To follow up on yesterday's post about weight loss ....
With a proper diet, adding resistance training can significantly speed up your results. Muscle is what's going to help keep your metabolism high as you lose weight. It will help ensure that you end up looking lean and muscular rather than just skinny after your diet. The means that for the best fat loss and muscle building results, a combination of resistance training and traditional cardio (especially walking) is best. Knowing that strength training can definitely help you burn fat effectively, it's also important that you do the type of exercise routine that is best for it. Perhaps the best thing would be exercises that target multiple muscle groups at once. The more muscles being engaged, the more energy and calories being burned. This allows you to engage all of your muscle fibers, which will in turn allow for a greater metabolic demand. It's also important that the exercises are done at a rather quick pace to minimize the amount of time you spend in the gym.
The most common training exercises that cover these points include the chest press and the pull up/assisted pull up. But any form of movement or exercise you can do safely and sustainably is awesome. I just happen to love the pull up as my go-to exercise for muscle building and weight loss. That's why, after getting in my steps at the gym today, I went to a local park to get in a few sets of pull ups on a very hot day.
In the end, resistance training is never going to win a weight loss competition. But it will help you gain muscle mass and even bone density. It will help you burn more calories at rest since muscle is so metabolically active. But no matter what the science says, the best form of exercise for your body is one that you enjoy and can do consistently for the long haul.