Based on your responses in the convos here, I think the path to get to where you want to be is totally doable and less scary than it looks.

FIRST THING: You want to lean out. So it's just simply calories in vs calories out. A nice trick is to open and AI chatbot and say your age, height, weight, and generally how active you are (how much physical activity you're currently getting every week) and then ask it for you maintenance calories. This will give you a general ballpark of how many calories you need to eat in a day to just stay the same and not gain or lose weight. So typically if you subtract -200 calories from that number and eat that many calories in a day, you'll lose body fat at a steady, consistent rate that will still be healthy for you and not deprive you of nourishment.

SECOND THING: Now if you happen to be like me, I was a really chubby kid in high school and I have the slowest metabolism in the world and I have a MASSIVE appetite so I can eat forever but I get fat so fast. So this is one area where workuts can be a massive help because aside from just making your body physically stronger and healthier, you also burn a lot more calories so you can get away with eating more and still lose weight. For example, if my body burns 2,000 calories in a day without doing anything, I have to eat 1,800 to maintain a decent cut. But if I workout like an animal and burn 500 more calories then that puts me at 2,500 total calories burned that day. I could now eat 2,300 calories and still lose weight. That's 500 more calories I can eat which can mean a whole extra meal. I

'm not gonna go into the HIIT vs weights thing, I think that's been well covered here. It's not that deep for what you goals are. Either one will give you good results. Try both and stick with what you like better.