With the exception of a couple days a month, I'm usually a clean eater. It's a little easier for me to do so right now because I'm living in a developing country where food in restaurants and grocery stores are prepared from veggies/fruits from local farms and I have little access to processed/packaged food from the west.
I love clean eating. My typical diet is: B: homemade smoothie with fruits and freshly made yogurt and honey. L: big spinach salad or leftover dinner D: stir fry from homemade/fresh veggies, homemade fresh veg lasagna, homemade cauliflower puree soup, homemade veg chili, etc etc. Usually 2-3 750 ml bottles of water a day.
That said, I still gained weight when I moved here even though my diet was extremely clean. The local diet here has a lot of cream and butter and portions were a huge issue. I also am a grazer, so even when I was eating fresh cheese or nuts, I was eating too much. (I also sometimes break down and have candy or cookies from home, Diet Coke, etc so I can't claim I'm 100% clean).
So I started counting calories and that has helped a LOT with portion control and limiting the amount of fat I was consuming (even if it was clean fat).
I totally hear you that you need a diet/life change that you can live with. It's important to find something that makes sense for your own life. I've found clean eating is actually pretty easy because it involves making decisions about what you are going to eat at a different time than you are actually going to eat: at the grocery store. As long as you don't bring processed food into your home that makes eating clean easy most of the time. If you go to make dinner and the only food you have in your pantry are fresh fruits/vegetable and whole grains, that's 90% of the battle right there. (eating out, vending machines, etc are another story).
Clean eating alone may be all you need to lose weight. For me it took the extra step of counting calories. Either way taking the first step of cleaning up the diet is a big one and hopefully you'll see and feel some good results very quickly