I was on the fence about participating in this discussion because I don't want to powerlevel or sorta humblebrag but I have gone to two men's physique competitions, you know, the less gay category, the one with the shorts down to your knees, not the speedos. (Tho some people would say its even gayer).
I didn't train just by myself I had a personal trainer that would plan out my workouts and diets and really is not that complicated. I'm just gonna give general tips that would maybe help Null and others that want to improve their lives.
Don't make drastic changes, meaning, don't do something like "Ok, tomorrow I'm gonna start Keto and do Crossfit 6 times a week". In my experience, this is the number 1 mistake people make when trying to get into shape. You'll maybe be able to maintain this for a week at least before you get burned out, too sore and hungry to continue and you'll give up, eat to compensate and probably end up fatter than when you began. If you're going to start living a healthier lifestyle, the best thing you can do is small, incremental changes. If you drink a liter of coke a day, I wouldn't even say to just cut it outright, the sugar withdrawl is going to suck. So maybe cut it down to a can a day for 2 weeks, then a can every 3 days until you can just have one a week alongside your cheatmeal. You can apply this to other things, maybe don't start trying to lift like Arnold the first day at the gym, start with simple exercises with light weights 3 times a week and just let your body get used to the stress. All in all, consistency wins the race.
Don't starve yourself to lose weight. More or less like the first point, if you're overweight, you're obviously eating more than you need and you don't work out so all of that gets stored as fat. At the same time, starving yourself might make you lose some weight in the short term, but in the long run, your body is going to get desperate and store everything you eat, even if its just lean meat and vegetables, as fat. After that you'll get frustrated that you're not losing any weight anymore and get desperate, completely fall off the tracks and start to get absurdly fat (like Ralph did). Also, another big mistake people make about nutrition is cutting off carbs. I can't stress enough how important carbs are for losing weight. Even a week out of a competition when I was trying to get lower than like 8% bodyfat, I would still have things like bread (yes, bread) and rice (not the super duper organic brown rice or whatever, just regular white rice). Obviously, these were measured almost to the gram and they weren't a lot but you're supposed to increase your protein and fat intake to compensate. Now, this is an extreme example and it's not something you should maintain for more than 3 weeks max, but I'm trying to illustrate that even for people who are trying to get into Treblinka levels of fat percentage (both men and women) while still keeping up muscle mass, are consuming carbs. You just need to have common sense and eat the "good" carbs, I use quotations because there really isn't really a good or bad carb, even good or bad food in general, it's just a matter of portion control, keeping an eye on your calories and your macros (the balance between carbs, fats and protein).
Move around! You don't have to join a super expensive gym to get into shape. A cheap set of rubber bands or used weights are more than enough if you just want to get a bit more toned and lose fat. Do daily walks everyday for 45 mins to an hour. Not only is it great for the heart, but combined with a measured diet and resistance training, it's the easiest and confortable way to lose weight and get healthier. Maybe if you wanted to get more jacked then yeah, join a gym because its simply more convenient. but like I said, if you're just looking to lose some weight and get a bit toned, you could do it at home without problems.
To simplify, just use common sense, don't go training and eating like an olympic athlete day one, ease into it. Make smart choices with food, instead of buying white bread, start eating brown bread as it doesn't have that much sugar (carbs) and the fiber helps to fill you up. Start doing some resistance training, if you don't like the gym you can just workout at home and get excellent results, people really underestimate how good body weight workouts are, pushups, squats, things like that.
I'm sorry for the rambling I could have probably written all of this much shorter and concise but I don't do much writing in my life daily and english isn't my first language so it's more or less a struggle for me. Hopefuly I gave you a general idea about how you can start living a healthier lifestyle while giving some examples of my own experience so you can take it as, well, at least this retard has done these things, maybe I can do it too!
Hopefully not only Null but the forum in general will input my thoughts and accept them for better improvement, thank me for my time and efforts.