Beginning strength training program
 

I love strength training, and I beginning to add it in. I love cardio's quicker results, but recognize that I'm losing muscle when all I'm doing is restricting calories and high amounts of cardio, so I'm trying to be more patient about short-term scale results (though I think the clothing stuff comes faster, and I care so much more about that anyway) and embrace the strength training.

I like P90X, but it takes SO long, and part of my issue with sticking with a weight loss program is the amount of time it takes. Can anyone recommend a strength training regimen that is fairly straight forward, and only requires either bands or limited free weights? About a half an hour. I don't have regular access to a gym, so I can't rely on machines either.

Thanks in advance.

New Rules of Lifting for Women. Takes about half an hour. Pretty low tech, just free weights and an exercise ball, some bodyweight stuff, a place for pull-ups. I bought a 10 dollar exercise ball at Walmart and a pair of dumbbell handles, had some weight plates I found at the curb. I didn't have a bench, so faked it with a plank of wood, laid across 2 dining room chairs for a "bench", leaned it against my bed and sat on the floor for an "incline bench", used a low branch on the apple tree for a pull-up bar. If you're creative, you can find a way, when you don't have the "real" equipment. You can probably find a way to use your resistance bands, too. Have fun!

I love NROLW (and New Rules of Lifting for Life) but after stage 1, the workouts do take longer--around an hour or 70 minutes.

You could do something like basic upper/lower splits: that is, do lower body one day and upper body the next.

Your workouts would look something like this:

Lower Body day: squats, deadlifts, lunges/step ups, planks
Upper body day: dumbbell presses, lat pulldowns/chin ups, db rows, incline push ups.

For fat loss, it helps to finish off your workouts with some HIIT: 10-15 mins of kettlebell swings are excellent and only require a kettlebell. (This would mean doing high power swings for 20 seconds, resting for 40 seconds, then repeating for 10 minutes.)

Those would be short workouts (probably 30-40 minutes) but as long as you used heavy weights, you'd make lots of progress and gain lots of strength. There's probably a way to use resistance bands instead of dumbbells, but I've never used them so I don't know.

Jillian Michaels - No More Trouble Zones is pretty good - it's about 45 min w/ warmup and really targets every body part. All you need is a set of weights and a mat.

Supreme 90 Day is a competitive product to P90X (I own them both) that has shorter workouts (about 40 minutes) and is a good program. It's also WAY less expensive than P90X ($20 + shipping). You might look at that, if you're wanting to follow a video program.