The is so much information out there on "weight loss secrets" and "how to lose weight" that most people can't help but get confused. The truth is, though, that there is only one weight loss secret, and one way to lose weight. All of that other stuff is designed to help you do this one thing.
Before you can understand the (one) secret of losing weight, however, you must first discover why you gained the weight to begin with.
Mother Nature is, indeed, a wise lady. She designed your body to work in ways that mere mortals could never conceive. At the center of it all is the engine that keeps everything else running by supplying energy to every cell, every muscle, every organ. It supplies that energy by burning calories that we get from food. Every meal you eat adds to the fuel that the engine needs to keep running.
Even more amazing is the way your body reacts when you consume more calories than it needs at the time. It converts those extra calories to fat and stores them, so that, if a time comes that the engine needs more calories that you are consuming, it can re-convert that fat to energy. Think of it as Mother Nature's way of keeping the engine up to speed through times of feast and famine.
There's not a lot a lot of feast and famine these days, though. We mostly live in a time of feast, and (thankfully) famine is rare. The fact is, most people have more than enough to eat, and they take advantage of their good fortune.
Unfortunately, your body doesn't know that no famine is coming, so it continues to store extra calories in fat cells and, well...you know the rest.
By now, that one weight loss secret that you're searching for should be obvious. You must reverse this process! If you take nothing else away from this article, take this: To lose one pound of body fat, you must burn approximately 3500 more calories than you consume in a given period of time (a day, a week, etc).
Assuming your weight gain is not due to a medical condition, there is no other way! If you can find a way to (1) eat less, or, (2) exercise more (or, better yet, both), you will lose weight. Mother Nature won't have it any other way.