If by getting in shape you mean losing a bit of weight, gaining muscle and improving your fitness there are a few steps that you can take to make a difference. The main aspects that dictate our general fitness are diet and exercise.
To improve what I'm referring to as your fitness is by using the principle of overload. Your body only improves when it needs to, so unless you present your body with a challenge that its not used to dealing with, it wont improve. You need to be doing regular exercise that is more challenging than your everyday life. Top exercises I can recommend are running, swimming, trampolining and cycling. Although I'm sure we'd all like to see an improvement quickly, but the more time you spend doing the exercise the more improvement you will see. It's a good idea to set yourself a goal that you want to meet, like running a mile in six minutes. This way you can see your improvement and see how much you still have to improve.
Losing weight doesn't have to be difficult. I can give you an outline of a better diet, but this isn't a quick fix diet, this is a lifestyle - a way of eating. The basic outline for this is a lower carbohydrate and higher protein diet. Hate to break it to you but eating fat isn't generally the problem.
There are three macro nutrients, protein, fat, and carbohydrate. Protein provides amino acids, and fats essential fatty acids, carbohydrate can only offer glucose (which is also gained from the other two). Bear in mind any glucose that is excess to requirements is stored as body fat. Healthy carbs are those found in fruits and vegetables, unhealthy are found in all processed foods like bread, cereal, pasta and cakes, cookies etc. These foods are described as unhealthy because they are concentrated carbohydrates which offer far more glucose than is necessary and are practically devoid of any real nutritional value, like vitamins and minerals.
As for building muscle, this diet can help. As well as loosing excess fat, your body can use the protein youre now eating to build the muscle you want - which is what protein is used for. Building muscle requires you to be doing sets of exercises which put stress on muscles you want to improve, by overloading. Key exercises for improving your muscular tone are push-ups (wide + normal), pull-ups, crunches, twisting crunches and leg raises.
The more time you spend following what Ive said, the bigger improvement youll see. Its up to you to decide how much you want to improve yourself and get into shape. A good book to refer to on all the basics of healthy living is How to Eat, Move, and be Healthy.
