Thirty minutes of daily exercise provides an equally effective loss of weight and body mass as does a 60-minute routine, according to a Danish research.

Forty percent of Danish men are moderately overweight.

For 13 weeks, a research team at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences of the University of Copenhagen followed 60 heavy but healthy men in their efforts to get into better shape.

Half of the men were set to exercise for an hour a day, wearing a heart-rate monitor and
calorie counter, while the second group was to exercise for 30 minutes, the American Journal of Physiology reports.

Research results showed that 30 minutes of exercise hard enough to produce a sweat was enough to turn the tide on an unhealthy body mass index, according to a Copenhagen statement.

On average, the men who exercised 30 minutes a day lost 3.6 kilo in three months, while those who exercised for a whole hour only lost 2.7 kg.

The reduction in body mass was about 4 kg for both groups, reports Mads Rosenkilde, doctoral student from the Department of Biomedical Sciences.