As for tracking, fitday.com, dailyplate.com, the many iphone apps etc are great at keeping track of your calories and progress. Until you start tracking what you are eating, you will not have any idea how many calories you are really consuming. As for methods for losing weight, at the core, it's extremely simple. To lose weight, eat fewer calories than your body uses. To gain weight, eat more than your body uses. A good way to go about this is to track your weight and what you eat for a couple weeks using one of the methods above. If you are gaining weight, reduce your calories by 100-200 calories and re-evaluate in a week. Unless you are significantly overweight, shoot for 1-2lbs of weight loss per week. One pound of fat contains roughly 3500 calories, so 1lb/week of weight loss means a 500 calorie deficit per day. As your body adjusts, your metabolism will slow and after a couple months you will have to lower your calories more to maintain your caloric deficit. Finally, you should eat more protein if you want to preserve your muscle mass while losing fat. If you are lifting weights a few times a week and maintaining a 500/cal/day caloric deficit, shoot for at least 1g of protein per pound of lean body mass - or less if you run or even less if you are inactive.

I lift weights for a couple hours 3 days a week and I track everything I eat. It's a lot of fun and it makes you look great naked :omg:

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