For me personally I can eat the foods that I eat and stay the same. When I exercise as well as eating my usual food I lose weight.
I have lost 18lbs since January by exercising. I've not been able to exercise as much now as my bursitis is playing up but I've kept all of the weight off thus far (2 months or so).
With dieting I would just gain the weight back afterwards.
I don't eat a high carb diet and choose high fat over high sugar. I have PCOS and I've recently started back on some old tablets, so should start to lose a bit of weight again.
To not gain weight on steroids has been amazing for me and exercising/eating the same food, has helped. I have bad food sometimes (pizza/takeaways) but mostly I stick to wholegrain breakfasts, light lunches, snacks of things like rice crackers, brown breadsticks and low GI foods.
I personally don't like salad, at all. I eat vegetables with at least 2 meals and try to eat foods high in Vitamin D/Folic Acid as I'm always very low on those and take prescribed meds for that.
I'm overweight and definitely think that high fat / exercise over high sugar / exercise makes a big difference.
To summarise I would choose exercise to lose weight as it has worked for me. I've burned off quite a bit of fat, but still have a large amount to go! I did walking at home videos mostly and did some jogging too. I found the speed walking/light exercises added in, really effective. Also didn't put too much pressure on my knee. That happened when I started jogging more.