One simple tip - Maintain muscle at all costs. So many people trying to lose weight do not consider this basic point.
Diets and many exercise programs cause the body to lose muscle and it is the muscle, the bodies 'fat burning furnace' that you need to focus on maintaining. Lose the muscle and what is going to burn off the fat?
On top of that all you also need to consider: calories in < calories out. Work the two together and you can achieve what ever you desire.
I changed sports 1.5 yrs ago; my first goal reshape my entire physique for my future ultra endurance goals and to that end I lost 55lbs in under a year. I maintained the muscle I needed and dropped off all the soft wobbly stuff and it was easy, and with every thing I have ever achieved it is done drug free.
There are many methods that can be used to reduce body fat and for each you can judge them on the risk / benefit ratio. Consider this risk / benefit ratio similar to how Ski runs are marked:
The beginners run will get you down the mountain but whilst on the one hand it offers the lowest risk of 'injury' it also has the least benefit to the skier. Then you have the black diamond slopes for the expert skiers, these have the highest risk of 'injury' but they also provide the greatest benefit.
The ideal slope would have the least risk of 'injury' but also offer the greatest level of experience.
If you are looking for a way to lose the soft wobbly stuff what you want is a method that will not cause 'injury' to the body (undue loss of muscle and poor body composition) whilst offering the greatest benefit (loss of unwanted body fat)
There are many ways of tackling this problem all with different degrees of injury / benefit ratios and the method that scores highly (low risk / High benefit) is High-density weight training. This is NOT low weight / high reps, this is not High Intensity training, this is about increasing the volume of weight moved over a shorter and reduced unit of time. My core utilisation of this was heavy kettlebell workouts with 15 second rest between sets and reducing rest between heavy weight training work sets also to seconds rather than the 3 minutes + on I used on strength work. The only down side to this method is my max strength did suffer some what but if you wish to target fat loss use this method on large compound movements, decent poundage but reduce the rest intervals.
