Two people can lose the same 5kg over three months and end up looking completely different, depending on how they got there.
The cardio-only route usually means 30–40 minutes on a treadmill or bike five or six days a week, with eating left mostly unchanged. It works, slowly, because the calorie burn from cardio is real but modest. A brisk 5km run burns roughly 300 calories, less than a fast-food value meal. Without a matching change to what's eaten, most of that gets cancelled out within the same day.
The strength-plus-diet route trades some of that cardio time for two or three resistance sessions a week and a modest, sustained calorie deficit of 300–500 calories. Weekly fat loss on the scale is often similar between the two, but the composition of what's lost is different. Strength training signals the body to keep muscle even while running a deficit, so more of the weight that comes off is fat rather than lean tissue.
Diet matters more in the strength route because there's less exercise volume to lean on. Protein around 1.6g per kilo of bodyweight, and swapping processed snacks for something with a fixed calorie count, two or three dates instead of a handful of biscuits eaten straight from the packet, makes the deficit easier to hold for months rather than weeks.
Neither route is wrong. But for anyone who has done cardio for years without the fat actually going, the missing piece is usually the diet side, not more hours on the machine.
For food swaps that fit either approach, see healthy food, and for more on the fruit itself, Dates Fruit.