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For best weight loss and long-term weight maintenance, combine Cardio-Aerobic Exercise with Weight/Strength Training.
In a nutshell, aerobic exercises help to burn extra calories and develop some muscles. Weight training builds muscle mass to raise your metabolic rate, which helps to maintain weight loss in the long-term.
With a typical exercise program, it is usual to maintain weight yet lose fat and gain muscle. This gain in lean muscle tissue results in a lower body fat percentage and a higher metabolic rate, which is good for weight control. Lean muscle tissue is much more metabolically active than fat tissue. One pound of muscle can burn 30 to 50 calories a day, while one pound of fat burns only 3 calories a day.
That said, in order to achieve significant reduction in body fat, regular moderately intensive exercise needs to be combined with a healthy balanced diet. In addition, fat loss is most efficient when aerobic exercise is combined with anaerobic exercise, like weight/strength training.
Although exercise may burn relatively few calories, a negative energy balance of as little as 200 calories a day can result in weight loss over time.
For example: by brisk walking for one hour (300 calories burned), instead of watching TV (80 calories burned) you burn an extra 220 calories. Over the course of a year, this is the equivalent of 23 pounds of body weight. What's more, in clinical tests, when moderate exercise is performed food intake either remains the same or decreases. At the same time, weight will gradually decrease.
Contrary to what some weight loss and exercise products state, there is no such thing as spot reduction. Fat is lost throughout the body in a pattern dependent upon genetics, gender, hormones and age. In other words, although a negative calorie deficit (more calories burned than consumed) will always cause fat loss, the precise location of such fat loss is decided by the body and no exercise or diet routines can influence this process.
Although fat may be lost throughout the body, the midsection (in men and some women) and hips and thighs (in women and few men) is typically the final body area to become lean.
Spot exercises, like sit-ups, crunches, hip raises, leg raises, hip adduction, hip abduction, etc. can only develop the muscles adjacent to the fat. They cannot burn fat from the area exercised.
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