strength training with no cardio?

Sure it's ok. One could argue that *some* cardio is advisable, though, for other health reasons. My definition of cardio is pretty tame compared to other people's. I might do intervals on a treadmill now and then, but mostly it's walking with an incline. it's good for you.

As to a lifting routine for beginners, checkout stronglifts 5x5, and do research on good form for those lifts (watching videos, etc).

What are your fitness goals?

If you're trying to lose weight there's nothing wrong with strength training in fact many people from the community would highly recommend it even when trying to lose weight. The problem however is that it is inefficient to try to grow muscle mass while eating at a calorie deficit. I personally lift heavy weights while eating at a calorie deficit to preserve my muscle and mitigate muscle loss from eating at a deficit. I am noticing some gains in strength now but I'm also still a noobie to lifting and that's to be expected for now.

I'd recommend a combination of strength training and cardio. Have a good 5x5 program like Evan recommends but maybe in the in between days do cardio. I can burn 800-900 calories on an elliptical working at my target heart rate for an hour, lifting weights I can only burn 1/3 of that (at least by my estimates).

Weightloss is all about calories in vs calories out.
Eat at a deficit and you will lose weight.

Lift weights for body.
Run/cardio for heart.

I also run so i can eat more!

Will lifting with no cardio help with weight loss at all? I do have a bunch of weight to take off, but I'd prefer to focus on getting strong (along with eating healthier).

Losing weight means creating a calorie deficit. You can create the deficit by just eating under your calorie goal or with a combination of exercise. Cardio gives you more bang for your back with burning calories if you work at a high enough intensity.

You can absolutely lose weight with weight training, just make sure you record your time and effort properly. I use fitness pal's estimate for weight training but cut the time in half. If I work out for an hour, I say 30 minutes to be safe. (Fitness pal tends to over-estimate)

Weightloss is all about calories in vs calories out.
Eat at a deficit and you will lose weight.

Lift weights for body.
Run/cardio for heart.

I also run so i can eat more!

^^This!!!!!

My trainer says less cardio more strength training - to lose weight!

He says do cardio to make your heart happy, do strength training to make your butt look good! LOL

My trainer says less cardio more strength training - to lose weight!

He says do cardio to make your heart happy, do strength training to make your butt look good! LOL

AMEN!

If your goal is to lose weight and gain strength, you absolutely don't need cardio. And if you are a beginner who is overweight, you should be able to get along for a little while with getting stronger and losing weight, as long as you eat enough protein and don't keep your caloric deficit too low. It will become more difficult to do this as you exhaust your newbie strength gains and your supply of excess calories (your fat), so at that point you can choose to stay at the same weight while slowly losing fat and gaining muscle or try to preserve your new-found muscle and cut calories so you lose more fat. I'd recommend starting strength or a similar barbell based linear progression program. Also, strength training does contain a small cardio component in that, from set to set, you don't usually fully recover from the previous set, so your heart gets a decent workout and becomes stronger.

The amount of calories burned from exercising (cardio or strength) is sadly negligible over time. You can spend an hour on the treadmill (and can you really trust activity calorie estimates?) and blow it all by eating one cookie. So in that regard, like other folks are saying, focus on what you are eating for weight loss. HOWEVER, doing strength training 3x times a week will help you maintain muscle mass as you lose weight, moreso than cardio. So eat less for weight loss, strength train to improve body composition, and cardio for heart health/endurance (although strength-training or just losing pounds can help with that too). If I had to choose one over the other while trying to lose weight, strength training hands down!

So basically, there is nothing WRONG with not doing cardio while trying to lose weight, but it does have it's own health benefits worth considering.

I shared this on another thread, but it's applicable, I think, to what you want to know:

The idea is that it's: 80% diet, 10% exercise, and 10% genetics. If you've plateaued from dieting, OR you want to eat the same and still lose weight, then cardio is good at helping with that. However, if you want to see real changes in your shape, I highly recommend heavy lifting.

