When you think of exercise geared specifically toward weight loss, you likely imagine spending long hours on the treadmill or elliptical. And while it's true that doing steady state cardio probably will help with weight loss, experts say it's totally unnecessary if your main goal is fat loss. In fact, you can lose weight just by lifting weights. (Yes, really. Just peep these weight lifting body transformations.)

However, that doesn't mean you should never do cardio. Here's why you might want to prioritize strength training if shedding pounds is on your to-do list—but you can't forgo breathing heavy forever.

RELATED: 5 Ways to Build Lean Muscle Fast

Why You Don't Need Dedicated Cardio Sessions to Lose Weight

"Cardio is one of the least effective fitness modalities for weight loss," explains Jillian Michaels, health and fitness expert and creator of My Fitness by Jillian Michaels app. That's because you lose weight by burning more calories than you eat, and to many people's surprise, strength training is actually better at doing that than steady state cardio.

The reasons for this are pretty simple. First, strength training changes your body composition. "Resistance training will help you build more muscle, which will spike your metabolism and help you burn more calories," explains Betina Gozo, a Nike Master Trainer who focuses on strength training. The more calories your body burns on its own, the easier it is to lose weight. In other words, if you want to lose weight, building muscle is a good thing. (Here's all the science on building muscle and burning fat.)

Second, resistance training done in a circuit often burns more calories than plain old cardio, particularly when done with compound movements like squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts, cleans, push presses, and more, according to Jennifer Novak, C.S.C.S., a strength and conditioning specialist and owner of PEAK Symmetry Performance Strategies. "When more joints are involved in a movement, more muscles have to be recruited to execute them," she explains. That means—yep—more calories burned.

RELATED: The Best Workout for Your Metabolism

Plus, there's the "afterburn" effect that comes along with higher-intensity resistance training. "When you're just doing straight-up cardio, you're working at an aerobic pace and only burning calories for the amount of time that you're working out," says Gozo. With a high-intensity resistance training circuit session, you continue burning calories for the rest of the day, she adds. Of course, you can absolutely get this afterburn benefit from HIIT, but for the muscle-building benefits, you'll want to incorporate resistance in the form of weights, kettlebells, or body weight leverage.

"That said, all of this is irrelevant if you don't also watch what you are eating," adds Michaels…

A new feminist movement is sweeping Instagram, as some South Korean women are rebelling against unattainable beauty standards that have become a cultural norm in their country. The movement, called Escape the Corset, sprang up over the summer on YouTube and Twitter, and is now gaining momentum on Instagram. It's a call to arms for women to ditch their insanely extensive skincare and makeup routines and embrace minimalism.

As the 8th largest cosmetics market in the world, South Korea represents nearly 3% of the global market. In 2017, the Korea Herald reported that most girls between the ages of 10 and 12 owned an average of three beauty products. If you're familiar with K-Beauty, this is probably not too surprising: The whole world has become obsessed with the country's famous multi-step routines (think: 10-12 different skincare products diligently applied twice a day). It's also not uncommon for South Korean high schoolers to get plastic surgery for graduation, according to The Atlantic.

In response, more and more South Koreans are making their voices heard on Instagram to push back against impossible beauty expectations for women. Lipstick and long platinum blonde locks are being swapped for bare-faced complexions and dark, lived-in haircuts. They're sloughing off layers of makeup in order to ground themselves in authenticity.

This woman wrote that she used to wear fleshy tights in winter (a.k.a., froze for the sake of dressing in a more feminine manner) and had more than 50 shades of lipstick and lip stains. She decided to swap her blonde tresses for a dark, more natural pixie cut in order to liberate herself from her culture's beauty standards. She signs her post off with #freethecorset.

Another woman showcased her hair transformation, writing that although at first chopping her hair was scary, she wanted to give other women "courage" to rid themselves of "the corset" for good.

Hand-in-hand with the Escape the Corset movement, the Skin-Care Diet (as described by Allure), is another social revolution currently being embraced by South Koreans. The idea: By removing most skincare products from your routine, you can find out what your skin can live without and what it actually needs. This usually boils down to a cleanser, moisturizer, and SPF, all free of harsh ingredients.

Instead of tossing their compacts and lipstick bullets in the garbage, South Korean women are literally crushing beauty standards by sharing images of their pulverized makeup. They're pressing the creamy, powdery, oily contents onto paper in wild, waxy, crayon-like works of art. They're not playing.

Paired with an image of smeared lipsticks and stains, one woman commented that her makeup collection once seemed like "meaningful consumption," but now it's just "garbage…

You’ve probably seen it: Your favorite blogger posts side-by-side images where the first is an average-looking shot of them on a cloudy day or in a dimly lit cafe and the second is the same image, but whoa, it somehow looks 1,000 times better. The colors are more vibrant, the light is shining in just the right way, and the person in the photo looks like a supermodel. The caption? “Check out my Lightroom Presets!”

@lyss/Instagram

If you’re scratching your head wondering what the heck a Lightroom Preset is, here's the scoop: It’s a predetermined position for all, or some, of the photo editing sliders in the Adobe Lightroom app. Basically, it’s a high-tech filter you can buy online and download into the app to apply to your own photos. You can buy Presets on Etsy, from various photography websites, and you guessed it, from influencers themselves.

RELATED: Millennials Who Use More Social Media Sites Have Higher Depression, Anxiety

Lightroom itself is an advanced editing app used by professional photographers. It not only makes images look seamlessly more beautiful, but it can also manipulate them without a trace. With the right Preset, Lightroom can turn a green summer day into an orange fall afternoon and a blue daytime sky into a pink horizon at sunrise. Not to mention it can change the color of your skin, eyes, lips, and more.

@haylsa/Instagram

We’re used to seeing heavily edited photos in advertisements. No one's blind to the fact that many models have had their teeth whitened and their skin airbrushed by a photo editor. But what happens when we start seeing that same level of editing on our Instagram feeds day after day? When people you consider your peers stop posting photos of their real lives and start posting photos of their fantasy lives?

“When we look at advertisements, we have our antennas up to the fact that these are probably doctored,” Mark Leary, PhD, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, tells Health. “It’s less clear if you just see a photo of a random person you don’t know on social media.”

RELATED: This Influencer Just Showed How Different Reality and Social Media Are—by Pulling Down Her Pants

In other words, do people even think of the possibility that a photo has been edited when it’s someone they consider to be just another average person, not a model or actor? Professional editing tools are becoming more and more accessible, to the point where you can use them if you have little to no photography experience. But our antennas aren’t tuned into that nearly as much as they are when it comes to ads, Leary says, which doesn’t bode well for body image.

“If you think about it from the standpoint of how we evaluate ourselves in general, it’s always in comparison with other people because there’s no objective standard…