[cbloom]

By far the most important thing is that you just do *something*. Whatever it is that you enjoy and find easiest to do - do that at first. Once you lose some of the weight and start to get some basic fitness everything will become much easier and you can look into some other basic exercises.

In particular since you have the kids a lot, I would recommend just trying to do some more physical play with them instead of TV or whatever you normally do with them. Play catch, play tag, run around with them when you have time with them. It will be good for you and the kids too. I'm sure you can easily get a hard workout that way.

You know this already but you need to man up and start eating better and stop making excuses like "I don't like to spend time cooking" or "I don't like lettuce". These are rationalizations to make yourself feel better about eating horribly. You need to cut way down on the carb snacks and switch to fruit and vegetables. Obviously eating an apple is not too much prep work. No, miniwheats is not good breakfast. Sandwich with lunchmeat is an okay lunch.

There are plenty of simple bodyweight exercises that will be plenty hard for you. Just go up and down a flight of stairs a few times. Lie down on your back, get up to standing, repeat 20 times.