Been doing similar research on same topic over the past few months, and I can say strict calorie counting is definitely the easiest way: It's incredibly easy to accidentally exceed maintenance calories which will kill the progress.
Some slightly more advanced advice:
* Figure out your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR. That's the number of calories you burn by lying on couch.
* Count your calories for food and exercise.
* Make sure you're on 10-30% calorie deficit, aim for 1-1.5% total body weight loss / week.
To make maintaining the diet easier, immediately cut out all products with added sugars. The sugar crashes and cravings will ease in a week or so. After that you'll notice you don't need to eat nearly as often, and as you decrease portion size you'll find your stomach shrinks and you'll feel full even with much smaller portions. Leave cheat days to once every two months or so.
Make sure the food is high in protein (about 1.5 grams / pound of body mass). The problem is, if you're not paying extra for 100% whey isolate supplement, you're probably getting too much sugar with the supplement so getting enough protein means you'll need to add some cardio (which in turn benefits from the protein and improves overall health). Make sure you always consume at least 20% of daily calories from fat to not hurt A/D/E/K vitamin intake. If you're obese, the calories from fat should be closer to 35% due to weakened insulin response of the body.
For the carbs you need and take, make sure it's always from products that have low glycemic index (rye bread, whole wheat pasta (Rummo is fantastic) etc). If you need to consume something that's sweet, eat it as part of a larger meal to reduce likelyhood of taking seconds etc., and to prevent blood sugar spikes that lead to blood sugar crashes that lead to binge eating.
If you're doing cardio, remember to increase distance only 10% / week to avoid over training which will slow the diet down. Stick to the 10% rule even if you think you can do more. It's as important as counting every calorie.
Also, if you're doing weights, consuming creatine etc. your body weight might increase despite fat loss, so to track body composition change the scale won't do. Body fat calipers are cheap and easy to use: there's sites that use e.g. Jackson-Pollock 7 to calculate body fat percentage https://www.free-online-calculator-use.com/skin-fold-test.ht...
Monthly progress photos also help, although if your body fat is very high the change won't be visible at first, but the speed of change is exponential.