***Just throwing this out there: I lost 35 lbs. without doing ANY exercise. At the time, I felt like engaging in a fitness routine was unsustainable, for me. Now, that I'm reaching my goal size, I'm finding that exercise, specifically, weight lifting is most important to reaching my esthetic goals. I STILL have to watch my intake, of course. Cardio is the last on my list, for my goals.***

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Will lifting with no cardio help with weight loss at all? I do have a bunch of weight to take off, but I'd prefer to focus on getting strong (along with eating healthier).

If you want to loose, I strongly recommend you to do cardio. You will burn a ton of kcal. Just by adding between 2-3 sessions of cardio and without changing your diet, you will loose weight quickly.

“Is it okay to do? What kind of results might you expect to see?”
“Will lifting with no cardio help with weight loss at all?”

Sure it's OK, as in it's not going to harm you.

Lifting weight will re-shape your body, make you more lean & compact, so you're going to lose inches & your clothes will fit better. But it's not going to do much, if anything, toward losing weight. In fact, initially you'll probably gain weight because muscle weighs more than fat per volume.

Muscle burns more calories per gram of tissue than fat, so it will increase your metabolism & have you burning more calories even at rest, but it's not a big enough difference to do much toward losing weight.

You'll burn more calories per minute doing cardio.

“Any recommendations for a beginner?”

1 - Start off by checking with your doctor to be sure exercise is safe for you, and discuss what a healthy goal weight is for you / your husband.

2 - Next, figure out your goal weight (if your doctor didn't already help you with this) & calories.
Here's a BMI chart: http://www.shapeup.org/bmi/bmi6.pdf
Find your height, and as a start, aim for the highest number in the green range (look to the top of the chart). If you want to adjust by a few pounds once you get there, worry about that later. So for example if you're 5'6” your goal is 150 lb.
(I'm 5'10", my initial goal is 170, which will be 105 lb down from where I was JAN14.)

The best way to control weight is to control what you eat, because it's hard to burn off calories and very easy to eat them.
It can take me an hour on the elliptical to burn 650 calories, but that's a medium chocolate malted at Culver's, which I can eat in 10 minutes.

The easiest way to figure out a healthy amount of calories is to take your goal weight & multiply it by 10. This is what my doctor & nutritionist do. So using the example of 5'6” & 150 lb, your goal should be 1500 calories. That will slowly bring you to 150 lb.

Another simple way to figure out your goal calories is to use your current weight to get the current calories needed to maintain that weight (multiply it by 10), then subtract 500 (to lose a pound a week) to 1000 (to lose 2 lb per week).
NEVER go under 1200 calories per day unless you're supervised by a doctor.
If you're starting off in the red range on the BMI chart, 2 lb per week is reasonable. As you get closer to your goal, slow that to 1 lb per week.

3 - Next, figure out which weightlifting exercises you're going to do. Start with large muscle groups (for example, squats) & finish with smaller ones (for example, calf raises).
Always work both sides – biceps & triceps, quadriceps & hamstrings, abdominals and lower back extension, etc.

4 - Then for each weightlifting exercise, learn how to do it properly so you don't hurt yourself. Look at the diagrams on the machines, get the gym's personal trainer to explain everything, read books, do a web search, etc.
Machines are easier, but train isolated muscle groups.
Free weights take more technique, but they use more muscles in concert.

5 - Now for each exercise find out how much you can lift, the absolute maximum. This is called your one-repetition maximum, or 1RM.

a - If you want to build muscle mass, do 1-2 sets of 8-12 repetitions with the weight set at 70-85% of the 1RM. You should be working hard to do the last one. When you can do 12 easily, increase the weight by 5 lb & go back to doing 8.

b - To increase endurance, do 1-2 sets of 15-25 repetitions with the weight set at 50-70% of the 1RM. If you're not tired by the last 1 or 2, bump it up 5 lb.

You could alternate days between styles, but give yourself 1-2 days off in between workouts.
I'd start with building mass for a month or so before starting to work on endurance, so you have muscle to work with. You want to lift 2-3 days per week.

For the suggestions in #5, I'm getting my information from:
American College of Sports Medicine's Resources for the Personal Trainer, 4th Edition (2014).
(Mostly pages 378-9.)