The exercises you do are very important, but there is not a secred formula. Maybe you heard many times before: "do abdomens exercices and you lose belly fat. That is very untrue. You have to do diverse exercise.
First of all you need some weight training. It improves your methabolism and you will burn more calories after that. Also, the amount of calories burned during a weight lifting training is very high.
Other benefits of weight lifting is that your body will be strenghten and it will have a much better shape. Even if you will still have a lot of fat, your body will look much better.
The weight lifting is not all, you must combine it with aerobic training. This is the best combination: weight lifting + aerobic. Aerobic can be anything: running, jogging, threadmill, bicycle, aerobic with a trainer.
You should spend some time to find what exercices are doing you the best good. Some people can't do some exercices and you must be careful, some weight lifting exercices can do harm to your bones.
If you are unsure what you do, you better use the services of a fitness trainer , believe me, it worths every penny. After few months with the trainer you will know a lot of information that you can apply by yourself and you won't need the trainer anymore, but when your start, you will lose time if you will do it wrong.
The good part is that now you don't have to neccesary go to a gym to make the exercises. DVD's and do it at home. I can reccomend Tony's training DVD's
.