I totally agree that ‘you can lose weight with any weight lifting workout,’ but that really depends on how each person’s body works and which exercises they are performing (Like you said, isolation exercises are not really that useful). I shall write an article about the compound exercises I do in my routines. I personally have lost a lot of “fat” weight, by building the right kind of muscles (see my other article on how to burn fat by building muscle) and doing a good amount of fat burning exercises.

Some people such as wrestlers who need to weigh-in and meet a certain weight class. These people will not only have to worry about fat weight, but also muscle weight. If their goal is really to just lose weight itself they have to maintain a good balance of cardio and weight lifting to make sure they do not gain any weight, tip the scale, and get disqualified from wrestling.

Finally, it all depends on the workout. I do full-body exercises 3 times a week. These are heavy, compound exercises that target a number of muscle groups (as opposed to isolation exercises). There’s no point in doing such exercises once a week. If I did it 3 times a week, which is what I’m supposed to do, I can’t do cardio more than once or max twice per week, as it will lead to early fatigue.

My fried lost 25lb by weight lifting 4 days a week (isolation) + cardio once a week (high-intensity interval training, which seems to be the best kind of cardio for retaining muscles), and sprinting for 5-8 minutes once per week.