Fitness 101

If your main concern is shedding some body fat, the key is to do longer, more frequent aerobic sessions at an easier pace. This approach has several advantages. It burns more calories. (Even though vigorous exercise burns more calories per minute than an easy effort, an extra 15 or 30 minutes of easy exercise wil more than make up the difference.)

Longer bouts of exercise burn proportionally more fat. (Harder, but shorter exercise draws more on carbohydrates.) If you walk or do some other activity for more than an hour, your body will start to burn significantly more fat for the rest of the workout. (Reason: The carbohydrate stores in your muscles begin running low after an hour.)

Try the following tips for enchancing weight loss:

Do 5-7 aerobic workouts a week.
Make your effort as easy as possible, so that you're able to exercise continuosly for 45 to 60 minutes wthout strain.
Try to do one or more "long" workouts (over 60 minutes) per week.
To speed fat loss, reduce the amount of fats you eat each day -- an approach that will also benefit your cardiovascular health. (A gram of dietary fat is converted into body fat much more easily than a gram of carbohydrate or protein.) A gram contains 9 calories vs 4 calories for a carbohydrate gram.
Ignore any losses in the first week (which are mostly water) and concentrate on a steady, consistent weight reduction of about a half-pound per week.

Information obtained from "InteliHealth"