I have found that just keeping honest track of everything you eat will help you cut back on the input side. If you are eating more than about 12 cal per pound of body weight per day you are likely gaining or close to it. You have to have a roughly 3500 calorie deficit to loose a pound. That works out to -500 cal/day to loose a pound per week. If you exercise and keep track of your calories and stay below the calories you need per day you should loose weight. It also helps to learn ways to convince yourself that what you feel is appetite, not hunger. Oh, and stay away from beer, wine and hard stuff, they do not suppress appetite. Keeping it off is harder than loosing it, at least for me; I have lost the same five pounds twenty times.