I am the female Mr Burns - weak as a kitten - where do I start?!

[Brightredpencil]

I am quite very overweight (but low carbing is going fairly well) and have very little strength. I'm also very tired, live rurally (so no easy access to gym), and have young children and no childcare. Now that's all the negative things over with...! I'd like to change this and am thinking lifting weights might be an option for me (having seen a friend on Facebook lift weights and been impressed with her progress).
Where do I start? What excercises should I begin with? I have no clue!!

I'm really no expert but due to issues with my pelvis after birth and being very flabby, I started with pilates. I went to class for about 6 months on a Saturday morning - yes it was a pain in terms of fitting it in an already busy schedule, but I made the commitment because if I constantly put myself last, there will be no one to care for everyone else should I end up poorly.

Now I do 20mins daily of a mix of pilates/HIIT and have just started C25K. Not feeling accomplished yet, but a great sense of achievement.

Good luck!

Fitness Blender has loads of free home based workouts which could be useful. The one thing I'd say though, is as with so much exercise, technique with weights is crucial or you could damage yourself. If it's at all possible, it may be useful to head to a council-run gym and ask about doing 4-6 personal training sessions to teach you form and get you started. Council gyms are much more reasonably priced, and you could possibly spread the cost.

Good luck! I do quite a lot of weights stuff at home, and love the quick results c

Youtube is great if you don't have much free time. You'll find loads of fitness instructors on there and all kinds of exercise, as a pp said Pilates is great for core strength, cassey ho is good but very perky fitness blender is really good too

You don't necessarily need weights. Body weight exercises like lunges, burpees, mountain climbers and planks will give you as thorough a workout as you can take. You could try Jillian Michaels' Beginners Shred DVD.