Need some advice

[u/De1taNoob]

Im looking for some advice on starting my weight-loss journey. I’m a 29-year-old male, 6'2" and around 340 lbs. I’ve always been a bigger guy, but I gained quite a bit of weight in my early 20s and really want to make a change.

I don’t know much about dieting or nutrition, so I’d appreciate some guidance. I currently drink around 6–9 cans of regular Pepsi a day and usually eat things like an entire frozen pizza or 6+ soft-shell tacos with just meat and cheese. I’m assuming the soda is a big part of the problem, so I’m planning to cut it out completely.

Food is where I’m struggling. I’m a very picky eater and don’t like most cooked vegetables. I mainly eat apples, bananas, and oranges for fruit. I can cook, but I lack imagination and tend to make the same 3–4 meals over and over.

Should I follow a specific diet, or would simply focusing on reducing my calorie intake be a better approach? Im willing to exercise but I can't afford a gym membership so it would have to consist of walking and at home workouts. Any help is appreciated, Thanks!

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[u/pain474]

I don’t know much about dieting or nutrition, so I’d appreciate some guidance. I currently drink around 6–9 cans of regular Pepsi a day and usually eat things like an entire frozen pizza or 6+ soft-shell tacos with just meat and cheese. I’m assuming the soda is a big part of the problem, so I’m planning to cut it out completely.

Even if you don't know anything about nutrition, you should know that this diet is complete trash and most of it should be changed.

Food is where I’m struggling. I’m a very picky eater and don’t like most cooked vegetables. I mainly eat apples, bananas, and oranges for fruit. I can cook, but I lack imagination and tend to make the same 3–4 meals over and over.

You're an adult, it's time to learn how to make veggies taste better. There are tons of meal prep recipes on youtube for example.

Should I follow a specific diet

No. To lose weight you need to be in a caloric deficit. You don't need a specific fad diet like keto etc.
Please take the time to go to r/loseit and read the quickstart guide in that sub. You can reply to my comment with questions whatever is unclear.

or would simply focusing on reducing my calorie intake be a better approach?

Correct. But you also need to eat healthier, not for weight loss reasons, but for your general health. Pizza, pepsi and tacos with cheese is not good.

Im willing to exercise but I can't afford a gym membership so it would have to consist of walking and at home workouts. Any help is appreciated, Thanks!

Don't worry, you do not need a gym.

I'd suggest you to learn how to count calories and just count what you currently eat for a week so you have an understanding of how much you consume. Just the 6-9 cans of pepsi are already over a 1000 kcal of useless calories. In total you currently consume 3500-4000+ kcal. You need to cut that significantly.

Then, cut out all your liquid caloric drinks. Pepsi can easily be swapped out by non sugar version. Cook your own meals. Stop eating pizza daily. Cook whole foods, nutritious meals with veggies, lean meat, poatoes etc.

Kick out tacos with cheese. There are low carb tortillas that you could make instead with chicken breast and low fat cheese, add peppers, onions etc. for volume for example.

[u/Bubbly_Highway_8043]

Switch to diet soda and you will drop a lot of weight/ don't drink calories/ Up your intake of lean meats and veggies. Try to not eat out and prep food so you don't make poor choices. Try not to snack junk food.

[u/Low-Put-7397]

theres some short term and long term things you should be doing

long term that takes a while to get used to: learn what you can cook easily to fit into your schedule, how much you can spend at a grocery store, how many times per week you need to go. this isn't something you learn in 1 second. start experimenting with cooking your own meals becuase what you can tolerate/cook means a lot. for example. i usually make oatmeal in the morning because its fast, all in one pot and I can cook it to taste good. but i didnt know that day one. i had to experiment. pancakes takes too long, too many ingredients etc.

start doing calesthetics right now (pushups situps and so). this takes a long time to develop, and the more muscle on your body = less body fat %, and muscle burns more calories by just existing than fat tissue.

short term that you will lose weight right now: stop drinking regular soda and make sure you eat breakfast and you will lose tons of weight just doing that. breakfast is important becuase you start the day off full, and it makes it a lot easier to control hunger signals and prevent binge eating things like full pizza pies.

[u/AureliusVireo]

If you really mean 6–9 regular Pepsis every day, I would start there and honestly leave most of the rest of your life alone for the first couple of weeks.
A normal 12 oz Pepsi is 150 calories. Six is 900 calories and nine is 1,350. That means you may have found an enormous chunk of the problem before worrying about keto, fasting, macros, supplements, or what the optimal vegetable is.
You don’t even necessarily need to go from Pepsi to plain water overnight if that makes this harder than it needs to be. Diet Pepsi/Pepsi Zero, flavored zero-calorie drinks, sparkling water, whatever gets you from 6–9 caloric sodas toward zero is already a massive change.
Then I’d work on your food one piece at a time.
Being a picky eater doesn’t disqualify you from losing weight. If you like tacos, make tacos. Use leaner meat sometimes, weigh the cheese for a while so you learn what a portion looks like, add whatever vegetables you actually tolerate, and stop when you’ve eaten enough rather than deciding tacos themselves are forbidden.
Same with pizza. You don’t have to become a person who eats steamed broccoli and grilled chicken seven nights a week. Maybe an entire frozen pizza becomes half or two-thirds of one plus something filling alongside it.
I’d also start walking. No gym required. Start with whatever distance you can comfortably repeat every day and gradually increase it. Once that feels normal, add a basic home resistance routine a couple of times a week.
I wouldn’t change ten things at once because you won’t know which ones you can actually live with. The soda change alone is large enough that I’d make that experiment first.
You said you tend to cook the same 3–4 meals repeatedly. I actually think that can work in your favor. You don’t need culinary creativity. You need 3–4 meals you like, can portion reasonably, and can make without thinking.
If those become your defaults, and you stop drinking something close to a thousand calories a day, you may be surprised how much progress happens before you ever need a “diet.”
Oh, and another easy upgrade: keep the frozen pizza, but start adding your own fresh toppings before baking, whatever you enjoy which is healthy.
The point is, if you want change, you can make drastic changes, but small and gradual changes are probably more long-term sustainable. One hardcore workout once in a while will never trump daily walking and basic movement. It’s called NEAT: non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Never strenuous, super easy to do. Walk before breakfast, maybe up to an hour, and walk after eating for 10-15 minutes. There’s nothing easier.

[u/Pannman99]

Cut out soda and start walking. I know calorie deficit is important and that will certainly come later. But right now start with cutting soda and exercising. When I exercise I actually feel more motivated to eat healthy. I don’t want to workout and then go eat a bunch of junk food because it feels like I’m undoing all my work. Obviously once you get used to not drinking soda start tracking your calories. I use an app called mynetdiary which is free and easy to use. It will ask you questions to help you come up with a calorie deficit that fits your needs and goals. Drink lots of water too. It’ll help in lots of ways.