starling72

What's worked for me is to add the exercise first and, at the same time, make small incremental changes to what or how much you eat. The weight loss will come naturally (and gradually) as you change your lifestyle.

I started by adding 15-20 minutes of riding my stationary bike 3-5 times per week until that didn't feel like a challenge anymore, then kept slowy increasing the time up to 30 minutes and eventually made a 30 minute morning ride part of my every day routine.

At the same time, I stopped focusing on meat as the main part of my meals and made sure my plate had 2-3 times more veggies than meat & starches (potatoes, rice). I didn't cut down on portion size, just on the kind of foods I was eating. My wife and I bought 3 of the AHA cook books (One Dish meals, Quick and Easy, and Meals in Minutes), which have a large number of easy to make, delicious meals in them that are far healthier than what we had been eating...especially if you stick to the portion size for each recipe.

Those two steps didn't seem all that drastic to me, given that my blood work was all out of whack. It didn't really feel like a dramatic, all-at-once change since I slowly worked into the exercise and really just became more conscious about what I was putting in my mouth. I knocked off 25lbs in 6 weeks as a side benefit without really even focusing on it (I started as a 305lb man, so I have a long ways to go to that "ideal weight") and I'm trying very, very hard to remain unfocused on my weight, but rather on making the lifestyle changes stick and become second nature.