I've been doing Stronglifts for about a year and I can say that my own experience backs up the "lift heavy weights and do compound exercises using free weights"

I've been doing Stronglifts for about a year and I can say that my own experience backs up the "lift heavy weights and do compound exercises using free weights" that the original article suggests. I'd messed around with routines from Men's Health and other magazines at various times over the years and got nowhere at all. I'm now doing far less exercise than I did with those routines and am seeing real progress. Stronglifts is a routine for beginners and the 5x5 three times a week soon gets too much as you start squatting heavier amounts - I had to drop to squatting once or twice a weeks once I started squatting about 1x my own body weight (about 250 lb). Based on personal experience alone I thoroughly recommend Stronglifts and Starting Strength as a good way to obtain good general fitness and to lose weight. Squatting and dead-lifting are whole body exercises that really do work the whole of you - it's surprising how much your abs and glutes hurt after some squats. A word of warning: you must start with light weights and work on doing each exercise properly - and I mean stupidly light to start with, start with just the bar if you are completely out of shape. If you try and start with impressive-looking heavy weights then you'll be resting up with a bad back before you know it.