If this helps anyone this is what i did:

I started with walking. A couple miles a day.

I added workout videos. (30 day shred and ripped in 30 5$ downloads to own on amazon prime) over and over and over. for the greater part of a year. 30 minute workouts with dumbells. Lots of pushups and situps and lunges etc. I found that workout videos pushed me at a pace that i wouldn't do on my own and would work out parts of my body that i would normally neglect. I'm getting to a point where i'm not opposed to taking off my shirt and theres some definition returning. I feel much more athletic. Like i could maybe play church ball and actually crash the boards and out hustle people.

I added running. Around 2 miles a day. Would take anywhere from 18-25 minutes. Found some trails that i liked to go to on the way home from work, or id go before work if i had time after my workout videos.

So i dedicated a half an hour to circuit training, half an hour to jogging and half an hour to walking. For me i eat better when i work out and i work out better when i eat well. So for me hitting the fitness hard was helpful to losing weight although i'm convinced its 90% diet that actually loses the weight. I made a significant time commitment to fitness of 1.5 hrs basically every day. I think it helped.

Diet wise-- started cooking from the skinny taste cookbooks. They are legit. Good tasting stuff with great fun recipes. Good dinners that are like 300-500 calories. Getting my wife on board with this was huge. Takes some shopping and meal planning but worth it. Plant based foods. Good flavors. Tasty meats and fish. Low on the carbs.

I did not eat much breakfast. It wouldn't eat until lunch time. And at lunch it was like 200-300 calories of either a salad or a protein bar or a shake. This left me room to make mistakes later in the day. Which i am really good at making. I cant resist chips and salsa.

Whenever a special occasion came up--- i ate the good stuff. I didnt deny myself the foods that i loved. It slowed me down weight wise but i was really good during the weekdays and i would trim the weight back off. I had cake and ice cream on birthdays, i ate out, i ate quite well. But i stopped treating every day like it was a special occasion. I'd try to have like 1-2 days where i would cheat but the rest of the week i was really trying to count calories and track it and do my best to keep losing weight.

protein shakes were my hunger killers. Salted Carmel, chocolate peanut butter, double chocolate....I'd put in a banana, ice, honey, peanut butter, almond milk and have a big shake that filled my tummy and kill some hunger. This thwarted a lot of snack attacks for me. But I lost weight the most when i would just have one to one and half servings of a low calorie meal and then stop eating. If i was starving id go to the shakes and maybe some snacks. I actually had a lot of halloween candy...but i'd just limit it to one or two and move on. I have a sweet tooth so i would do alot of diet soda, zero calorie sparkling sodas, crystal light packets.

Motivation wise--i scheduled family pictures and told myself i wanted to lose as much as possible before then. We payed a lot for those photos so it motivated me to schedule that for a couple months out. I used social events to motivate me to lose a certain amount by certain dates. I got together with guys from high school and that really motivated me a lot because it reminded me of times when i was leaner and it motivated me to try to reach those levels again. Those guys will always motivate me so spending time with and around them unlocks some of my competitive fire.

I'm hitting the beach in april and im basically treating it light im doing contest prep for a body building show. I'm making progress toward that. I'm still average looking...ha. But it looks a lot lot better than it did and i can see the potential now that i hadn't seen in a while.