I can't say that I'm 100% sure because I'm no expert on physical fitness and exercise. That being said in all my research on exercise the consensus seems to be for maximum benefits you want a period of about 1.5 hours woth of steady heart pumping exercise for burning off lots of calories to lose excess weight. Now in my own case I was walking 5 miles per day and during the time I did that I lost a total of 75 lbs in about 6-8 months time. At the pace I walked it took me about 1.5 hours to complete 5 miles and at the end I would feel that I had exercised, I would be sweating and my heart rate would be elevated. So my own experience seem to suppoort what my research was telling me. Now I never put it to the test by breaking it up into 2 seperate walks of 2.5 miles. What I can say though is that by the time I hit the 2.5 mile mark during my walk I wouldn't be breaking much of a sweat (unless it was really hot out) nor would I feel tired and like I had a good bit of exercise. So it seems likely to me that if I did break it up into 2 walks of 2.5 miles with a long period of rest inbetween that the benefits in terms of weight loss would have been less. It's also worth noting that during this time when I was walking 5 miles per day, I didn't engage in any other form of exercise (not counting normal daily activity maintaining my yard and home). I also didn't make any changes to my diet which still included many items generally discouraged for people trying to lose weight. I was operating on the assumption of if I kept my caloric intake the same as it had been for the years that I became overweight, but increased the number of calories I was burning, then I should lose weight based on the idea that if you burn more calories then you consume, you'll lose weight. This proved to be true.
Now it's important to note also that everyone is different, we have different metabolisms and such that some might need more time exercising to burn off more calories then they consume, while others might need a little less.. Again though in a general sense the consensus from my research was that a period of 90 minutes of sustained activity was the ideal point to shoot for.
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