What is really the best weight loss plan?

I really want to lose some weight, at least 40 lbs. I've done it in the past, but the first time around was part keto and part stress (and I lost about half of my hair and felt like I needed to throw up constantly, so I'd really not like to repeat that, lol), and the second time was hard to sustain because I was constantly tracking EVERYTHING and it was a huge pain in the ass. It was slower than the first method, but I became fitter and looked better, plus I had no ill side effects (though I don't know if the side effects of the first were due to the keto diet or the stress, or both). The second method was basically just me obsessively tracking my calories, macros, water intake, and exercise. I'm slowly getting back into it, but tracking food and water is the hardest for me to remember to do at the moment. My phone automatically tracks a lot of my activity while it's in my pocket and I always set it to track my walks beforehand. I was using MyFitnessPal and it gave me guidelines to stay within X amount of Y, but I got a bit obsessive about trying to perfectly meet all of the macro goals, which frustrated and overwhelmed me.

I just felt like keto was way too restrictive for me to be able to sustain it long term, as I am not nearly as huge on meat and cheese as a lot of people. I like and will eat them, but I really don't love the idea of that being most of my diet. I also hear so much back and forth about it being unhealthy or not.

I've looked into the Mediterranean diet, since it's supposed to be one of the healthiest, but I really can't get myself to like hummus. I can definitely do pretty much everything else, though. I struggle with so many weight loss recipes in general being really odd stuff with weird and hard to find ingredients, mostly Asian-inspired (Asian food is kind of a once in awhile thing for me and not something I like too often), or being so heavy on the hummus.

These days, I feel like I'm juggling so many things on a daily basis and it's harder to stay on track than when I was younger and my life wasn't as busy. This throws me off quite a bit as well. I really want to find a good routine that isn't terribly hard for me to stick to, and most importantly, I want to do it in a healthy and sustainable way.