Different things work for different people based on body type activity levels etc. However, there is a mathmatical formula for losing weight. Back during my competition years I tried lots of bad diet advice. Judging by what you wrote(and others) there are some mistakes and misconceptions about weight loss here. Truth be told there is really now way around it, in order to lose weight you have to know your caloric needs to maintain your current weight then you have to take in less than that amount. I wrote a pretty lengthy article about it on my blog so check it out.
http://hungsingmartialarts.blogspot....n-kung-fu.html
I also agree with sevenstar that short training durations are preffereable to long workouts. I try to keep all my personal workouts around 1 hr and ramp up the intensity. Just for being effiecient its much better. I can squeeze in more volume of work in 1 hour now than i used to when i trained for time i.e. "I train for x amount of hrs per day"
Another valuable resource for training tips is this blog
http://rosstraining.com/blog/