>>217183I would say the best way for people to lose weight still is through weightlifting and cardio. Cardio itself isn't super efficient with a bad diet. It works wonders if you count your calories. You lose weight whenever your body is in a caloric deficit. Your body basically taps into it's fat reserves for fuel whenever you're in that state.
In order to hit a caloric deficit, you're going to want to eat about 300-500 less than what you usually eat. Basically figure out how much you eat in a day and then eat 300-500 calories below that. If a couple weeks pass by without any weight loss, either lower your daily calories more, or do some more cardio. You can start with cutting out sugary drinks and sweets, and swapping out stuff like bagels with vegetables and rice cakes(the caramel ones taste the best).
Drink more water and black coffee. Black coffee is bitter and kills your appetite. The caffeine speeds up your metabolism and helps you passively burn more calories by increasing your heart rate.
I got my mom down from 160 to 130 pounds this year by just strengthening mostly her legs and having her do cardio.
If you're focusing on losing weight, try to build some more muscle on your lower body and core with machines at a gym. You can also train your upper body on machines with lighter weights on your upper body just for the general health benefits if you don't want to look super jacked. More upper body mass will also make it easier to lose bodyfat, but not as much as lower body muscles will.
The added muscle mass will speed up your metabolism. Especially on the glutes, it's the biggest muscle on the body. The best leg exercises you can do are probably the Hack squat/leg press, leg extension, leg curl, hip abductors, and then a hip thrust exercise with a dumbbell/smith machine to isolate the glutes. For abs, any crunch machine you want. My favorite is probably the hammer strength crunch machine.
As for cardio, 30 minutes a day on a max incline treadmill at 2 mph is my general suggestion. You can adjust the speed and duration as you improve, but that's a good starting point. The most cardio you'll want to do in 1 session is about an hour. If an hour of incline 2 mph gets too easy, raise the speed by .2. Once you cap out at 3 mph, you can sprinkle in one minute 4.5-5 mph jogs every few minutes to keep your heart rate up. Hope this helps.