From my experience, progress is a good motivator to keep pushing it. When you start on low carb or something like Keto, you’ll get progress for sure. If you want more progress beyond that, you will simply not be able to deny that a calorie is a calorie. You have to reduce calories, period.
In 2012 I followed the Four Hour Body approach - eat enough to never feel hungry after a meal, reduce carbs (beans & pulses, mainly) so it's not keto, drink more, avoid 'white things' (rice, flour, sugar), bump up your meal size to compensate for the absence of carbs, have one cheat day a week to keep you sane (eat as much as you like or whatever you like for lunch & dinner on that one day). Jot down everything you eat - it helps motivate you to not eat poorly.
Measure everything - well, as much as you can. I used some Omron body composition scales - probably not hugely accurate in the absolute, but more than sufficiently accurate in the relative.
So I have a google spreadsheet that over the space of 18 months has daily weigh-in data, and very detailed descriptions of everything I ate each day. (It was quite the adventure, though I'd be unlikely do it again.)
I reiterate -- this graph shows changes in my mass during a period where I was never calorie-counting, never felt hungry, wasn't in keto, and felt the approach could be sustained long-term without threatening sanity. My modest amount of exercise - the occasional bicycle ride - did not change during this period.
I did the slow carb diet too when the book came out, didn't work for me. Made me sick and lethargic. And I didn't lose any weight. To each his own, I guess
