It's all about calorie deficit. Whatever is most comfortable for you to achieve the calorie deficit.
Calories.. Lower calories...
...Sounds like you must count calories and that's in fact too complicated for most people. Most of people stop thinking about losing weight when they hear about calories. Yup, people are just plain lazy, too lazy to think or reason about things.
If you want people to lose weight, you need to make things extremely simple so they don't need to think. People don't like to change their life style, so they come up with all kind of excuses: "no I don't have the to count calories." But it is much more simple than that. You need to make it as simple as possible so they can't make excuses!
Basic program, for 90% of the people in the whole world, these steps should be quite enough to lose weight:
Step 1:
Get rid of all soft drinks. Sugar or sugar-free doesn't matter. Don't drink anything but water to the meals and between them. Coffee and tea is ok, but no sweetener or cream.
Step 2:
Eat less. Smaller portions, less often. Snack once or twice a day is ok, but no potato chips or similar. But sweet bread or a couple cookies is fine, and fruit of course.
Step 3:
Varied food. Don't chose what to eat because of laziness or habit. Vary the food.
Step 4:
Get used to go around a bit hungry. To eat less food or smaller portions, you won't get the same feeling of being full. If you can't stand being less stuffed, you won't lose weight.
(I have gained weight the last year and all I can blame is too many business lunches. I eat too much, and that's all. I don't need to count calories or exercise more. All I need is to eat less, like I used to do.)
Step 5:
Don't sit all of the day. You actually don't need a training program. Just make sure you don't sit all of the day, but walk around, ride a bike etc. Bringing movement into your everyday life is ten times more important than to schedule a training session a couple of times a week!
Training schedule and everything else is something you do if you can get away from having a not so healthy life style.
ONE big problem though in many countries is the common life style that people share. I know a guy who came here from Texas US. He lost a whole lot of weight in 6 month and become much more healthy than he was just by eating regularly what everyone else here eat. All he did was just eating the regular food that everyone else eat. Why he had become fat was because in his hometown, he ate what everyone else ate and what was available there. So sometimes, eating healthy meals or having a healthy life style is just not available where you live. The first and best solution if you want a long and healthy life is - move to a place where people are healthy and live long. If you can't move, you're still f-cked. Simple as that.