Thirty minutes of daily exercise can be as effective for weight loss and improvement in body mass as 60 minutes of exercise, according to research published in 2012. The study involved moderately overweight men who either worked out hard enough to produce a light sweat for either 30 minutes or one hour daily over a 13-week period. On average, the men who exercised 30 minutes a day lost close to eight pounds during the three month study, while those who exercised for 60 minutes only lost about six pounds in the same time span. Researcher Dr. Mads Rosenkilde explains, “Participants exercising 30 minutes per day burned more calories than they should relative to the training program we set for them. In fact we can see that exercising for a whole hour instead of a half does not provide any additional loss in either body weight or fat. The men who exercised the most lost too little relative to the energy they burned by running, biking, or rowing. [Thirty] minutes of concentrated exercise give equally good results on the scale.”
American Journal of Physiology, August 2012