I'm sorry I didn't read all of the posts, but I feel my diet has been the easiest I've ever done. I keep my sugar grams under 25/day. You may say that you don't eat sweets, but I ended up giving up milk. That bowl of cereal every day was an easy 50g. I loved ketchup, stopped using that and forced myself to like mustard or salsa. Not only did I lose weight, but IBS, joint pain, anxiety, heart palpitations almost all went away. I figured my blood work would suffer as I ate egg mcmuffins almost 4 days a week at the start. But ALL of my numbers have improved. Sugar is evil!
Diet pop is not a great alternative either, it tricks your body. I don't care about carbs, I just watch sugar grams. I even stayed off fruit for the first few months just to get my body not craving sugar. I lost 30 pounds or so in a couple months. I started around 295 and I'm steady at 265. I am 6'2.5" and ran a marathon at 275 years ago, so I'm not your typical fat ass.
I am not so fanatical about it as I feel more than comfortable in my clothes, but if I get that motivation I go a week without any of those things I mentioned above and another 5 pounds drop off. But most of the time I have little cheats, like a donut or candy bar. But it doesn't interest me nearly as much as it did. But it's really hard for me to go to McDonald's and have a large coke, that's 3 days worth of sugar. I found that I ate much worse as a "reward" for staying away from sugar, and it didn't matter what I ate I lost weight. Of course I don't eat a lot, just ate poorly, so we may be a bit different. I've tried the Keto/low-carb diets, but I could never do that for the long term.
This has been so easy that it's just my regular life now. I drink tito's and La'Croix mostly, pretty much gave up beer. I'm hoping to increase my gym life this winter after I'm done golfing and hope to get under 250 for the first time since just after high school. If you have any questions feel free to PM me.