Swimming is good for larger people IADad, the water keeps you cool, and you use muscles you wouldn't otherwise use, you can also go at your own pace, have breaks etc without blocking other people from equipment at the gym. It's good to go through your gym routine and then go for a swim, for about half an hour.
What is quite good is within one meal to either have meat, or carbs, not both. Obviously you have to switch between the two as both are very important, but you should try to avoid eating them within the same meal. I would also say don't eat bread, if you do eat small amounts of seeded bread and you wont like this, don't eat any cheese unless you're eating reduced fat cottage cheese, quark, or ricotta.
I think most people don't realise how hard it is to burn calories, at most gyms you can enter your height, age, sex and weight so you can get a fairly accurate reading of how many calories you are burning. For me I know the rowing machine burns 30 calories after 2000 meters at a high resistance level.
While I don't think things such as WW are that great as they rely on reliance, if you buy their magazine or go on their website their recipes are pretty good, they're not just small portions either.
My wife and I have a rule, if it is more than 4% saturated fat we do not eat it more than once a month, so once a month we get a treat such as a cream cake, cheese on toast etc. Otherwise we would live on chocolate souffle and ice cream.
