I think we have to be careful about giving advice, and I try to limit my discussion of these things to describing what works for me, and maybe warning people off of stuff that I have good reason to believe is dangerous and/or harmful.
The reason for this is that all of the most recent credible research seems to indicate that there is no universal method that works for all or even most people--that it really varies at the individual level.
What worked for me initially was to weigh myself daily, try to keep a steady weight loss of about 3 pounds a week, and make changes to my diet if that rate stopped, slowed or reversed. I learned not to freak out about 1 day fluctuations because that's usually just water, but kept an eye on trends that seemed to be lasting more than a couple days.
I lost an initial 100 pounds doing basically just that, then lost another 50 or so through exercise.