daily schedule for me would look something like this:
6:30AM - Wake up.
7:30AM - Hit the gym. 30 mins cardio, 30 mins weights.
9:00AM - Breakfast - Typically 2 eggs, 1 slice of toast, 1 banana and a coffee.
9:30AM - Work.
12:30PM - Lunch. I'd eat 1 cup of rice, 200grams of chicken, and some veggie or legume. Usually my go to veggies were Cauliflower, broccoli, okra, eggplant etc., Legumes that I usually had were white or black chickpeas.
3:30PM - I'd have a snack - A cup of fruits.. Usually consisting of a fruit salad bowl that I bought from the cafeteria consisting of grapes, mangoes, apples, banana and melons.
7:30PM - Dinner. Id have 2 chapatis, lentils, 200grams of chicken or fish.
And then nothing else until 9AM in the morning. I dont know how many calories this was. Likely 2000 to 2500 calories in my opinion.
I still think that could have been easier if I had cut out the bread and the rice, and instead subbed it with high volume, low calorie foods like broccoli. Or Cauliflower. You can eat a lb of brocooli and it is still only 100 calories. Which is what I do today.
Oh and last but not least, I cut out drinking and smoking. To this day I dont drink or smoke! Best decision ever.
So basically you need to change how you eat food, how much you eat, and learn to love different things. Like for example instead of a piece of cake, try a bowl of fruit instead. Its sweet too, but its healthier. But dont say no to cake for the rest of your life either. Just set 1 day a month and have a piece of cake, but have the discipline to not enter a binge eating phase once you try that piece of cake. If that is a risk my advice would be to go on the low carb, portion controlled diet, and let your body acclimate to it. Eating sugars, craves more sugars and cutting out sugars will slowly acclimate your appetite and body to not craving it over a period of a couple of months. So stay off foods that will put you in a binge eating phase for the 2 months and then portion control them after that.