You probably know that working out and weight loss go hand in hand, but you may not know just how much you need to do to shed pounds or how to maximize your workouts so you reap the most benefits. Michelle Hering, M.S., Best Life fitness expert separates workout fiction from fact and tells you what you need to do to slim down for good. There are some discrepancies on this for whether or not it's better to maintain a full exercise bout for 50 minutes on one piece of equipment versus splitting it up between two or possibly even three. For increased cardiovascular fitness, the American Hearth Association recommends 20 to 30 minutes of continuous aerobic exercise. So that means no breaks, no slowing down, just kind of a continuous, rhythmic movement for the entire 20 to 30 minutes.

For weight loss, on the other hand, it's better to do whatever keeps you coming back for more. So if you think about exercising for a constant 30 minutes and it's just completely daunting and you don't think that you can get through it, you are going to get the same benefits for weight loss if you do small 10-minute bouts. So you can do three 10-minute bouts throughout your day. The most important part is to move for weight loss and just to get your energy flowing. So if the idea of performing an aerobic activity for 50 minutes or 30 minutes is just out of the question, then do what you can do to move for that 20 to 30 minutes just to get that chunk of time in there for weight loss.

Keep in mind this is for a lifestyle change, though, so you are not just looking at weight loss, although that may be your initial goal. Your overall goal should be to improve overall health, so identifying ways to get to that 30-minute mark, distinguished by the American Heart Association, is probably your best bet.

So the reasons for going beyond the 20 to 30 minutes that most people identify with is because they're trying to increase their intensity. A lot of times when you get to a plateau and you've been doing 20 to 30 minutes or 30 to 40 minutes, you can't figure out a way to increase the intensity, except for by going longer. So other ways to increase intensity or difficulty levels of aerobic exercise is to raise the incline on a treadmill, to speed up your steps on a stair master or the elliptical. You can do intervals, such as sprint work instead of just running at the same speed for a longer distance. Or after a couple weeks, say a month to six weeks, you can change to a completely new piece of equipment all together that you've never tried. Because maintaining a well-rounded workout will help with your functional ability on a day to day basis; you're exercising muscles in a different way and you're putting strains on your body in a variety of movements instead of a repeated motion over and over in the same way.