I think it's less about eating less, and more about burning more energy than you put in. After all, isn't fat really just unused energy reserves? Just do craploads more activity, but don't change your diet too drastically (trick your body into thinking it has energy to spare, and it should start using that excess instead of the new supply)
Well, they are both the same thing. You're just taking the calories out of the start of the equation rather than taking them out at the end. Usually it's easier for people just to eat less - it's really easy to eat back more than you burned, especially accounting for the extra hunger caused by exercise. How many times have you heard "I exercised today, so I deserve a <some sort of horrendous calorie-filled thing>" (or similar variant)?
I mean yeah, it can help if you're doing a lot of exercise, but for most overweight people this is unfeasible. They're usually sedentary and depending how overweight you are, high-impact activity can be out of the question. If you get a sedentary person pushing their hardest they're still only going to burn a couple hundred calories. Anything more and it just gets miserable.
Way easier to not eat over maintenance than to overeat and try to burn the extra off.
(less soda, more fruit juice; have an orange instead of M&Ms or something. Little changes. Drinking more water is a biggie.). I mean, for a good amount of time, while my funds were running kinda short, I invested more in produce than junk food, and over time, I noticed that actually made some difference with my overall energy levels, and my winter weight faded more quickly.
Well I'm replacing soda (as often as I can bring myself to) with sweet tea (not that great of a change but still better than soda kinda) and water.
I'm eating more fruits and less processed food stuffs.
Eating less processed stuff is a good idea, but remember you can still lose weight eating pretty much pure crap - just comes down to portion size. Though definitely you have way more energy when you're getting enough veggies and pulses etc. No 'afternoon crash' is the best benefit imo.
Soda/sweet tea/fruit juice are all pretty much identical nutritionally. The sweet tea and fruit juice can actually have more sugar per ounce than cola, sprite etc. So just be careful if you're thinking it's a healthier substitute. Would be more effective to switch to diet soda, green/black tea, or (the horror) water.
And I might see if I can pull a 'push yourself to your limits' exercise regiment tonight.
I'm going to be sore tomorrow and it's uniform day but I don't much care...
Have fun.
edit: somehow post got snipped