It's basically calorie counting plus exercise facilitated by free web tools (and smartphone apps) to make it easier to keep track. I never changed what I eat, just the quantities. I also found it helped my motivation to exercise; I knew, for instance, that if I could work in 30-60 minutes I'd be able to have some ice cream for dessert.
Prior to that I'd already pretty much trained myself to drink water rather than anything with many calories. That leaves a lot more room for, say, ice cream 
Another thing I found myself doing was craving variety. I'd eat just a little of this, just a little of that, and I felt like I was getting away with something...
A kitchen scale is really helpful. After about 6 weeks of logging everything, I developed a much better eye for assessing the likely number of calories of anything I was about to eat. I think most of our intuitions, aided and abetted by people trying to sell us more food than we need, are way out of whack. One "serving" is rarely what the typical American would take as one serving of anything!
Even the fact of logging everything both slows your eating (giving you more of a chance to feel "full" before eating too much) and interrupts the process of mindless eating that makes it all to easy to pack on the pounds. It's one thing to grab a bag of chips and go watch TV; it's another to go to the kitchen and get a plate, weigh out a serving of chips, and go watch TV. If you want more you really have to decide to get up and do all that again. I'll do that sometimes, but at least I'm doing it mindful of what I'm doing, rather than just shoving another handful of chips into my mouth!
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