hi all! very excited about this thread! my two cents:
For beginners, you can virtually get away with almost anything. As long as youre hurting for 2-4 days after your workouts, youre growing

if youre a leaner person, you can get away with not worrying tonnes about dieting, but if youre starting out with the goal of losing fat first, you need to get your diet on 100% first, and this is the hard part.
making a diet plan:
for leaning up, this was my diet plan:
mon-fri:
9am: 2 weetbix, 1/2 cup of fat free milk, 20g protein shake
10.30am train
11.30am, 30g protein
12pm 1/2 cup of long grain white rice + 100g chicken and veggies
3.30pm 100g tuna + salad
7pm 4 egg whites
10pm 150g steak/veggies
whilst you dont have to follow this exactly, you need to understand the reasoning behind this:
Protein: the building blocks of your muscles, without it, you cant grow, and you cant repair muscles.
carbs/sugars: chemically identical function - provide energy. The difference is timing. Sugars are fast absorbing carbs. you ONLY want sugar immediately after, or immediately before a big workout, and i only take them if im feeling really run down before or after a workout.
fats: super slow digesting, long term energy. the only place for fats in a diet is early morning, if youre not going to be training till the afternoon. If youre training in the afternoon, maybe have 3 egg whites + 2 whole eggs for breakfast, and thats all the fat you'll need.
now take a look, Im a male, lifting heavy, frequently, with big goals. and ive only got 2 weetbix + 1/2 cup of rice of carbs. Thats ~40g of carbs per day. the average adult daily carb intake is 310g/day. you seriously, seriously, seriously, dont need that many carbs to function. The idea of weight loss is to cut out as many carbs as you physically can, whilst still getting through the day. after about ~3pm, make sure you have 0 carbs. you need to taper them off throughout the day, because when you go to sleep, if theres any glucose lft in your blood, thats going to be stored as fat while you sleep. If you do this, i guarantee you 100% you will lose weight. if youre cutting, please, for the love of god, dont eat fruit. its only sugar.
It's important to make your own diet plan, and not just say 'im eating healthy'. so a diet doesnt mean 'no fat, no sugar, no junk food'. it means you fix what you eat, and the times at which you eat them. its the same for bulking, but then you up the carbs a LOT, and the protein.
in terms of creating a training plan, women out there LIFT HEAVY DAMMIT!!!! you wont grow massive muscles, you wont be a body builder, you dont have the hormones to get massive. instead, you will start to look like a figure athlete:

when you begin to make a program, learn to train little muscles with big muscles. The bigger the muscle, the more microtears you get when training. the more microtears, the more growth hormone your body will release to repair it. so if you train biceps all day, you'll get very little growth hormone. but if you train your back, and then your biceps, theres already tonnes of growth hormone in your blood when you train your biceps, so they grow. this is the single biggest reason you simply cannot neglect your legs. 2 of the 3 biggest muscles in your body are in your thighs. if you dont train them, you will not get that growth hormone. this is a big factor in putting on massive amounts of muscle in your first year, if you dont train your legs, you'll cut your first years progress by around half.
best of luck guys, but you NEED to understand this: its not a 3 month project, or a 1 year goal, or a 5 year goal. It's a lifestyle, that you grow to love, and you do everyday simply because you love it.