Here’s what I’ve noticed over the years of lifting, moving and eating.
Because muscle is muscle and fat is fat, if you’re interested in losing weight, focus on what you eat more than exercise. Exercising is good, but if you just want to lose weight, just cut way back on carbohydrates and you’ll lose weight without any extra exercising. Exercising is good but it’s not required if you only want to lose weight.
You can both watch your carbs and exercise too. Our bodies make every effort to conserve energy, so if you want to build muscle you’ll need to give your body a good reason to do it, and that’s through stressing it by lifting heavy things and moving more. Then allow time between the stress sessions for your body to rest and adapt to the loading you’ve put it through.
I’ve noticed that people either worry about getting too muscular from exercising or not getting as muscular as they’d like to be through exercise. People get their unrealistic expectations from examples they’re exposed to that focus on exceptional specimens. We aren’t shown the wrecking yard full of the people, without exceptional genetics and/or an exercise history, who’re hurt, worn out, or just frustrated. Instead, work at being the best you possible without concerning yourself much about what the exceptional specimen is able to do.
That’s about it in a nutshell.