When it comes to your weight loss, the "slow and steady" approach is probably the safest way to go, but you can significantly speed up the whole process. Usually, it's the safest way to better fitness and weight loss at the same time: no extremes, no overly harsh diets, and from time to time you can even have something unhealthy. Like a couple of beers (arsenic, sugar, alcohol).
However, it's possible that nothing has been happening for a suspiciously long time, so you're (quite understandably) a bit nervous. You might also be getting married, changing jobs, or something else is radically affecting your life. And you simply need a proper start.
Don't succumb to the temptation to try something completely new on the web every day that you come across in this matter. You need to stick to more basic strategies and implement them more aggressively. You need to lose weight, but also gain some muscle during the process.
Move more during the day instead of tons of endurance exercise
You probably also believe that endurance exercise is the best way to lose weight, so you probably spend hours and hours every day running on a treadmill, jogging, cycling, ... But there's a smarter approach: increase your less demanding activities during the day instead. And every other day, intersperse it with strength training and moderate to moderately intense aerobics.
Many people today think that if they had spaghetti or a lot of good cheese yesterday, they'll do "cardio" today to help against all that damage. But we have a surprise for you – for the average person, it's not exercise that's the biggest calorie burner. That honor goes to good old walking during the day, working and walking around the house, walking the dog, ... and other low-intensity walking: "Scientists grandly call it NEAT - non-exercise activity thermogenesis, but it's just a grand name for more movement during the day," says exercise physiologist Dr. Mike T. Nelson, founder of Flex Diet, a modular system for maximizing performance and body composition.
Step one is to move more naturally.
Add weight for strength exercises
While you'll certainly use it now to burn calories, its benefits are more long-term. Strength exercises also help you build a better physique, which in turn makes you look better, perform better at work and in life, and you'll probably live longer. Even when you're on a diet, one thing is to expend more energy than you consume, but it's also equally important to replace all that with well-built "musculature." Aerobic exercises help keep your heart, lungs, metabolism, ... in better condition for further fat fighting. You'll also find it easier to maintain your weight afterward.
Don't completely eliminate starchy foods
You've probably seen it somewhere too: first, you have to stop with noodles, rice, bread, potatoes, ... The theory is that they are the number one enemy in your weight loss. Until recently, fats were discouraged, then starches. But a person needs all three macronutrients at the same time to be healthy. While they are not truly essential like proteins, for example, they are necessary to maintain the strength and muscle you've built.
When you exercise hard, you need sugars
For high-intensity exercise, sugars are your friends: your body prefers them for running, training, and other similarly high-intensity activities. They are also necessary for general health – when they are too low (60g of white sugar for women and 90g of sugar per day for men at most), you stress your body and potentially negatively affect your immunity (your body also makes sperm from sugars, by the way).