Help! Want to drop fat, but don't want to do lower body workouts

I'm 24 yrs old, female, 5'5, 30% body fat and 142 pounds.

Tom Venuto's BFFM is my fat loss bible and I've been doing it all right with the 6-7 days of cardio per week, protein in every meal and etc.

I only have one problem. I incorporated weight training 2-3 times a week into my program, but I'm only working on my upper body (with dumb bells) and my abs (sit ups). I cannot do squats or lunges because my lower body will be aching for atleast a couple of days afterwards and this prevents me from doing my cardio exercises efficiently. I really don't want to miss my daily cardio workouts because my life would be very sedentary without it (I work from home on the pc). I also have no access to a gym currently, so I can't get anyone to teach me, I have a dumb bell set I use at home for the weight training exercises, and I brisk walk or jog daily for 45mins. I'm thinking of getting an elliptical soon to vary my workouts.

 My first goal is to get down to 25% body fat, once I get down to that number I will start adding the squats and lunges, and reducing the cardio to 3-4 times a week.

Is this okay? Please advice.

There's part of this I don't quite understand. When you say your body aches after doing squats/lunges to the point where you can no longer do cardio efficienctly, could you elaborate?

Also, how heavy are the dumb bells you're lifting?

I am also curious to what you mean by cardio. Are you doing steady-state cardio or HIIT (high intensity interval trainning?)

With just what you've written, one thing you could try is to maybe do lower body workouts one day followed by cardio on the rowing machine the next day. That would give your lower body a break while still providing you with a cardio workout, and the rowing machine (often overlooked by women, and no it won't make you bulk up) is fantastic for that. Then after you've had an appropriate recovery time for your lower body, switch and do an upperbody workout the following day, and then your usually running/jogging the day after.

Also, the soreness you experience with lower body workouts diminishes with time. If you start doing squats and deadlifts, it will interfere with your jogging performance for a short time. But you will soon get used to it so that you can run the next day or even later the same day.  It's worth taking the short term hit so you can get the benefit of these excellent exercises.

Thanks for your replies :)

I am thinking of putting off the squats and lunges until I can actually get someone to teach me how to do it in proper form.  I'll be able to join a gym in a couple months then I can do those exercises under the guidance of a fitness trainer, right now I'm pretty much stuck doing my work outs at home.

When I do squats and lunges, the soreness I get is on the butt and thighs, not just that, but my knees would be aching too. I'm afraid I'm not doing it right. I don't want to hurt myself this way, other than having it interefering with my cardio. I really don't want to do it alone. The upper body exercises and ab exercises are great though, the soreness I get from those don't interfere with my daily cardio so I'm happy about that. Oh and I'm lifting 10 pounds for the upper body workouts...well that's 5 pounds per dumb bell hehe....

For my cardio, I'm doing interval training, 1 minute running 1 minute jogging...not exactly HIIT...that's abit too advanced for my level of fitness. I actually only recently gained weight, just 6 months ago I was 132 pounds and 27% body fat...I went through a huge loss and was severely depressed after that, barely moved, just sat in bed and ate...and tada! here I am, 10 pounds heavier.

I only recently started picking myself up again, and I'm just trying to move around as much as I can, walking, jogging, running around, jumping around, whatever it is, just to atleast get back to where I was, just to get my activity level up so that I won't fall into the 'sedentary' category...I never really did lift weights before, but I used to do some running a few times a month, and I did alot of walking...so I'd say I was 'lightly active'. 

Sorry that was long...I really want to lose weight and fat the right way while holding on to as much muscle as I can. At the same time I really need my cardio because I need to move...when I move, I stop thinking, and it feels great. It kinda sucks to even miss a day of it :(

Yeah, if your knees are hurting, that's a sign of that form improvement is needed.   Getting a trainer to help is a very good idea.

Original Post by alevin:

Also, the soreness you experience with lower body workouts diminishes with time. If you start doing squats and deadlifts, it will interfere with your jogging performance for a short time. But you will soon get used to it so that you can run the next day or even later the same day.  It's worth taking the short term hit so you can get the benefit of these excellent exercises.

 the usual muscle soreness will definately diminish over time. once i get into a new program it does go away by the third workout or so, i even miss it a little. this one i just started, the first workout i was sore for days... the 2nd slightly sore by the third it practically went a way. however injuries & strains are another thing.