Basically, proteins and fats are good for you... carbs are bad (at least the levels that American’s eat them).
If you want to lose weight, just drop your carbs to less than 100 a day, ideally less than 50 a day, and if you do nothing else, you will lose weight.
Did you know that when humans began to farm, and started to eat a diet of primarily carbs, instead of proteins and fats, they actually got smaller? The average human became several inches shorter once we started to farm vs being hunter gatherers... not to mention suddenly started to have issues with tooth decay and other things that were not commonly seen in humans prior to the advent of farming.
Once you are on a lower carb diet, after a few days, to maybe a week, you will start to not crave nearly as much food in general. You will find yourself eat a LOT less food, because you won’t be craving it.
Most of your initial weight (like most diets) will be water weight... You will indeed see a LOT of weight come off initially when you start keeping your carbs low, as your body burns up your glycogen stores, this is nearly all water weight.... but it will be significant and rapid. After your body burns your glycogen stores, the rapid weight loss will stop... and you will need to follow your diet, and yes, exercise never hurts, and is a good thing.
If you do decide to “cheat” and have a high carb day... expect to gain a few pounds almost instantly as your body stores those carbs.. but it will drop right back off a day or two after you have gone back onto the low carb diet.
The nonsense about avoiding red meats and fats (other than trans fat, that is indeed a killer) due to cholestorol and other issues is bunk. Its been known for a long time that high amounts of processed sugars (carbs) is the cause of most heart disease, not red meat, or saturated fats. When you intake high amounts of refined sugars, your liver rapidly processes them and shoves bad things into your blood stream, fried foods also are NOT good for your heart, but not because of the saturated fat, but because the oils that most foods are fried in have oxidized, which causes an inflammation response in your arteries etc.
Basically if you grew up like I did in the 70s and 80s the government basically was telling you the absolute WRONG way to eat... and still is to this day.... CARBS (all carbs) should be treated like candy/treats. Yes everyone has different metabolisms, biodiversity is grande, but for most people CARBS should be avoided, you should NOT be eating 300 carbs a day, or whatever it is the FDA recommends you eat. (and most Americans eat FAR more than that a day).
Keep them to 100 or less, and ideally 50 or less.
The Extreme anti carb diets, are not generally great, unless you have a health reason to be that low, complete denial of them (like anything) is almost impossible for anyone to maintain.