How about an all round balanced diet, with appropriate portion size, eaten consistently with little junk. I know it sounds mad but it does work.
For me that means something like
Breakfast
2/3 eggs and slice of toast 3/4 days a week, porridge the other days with nuts and banana thrown in
11am
Fruit - Usually a banana
1pm
2 brown bread sandwiches stuffed full of meat and little bit of cheese (some mayo or colslaw in there too). Or often its couple of bagels with similar additions
Hand full of nuts
3pm - more fruit
6pm - half bowl of cereal before a spin. (or even a bagel with some jam)
8/8.30 pm - Dinner (Fish and veg, spagbol,steak etc)
9pm - small bar of choc or crisps.
Plenty of water. No soft drink. 4/5 bottles of beer on a sat night. One take away every 2/3 weeks.
Would only go for bars or gels on long weekend cycles.
Injured at present (8months now) so eating less but maintaining weight (although losing muscle 
).
Plenty of good information over here in the Nutrition and Diet forum on what you should / shouldn't be eating in general
This sticky in particular - Nutrition 101 is well worth reading.
Personally, I dropped about 10kgs last year by eating better. Not really dieting, it actually felt like I was eating more rather than less - but what I did do was cut out wheat - no bread or pasta. Was very strict on it for a while, and felt a whole lot better. Substitute with porridge oats, brown rice or potatoes. It makes lunches more work... no sandwiches / rolls / bagels / wraps / baps / buns / pastries...
So - along with cutting out the bread and wheat, significantly increase the amount of fruit / veg / raw nuts you are eating, in general. More fish, steak, eggs. Cut out the junk food.
My breakfast / pre-cycle meal consists of this:
1 x Grapefruit
1 x Shake:
1 scoop whey protein
1 large mug porridge oats
1 heaped teaspoon each of linseeds, wheatgerm, honey
Water
Blended, into a pint glass, drink
1 x espresso
That keeps me going for well over and hour on the bike, but I start eating bananas / bars before I get hungry, and have little glucose in the bottle to keep the energy topped up.
In general - for me - complex carbs before exercise (porridge oats / brown rice), simple carbs during (sugars - dextrose etc), protein + simple carbs immediately after.
Ah yes. "But why don't you just stop drinking then?" said the doctor to the alcoholic.
Damn you for making me have to make explicit what I presumed to be implicit, but of course the reason is that I don't have the maddeningly facile prudence, sensibility and self-control of the perpetually skinny. I can't take a square off a bar of chocolate and put the rest back in the fridge for tomorrow or the day after. Hence the need for a stricter imposition of slightly silly dietary regime that restricts whole food groups
Forget fad diets, low-carb, no-carb, paleo, atkins, blah blah blah.
They're all just low-calorie diets with different packaging. Somewhere down the line someone is using your confusion so they can sell you something.
If you want to lose weight, then the only thing that matters is calories. Forget about carbs, protein and fat. From a weight-loss perspective it doesn't matter if your daily calories come from eating two bags of chipper chips or a shopping trolly filled with carrots*. If you eat less than you burn, you will lose weight.
Changing your level of carb/fat/protein intake is for people who have very specific training goals which require specific additional intake. They're not long-term sustainable eating plans and eventually you'll start eating normally again and the weight will go back on because you haven't built up a proper habit.
If you want to lose weight, count calories. Yes, it's boring and annoying and sometimes it seems a little obsessive. But it works. And ultimately it works out easier than analysing every piece of food to ensure that it doesn't contain more than 3.44ug of processed fine carbs, or whatever the latest fad has decided is the way to go.
Eat white bread, enjoy the odd chinese, go out with the lads for a few dirty pints. Just count the calories and eat less than you burn. You will lose weight. As long as you don't have one of those insane eating habits that consist of only chips & beans every day, then your nutritional requirements will largely look after themselves.
When calorie counting, you naturally shy away from junk food because you'll notice that two mars bars contains a dinner's worth of calories but you're not even remotely satisfied afterwards.
You don't really need to integrate your exercise into your diet. What works for me is operating on the basis that the exercise isn't happening. So I don't eat more when I get off the bike or say, "Ah shure a kebab is fine, I did 100km today". Well, at least I try to operate on that basis.
Anything consumed on the bike doesn't count. But for an average 2 hour spin, you shouldn't need more than one energy drink and/or one energy-type bar. Arrange to eat one full meal like lunch or dinner once you get home and all will work out.
Whatever you do allow yourself at least one cheat-meal per week (meaning if you want to eat a burger go have it without feeling sorry about it). Over restricting food groups can have a negative effect on your physchology and push you into places you really don't want to go.
