Cut out the fruits and all that crap. Fructose is not the friend of somebody trying to lose weight. The old hypothesis about calories in and calories out is not accurate at all, but rather a very outdated and superficial analysis of human metabolism.
To use the analogy of a car, if you put diesel in a gasoline engine, the chemical energy going into the motor might be greater, but the fuel is wrong and you won't go very far. This is the same concept as calories in should be less than calories out - a concept that focuses really only on the chemical bond energy of the foods you are eating and ignores whether or not the human body is meant to run on these foods. A prime example in nutrition is fiber. Technically fiber is a carbohydrate, but since it is not broken down into usable fuel by the body, it is not counted as sugar. You would be unwise today to count this in your caloric intake. Think of the bulk-forming laxative Metamucil. You could eat it all day long and it's not going to fuel your body. You'll just crap out the hydroscopic psyllium husks.
The last shit you want to put in your body is anything processed, and I am especially talking about hydrogenated oils and margarine. Basically the story with hydrogenated oils is that oils solidify and liquify at different temperatures based on how many hydrogen atoms are attached to the carbon chain that forms the oil. When you have an oil that is a liquid at room temperature, it is not easy to put it into a packaged food and have the packaged food remain appealing to a customer. By adding another hydrogen to the carbon chain, which is essentially completely altering the molecule to something that never would have occurred naturally, the oil will become a solid at room temperature. Now you can put it into a food product and the oil will not separate out of the food anymore. Make no mistake, your body was never meant to run on hydrogenated oils.
As for fats, you absolutely want to eat high quality animal fats such as bacon and butter. This is the type of fuel that your body will run best on. The same goes for high quality meats - not Chinese take-out, but real chicken and red meat. And no, red meat is not bad for you, but you will not benefit from eating low quality processed meats. You need the real thing that your body was meant to run on.
Potatoes and such are truly garbage for your body. The glycemic index (a measure of how fast the food raises blood sugar) of a baked potato bests that of table sugar because the cooking process cleaves the starch and you will get a terrible insulin spike after eating shit like potatoes and bread. The very worst is white bread, which nutritionally is nothing more than fluffy table sugar.
Here is what you need to know about metabolism, and this is science, not Richard Simmons:
The body runs on sugar and sugar only. In your body, this is the glucose in your blood and it is the only fuel that your body uses to run cell processes. How your body gets that glucose can occur in a few ways. Either you can eat it directly, or you can let your body make the amount of it that your body needs to run.
Lets say you eat a baked potato, which is terrible for you if you want to lose weight. If you are hungry, your blood sugar is probably dipping, which triggers a hunger response. When you eat the potato, your blood sugar increases to an optimal level right away, but there is so much sugar coming in from the potato, that you would turn hyperglycemic if all of the sugar went into your blood. This is where your insulin kicks in and takes the extra sugar out of circulation by converting it either into glycogen or into fat. More on glycogen in a second.
Now let's say you eat a stick of butter on your baked potato. The fat will slow the absorption of the sugar from the potato, but not by a whole lot. Your blood sugar increases, the extra sugar become glycogen or fat, and the butter goes straight into stored fat (adipose). The exact same thing happens when you eat pizza.
Now lets say you don't eat the sugar or the carbs that become sugar. Your body has stores of a sugar called glycogen. Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles and converted to glucose extremely quickly. When you run out of this glycogen, your body can no longer use this metabolic pathway to create glucose. Think of glycogen reserves like an immediate fuel tank for maintaining blood glucose levels. Once you deplete this fuel tank, the first thing your body wants to use is adipose tissue, which is what we all call fat.
By depriving your body of sugars, you are forcing the body to deplete its glycogen reserves and metabolize fat reserves for fuel. This is where weight loss actually occurs. When your body is metabolizing fat, the result is a molecule called a ketone, and you can measure the concentration of these ketone bodies in your urine using a test strip for diabetics that is available at any local pharmacy. As long as you avoid putting sugar in your body, your body will continue to run on fat. As soon as you eat sugars, your body will use that sugar for immediate blood glucose and put any leftover sugar into glycogen reserves. Then you need to burn up those glycogen reserves before your body touches its fat again.
In the unlikely event that somebody runs out of fat to turn into blood glucose, the body will turn into a state of catosis, which means you are now metabolizing protein (muscle) and turning that protein into blood glucose. This is highly unlikely, especially if you are eating enough that you are not starving yourself. If you have fat on your body, your body will use it before it uses protein for glucose.
In summary, biologically your body is meant to run on high quality fats and proteins and very very small amounts of low glycemic carbohydrates. This means butter, coconut oil, olive oil, nuts, sesame oil, bacon, chicken, eggs, pork, red meat, etc. Your body was not meant to run on breakfast cereal, white rice, white bread, baked potatoes, large quantities of fruit, beer or cheap processed foods. If you want to lose weight, just look at the metabolic pathway and maximize it. You may also be interested to know that the strains of wheat and maize we consume today rank far higher on a glycemic index than the ones consumed a hundred years ago. And it may also benefit you to cut out gluten, much of which you will eliminate with a low carbohydrate diet. Gluten has an inflammatory effect in the body and many many people benefit from eliminating it, not just those who suffer from Celiac disease.
I hope this helps.
M1Amen