One of the problems people have who want to improve their fitness and lose weight is motivation.
As diets are long term, it is easy to become dejected after a short while if you do not lose weight quickly.
One way to keep your motivation up is to have goals to start with that are not too difficult.
If you can aim to just lose 1lb per week for your first month, this would be a great achievement.
So you could just try and cut down on the size of your meals and cut out high calorie foods.
Next introduce some extra exercise into your life. Try and introduce something you enjoy such as walking, running or swimming.
After a short while you will start to lose weight and find your fitness levels improving.
It is important to keep the motivation up. You may find swimming tedious after a while. One of the answer to this is to introduce a complimentary exercise such as cycling as well.
This is sometimes referred to as cross training.
With cross training you have at least two different types of exercise such as swimming and cycling.
This not only gives you a change of exercise, it also helps to give one group of muscles a rest and avoid strains and injury.
One nice benefit of cross training is that you will see your stamina improving.
If you swim, say 30 lengths and on another day cycle for 3 miles, after about a month
you will find that because of improved fitness and stamina, you will be able to swim 35 lengths when you go swimming and cycle for 4 miles!
You will also notice that you start to lose weight more easily and feel fitter and healthier.