That all sounds worryingly familiar. The only way I can satisfactorily control eating junk is by not buying junk. Luckily my lack of self control in that regard is largely offset by my laziness, so the apples in the fruit bowl beat the walk around the corner to the shop, and if there's no beer in the fridge then and only then does the kettle go on. If I was going for a lower carb diet, I'd probably look at the paleo diet, but more because I like the food than any other reason. Having shared space with co-workers on the atkins diet in the past, and if you go down that route maybe buy a few night lights to leave lit around the house, or as a bare minimum leave the pilot light on on the oven.
Damn you for making me have to make explicit what I presumed to be implicit, but of course the reason is that I don't have the maddeningly facile prudence, sensibility and self-control of the perpetually skinny. I can't take a square off a bar of chocolate and put the rest back in the fridge for tomorrow or the day after. Hence the need for a stricter imposition of slightly silly dietary regime that restricts whole food groups
I think you just have to find out what works for you. For example i ve a sweet tooth, always have and always will and literally cant sit down for my eveing cup of tea without something or i feel like im depriving myself/on a starvation diet. Therefore i allow myself one small bar of choc a day or have 2/3 rich-tea biscuits (120kcals) with the cup of tea. That satisfies the cravings.
Also i really find extra water and extra protein help with cutting out cravings.
My dad uses that philosophy. He is type 1 diabetic and has to be careful regarding nutrition. He is generally fit, but would say the he is diabetic 5 days a week. He takes the weekend off.
I'm also cursed with the "Sweet Tooth"! I recently came out in sympathy with my 9 year old who was giving up sweets for Lent on the orders of his teacher in school. No sweets or biscuits for 6 weeks (apart from a few Marietta with a cup of tea!!) and I lost 3 kilos! The extra large Cadbury's egg never knew what hit it on Easter Sunday!
Read books like the diet trap, unless you actually are a clinical nutritionist how can you actually know that all Calories are equal. Almost as important as quantity is the insulin response certain foods trigger, this is what causes the body to store excess calories as Fat. The idave diet is not a low carb diet, pulses contain tons of carbs and you can eat as much as you like of them. It has been done to death on Singletrack world however I am living proof that it works as I took my Body Fat % from 22% to 8.6% (lab verified not crappy scales) and lost 20kg following the diet over a year. When I cycled I took simple carbs like energy gels as that is what the diet says to do otherwise I avoided all simple carbs except on the cheat day.
Similar here. Cut out all junk for one week. Stayed off bike and away from gym, but ended up walking about 5km a day. Lost 2kg in a week.
Back in gym now, which tbh, has a massive affect on my appetite.
Two things I've heard though (and I'm going to guess the sweet toothed amongst us may empathise). Without a decent amount of carbs everyday I get very moody, iritable really, bit of chocolate and I perk right up. Then heard a nutrionist on the radio mention that some people can suffer psychologically if they allow their sugar levels to drop too far. Doesn't mean you can eat chocolate all day, but it is something to be aware of.
Also, recently read that one of the mistakes cyclists make is eating too much fter a ride. Even though we need to replace a large number of lost calories, that we often over estimate how to replace them and eat too many calories.
May be true, may not, but makes some sense to me anyway.
Is that the don't eat any fruit diet? I find it very weird.
Yesterday my food intake was 3 Toffee Crisps, 4 x 2-finger KitKats and an M&S microwave cannelloni. Works for me.
i found the eat less carbs than you burn thing to work best for me, along with not having sweet stuff in the house, and not buying crisps. Lost about 23kg now since september, havent been starving myself, have been eating more fruit, and watching portion sizes and working on a maximum of about 2000 calories a day. Most days its less, but i will still have a chinese and a few pints, or a burger or whatever.
Just interested to hear a couple of thoughts/perspectives on this. I've been reading up about this iDave diet, I think I came across it on one of the training log threads here. Seems to me to be an Atkins of sorts but without a lot of the saturated fats.
Anyway, it's something I've wondered about before - cutting out carbs for a cyclist is like giving Michael Schumacher a jerry can of diesel. It's surely going to severely effect performance. Everytime I go out on the bike, it's not eggs and lentils I have in me back pockets, it's pure, raw, uncut carbs carbs carbs!
Has anyone tried to eliminate carbs and continue training, and how did that work out for you?
As an aside, in looking for a diet to stick to for a while I've noticed my 8 year old daughter isn't carrying any weight. So I was thinking maybe I could just eat what she eats... so that's coco-pops for breakfast, a bite of half a bagel for elevenses, small bowl of pasta for lunch, thimble of peas and some more simple carbs for dinner, and maybe some meat, followed by a big bowl of ice-cream. Hot chocolate and toast with chocolate spread before bed. -Y'know, apart from the total absence of caffeine and alcohol, it's not a bad deal