Might be a bit long, but I'll share my experiences if you want them
I'd recommend changing goal from "weight loss" to "getting fit".
I'm still a bit overweight at the moment, but everywhere except for the stubborn belly-fat I still have shades of looks reasonably good actually. What I did was, over about 8+ months, just started working out at home.
My current daily routine (providing I have time and don't get ill!) is:
71 pressups a day (1 for luck!)
50 situps a day
20km on my exercycle
20 curls on each arm with a weight.
Of course, if time is short I cut out one or two of those, usually the cycling. The cycling makes the greatest difference though and I'd say pressups are good too, because they make your arms look sexy
and tone the rest of your body at the same time. I find them a strangely satisfying exercise now
Cycling in particular is a really fantastic exercise. Low stress on your joints and bones, high energy usage and you can tailor it to however long you want if using a stationary cycle (which you can get cheap second hand). Keep an exercise diary so you can motivate yourself to continue on with it.
The hardest thing is starting out. I had no motivation when I started and I didn't "get" exercise. After I kept it up though (the essential thing) and started seeing results, my attitude changed and I started enjoying it.
If you haven't worked physically in ages (like me back then), start just doing like 5 of each, a 5 km cycle or run or whatever or possibly even less than that. Once you feel stronger, push yourself to do another 5 and keep increasing it. I find the ratios above are a happy medium for time versus payoff for me, but everyone's different.
The cool thing is, assuming you're not going overboard with food, your body will start to maintain that build and weight and you will get
fitter in addition to looking and feeling better. I can now carry loads that lots of people find too heavy and stairs and jogs to places are no problem for me, whereas it used to be embarrassing when I would start getting out of breath.
It was also encouraging in that girls seem to pay me a little bit more attention now. More importantly, however, I feel confident and strong in myself.
I dropped a few stone through just working out with the above and avoiding crap food wherever possible, then I had to stop exercising for about a month...and my body stayed the same. Neat! Now I'm back to the point where I can work out and start lowering the weight again.
As the poster above said, if you're simply looking to "cut weight" off, it's all too easy to drop loads of it by radically changing your life for a couple of months and then put it all back on again. This is why I've never "dieted" or anything.
Anyway, I hope that's not too long. I just wanted to share what I think is the philosophy that helped me, and that's to make simple but permanent changes to lifestyle gradually, rather than dive right into one thing radically and then get nowhere in the long term.