Historically, the experts have said that the only way to actually lose fat was to perform at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3-4 times per week. Now, this usually took at least 45 minutes, because the "aerobic" effect only started when your heart rate reached a key point. There are all sorts of age/heart rate charts out there that people still use. So, basically, the idea was to get your hear rate to a certain point and let it stay there for thirty minutes. This does work, but if you're looking to figure out how to lose fat, it's not the best...and it takes too long. The new way that experts are suggesting is interval training. The general idea is that you run a cycle of slow, fast, faster, fastest and all the way back to slow again for a period of about 20 minutes. With warm up and cool down, my interval workout lasts 24 minutes exactly. When you're trying to fit workouts into a busy schedule, 24 beats 45 evey time. My interval workout looks like this (on the treadmill)
My Cardio Plan
You can do exactly this same thing, just adjust the speed so that you can do the whole thing, and by the end...you're exhausted! It takes a couple times to experiment, but it really works.