Well a recent post inspired me to follow up on my new year's resolution posted above.
As to #1, getting closer to and walking closer to God, that's a toss-up. I felt it went in a great direction for the first few months, but has not been so great recently (mostly due to laziness and distraction on my part).
As to #2, major success story. I was 276 at my worst, I am now about 239.
As far as "watching my diet" vs. "working out", I'd say the ingredients to my success has been 80% working out, 20% watching my diet.
I am now fully accustomed to going to the gym 4-6 days/week.
The other thing that helped me was a singular, focused approach - and just doing it over and over and over with no variation.
Although I heard 1000 people tell me 1000 different things to do, I politely nodded then set them aside and did the one thing that kept working for me. Go to gym, get on treadmill, enter all information carefully (including current weight, so it can accurately calculate calories being burned), put it to approximately 10% incline, approximately 3.5 MPH speed, then go until I burn 600-700 calories each time.
Turn on my pandora station that plays Buckethead, John Petrucci, etc and rock 'n' roll.