Strength training isone of the best weight loss tools that you canhave in your toolbox. Muscle is high maintenance tissue - the more muscle you have the more calories you burn evenwhile you're resting. Cardiovascular training is important in consuming the fat stored up in our bodies but in order to truly change our body compositionwe need to add muscle or lean tissue. A common misconception that people have is the ability to spot reduce, to focus on a specific area of the body they want to loose weight at. I'm sorry to tell you that our bodies don't work like that. Our bodies reduce the amount of, what I lovingly call stored energy, on a first on last off basis. So the neweststored energycomes off firstand thestored energythat we have carried the longest is the last to go. In order to enjoy lasting long term weight loss we need tocombine eating a healthy balanced diet, doing 20-30 minutes of cardio 3-5 days a week and adding a full bodystrength training program once or twice a week. The ulitmate goal is to create a high maintenance metabolismin order to do that thenyou need to changethe composition of your body and to do that you need to add muscle.