Hi,
Things that I suggest:
1.Don't skip meals and eat what you like (not too much but not too less) you don't necessary need to start a diet if you can control yourself and don't eat like for the whole family..
2.After meals don't go and sleep, but go and walk a bit are anything that requires a bit of effort.
3.If you need to get rid of the water or if you have water in excess in your body, then I'd suggest drinking Green tea instead of water.
4.The most important is, make exercises. (here I let you chose what kind you want).
I'm talking from personal experience. I did the things above and I lost like 100lbs/45kg a year.
I daily made bicycle exercises for a couple of hours and like 200km's/124miles. (Yeah, I have a fitness bike.
)
It's important that if you want to lose an average of 9lbs/4kg a month you need to burn like 1200 calories a day which will result in 2lbs/1kg a week.
I saw some previous posts for losing like 5-10kg/11-22/lbs a week, but trust me, that's not healthy at all. Too much weight loss in a short period of time can cause serious problems.
And finally you can mix up the type of exercises like do Aerobic (Cardio) one day the other some weight lifting if you want to make some muscles and when you're up to it do some Anaerobic (Hardcore training) and trust me, that you'll love your results.
But all of these isn't important, the important thing to succeed all of the above you need determination, strong will power and the most important thing is to be optimistic and to never think of giving up.