This is a little off topic, but I think it's important since we're talking about health. The easiest way to lose weight involves one simple phrase: "Burn more calories than you eat." You do this with proper diet and exercise.
Honestly a lot of people overcomplicate things. Just keep a rough track of how many calories you eat per meal, per day. You can calculate your threshold to maintain your current weight here:
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm
Now cut down a little bit when you eat. Don't overdo it. Even cutting 100-200 calories helps a lot. There's a surprising amount of foods out there that have tons of calories yet do nothing to make you full, such as many desserts.
If you don't exercise, then find the time to add in light to moderate exercise. It doesn't have to be crazy, especially if you hardly ever exercise. Walking has helped many people. You can increase the intensity of your exercise plan once you get used to it. If you overdo it, then it becomes discouraging if you exhaust yourself.
If you are significantly overweight then you will lose weight much faster than a person who is only 10 pounds over, for example.
I am by no means a nutritionist, but I've done quite a bit of reading and have experience losing weight. Doing training for triathlons I've had to be a little more cautious of what I eat and it's made a big difference. Before I was exercising with high intensity but still eating a lot of crap because I believed it didn't matter with the level of intense exercise I do. Surprise, I wasn't losing weight. Once I started calorie counting I began to lose weight. I was 183 at 5' 8" at the beginning of this year, the most I ever weighed in my life. Now I'm about 167 and looking to be just under 160 by the end of the year. It's harder for someone like me to lose weight since I'm roughly around what I'm supposed to weigh. A friend of mine lost a lot more weight quicker since he was in the overweight category.
Anyway, to stay on topic, I always tend to think of fat bass player stereotype, but in a lot of music I listen to, especially punk, the fattest guy almost never seems to be the bass player. In r&b I tend to notice bigger bass players. I've always been roughly around the same weight as other people in bands I've been in. Never been the fattest.
