For me, *this* is why WEIGHTS over CARDIO is KEY!

jewelsinbig - I *used* to have lower-back/hip issues. About 8 years ago I injured myself (not through any exercise endeavour). However, strength-training has eliminated these problems, completely! (Even 2.5 years of bikram hot yoga didn't "eliminate" the back/hip problem areas, although it did alleviate most of the pain.)

To reinforce what OP said.

All you need to get into shape is an idea of your calorie intake vs the amount of cals u need to maintain your weight. You make sure you choose healthy foods and make sure not a lot of your choices are processed, and you will lose weight consistantly without cardio. The other part of the diet is if you handle only drinking water except maybe a day or two on the weekends, if will help tremendously. The amount of calores you cut out by drinking only water is actually insane. The thing is though, some people might say, 'well how come I can't drink diet soda/beverages since it has low/no cals?' Well diet drinks for some reason or another (probably the artificial sweeteners and other crap in it) it causes water retention, meaning bloating. It also is thought to cause an insulin release. Now you are probably saying why would it do that if there is no sugar in it. Well our bodies being simple yet complicated, when we taste something sweet, the body is thought to release insulin based off just that. So that's why water is the best. It's not so much the diet drink as it is what you are going to eat/drink after the insulin release.

As far as 'exercise'. Lift weights, period, no excuses. The more LBM you have (Lean Body Mass aka Muscle) the more calories you will burn during periods of inactivity. If you are a woman and your fear is that you don't want to look like a man, you won't because the transformation from going to what you look like now if you aren't lifting weights, to the extreme of looking masculine, would take a lot of time, and in a large part of the scenarios where the women you see look 'manly', they are taking steroids as well. Just like how hard it can be to do a transformation by losing weight, you won't gain muscle over night either. Actually, for someone who has been weight training for more than a year, it is impossible to put on more than 1lb of muscle a month (the figure is actually less) unless you take steroids. You make most of your gains (put on the most LBM aka Muscle) in the first year of lifting weights.

As far as cardio goes. well, cardio is a slippery slope for most people. For most people who want to get in shape, and fail along the way for no other reason then they arent satisfied with the results they got from the amount of effort they put in, they are likely switching their food sources, and eating healthier, but are doing minimal weight training, and a lot/some cardio. People think the secret to getting into shape fast is watching what you eat and doing cardio. While yes that will work for a while, you will drop weight, and look better. Most of these people didn't take the time to figure out how many calories they need to be eating in order to lose weight while preserving muscle. This is where cardio can be detrimental to your goals. Cardio is going to create a larger deficit in your calories ingested vs calories expended. But, when we are hungry, as humans, we have a tendency to eat. If you are already not tracking how much you should be eating, you are more then likely eating way too little, and then you do cardio, you are going to impulsively eat when you are done, or a few hrs later. Then should you have eaten your final meal for the day after you did cardio, but haven't eaten enough, you will more than likely end up eating again. If you eat again and it happens to be sometime late at night right before you go to bed, or wake up in the middle of the night hungry, you will probably eat a really unhealthy snack which has a lot of carbs in it. So in the end, you did the cardio for nothing as far as weight loss goes. In the long run, cardio is detrimental unless you figure out your calorie intake because you will end up burning muscle. We want to preserve as much muscle as possible, because that is the biggest part about looking in shape, and burning calories when you are inactive/sleeping. So don't make cardio your primary form of exercise unless you have to ie heart problems or understand your calorie intake and macronutrients


I guess I should add that I lost 45lbs without doing any cardio.