Hate how all the guys you know only lift weights a few times a week, skip the treadmill, eat twice as much as you, and still manage a 6-pack while you struggle to reveal any pack at all? Maybe it’s time to take a few tips from the boys!

As members of the fairer sex (holla!), we have some major obstacles to staying slim that guys will never have to deal with. The bloating and hormonal changes that come every month obviously suck. And the cravings don’t help us lose those extra pounds, either. While it’s true that both guys and girls get cravings, women are more likely to crave chocolates and sweets, whereas guys are more likely to crave meat (which happens to be filled with protein, makes you feel full longer and is generally better for your body). See the problem here? We should take a hint from the boys and switch to more protein-oriented snacks! Before reaching for the chocolate, go for some string cheese, a turkey and cheese wrap, or cottage cheese with fruit. If you’re still craving sweets after that, try mixing some protein with it – like almonds and chocolate chips. Read More »

I get it. Trust me, I get it. It’s getting nice out and the last thing you want to do is spend an hour or two inside the gym. Who wants to sweat indoors when eating ice-cream by the lake is so much more appealing (and yummy?) But on the flip side, you’ll be donning a bikini before you know it (like, ahem, next week) and you want to look h-o-t.

If only you could snap your fingers Sabrina-the-Teenage-Witch style and have your workout completed and your body looking Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition ready.

Well God is great, but he’s not that nice. Instead, he leaves us messages and makes us feel a little guilty, like the other day when I was waiting for my nails to dry (instead of working out) and I found this pamphlet next to the drying station: “14 Tips and Tricks for Looking Great in Your Swimsuit.” I flipped through the list, somehow managing not to smudge a nail, and now I will share these really great tips with you. (Don’t thank me, thank God. God or the nice Vietnamese people who placed these pamphlets on their drying station).

Brought to you by “Pilatesyourway.com” Read More »

“For this workout you’ll need a roman chair, a set of 5 pound weights, 10 pound weights, and 12.5 pound weights, a Bosu ball, an incline bench, a cable machine, a pull-up bar, two resistance bands, a mat and a partner.”

WTF?

Whenever I see workouts in magazines/online that tell me that I need 23,494,201 pieces of equipment to get a full-body workout all I think is, “I’ll stick to the elliptical thankyouverymuch!” But while the elliptical is a great cardio workout, it’s not enough to get into shape and stay healthy. A girl’s gotta lift some weights.

But where? And how?

Typically, the weight room on college campuses is the “man’s domain” (as we control the cardio machine kingdom), so walking in there – never-mind actually using different machines while frat guys look on with tongues hanging out – seems less than appealing for many women. You think I’m gonna do some squats while that meat head looks on? No thank you.

And that’s pretty much why I designed this workout. The routine hits all the important areas of the body and doesn’t require a lot of time, equiptment, or beefy guys staring at you as you fumble with the inner/outer thigh machine. All you need is one flat bench and a set of weights, anywhere between 5 and 15 pounds depending on your strength level.

I recommend starting with the biggest muscles (legs) and then moving on from there, but the order is totally up to you! Read More »

Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought to yourself, “I don’t need to lose weight, but I totally want to tone up”?

Let’s say that you fixate on ‘toning up’ your arms and that you start doing bicep curls with three or five pound weights and a high number of repetitions per set. But after two weeks, you don’t see any results, so you give up.

Do you want to know why that didn’t work?

Because there is no such thing as toning up. All of those bicep curls that you do with three pounds weights? That starts you down the path that you want to go on, but what you’ve got to do is put down the puny weights and pick up those heavier bad boys.

If you were working with three pounds, move up to five; if you were at five, move up to eight and so on. Do 12 reps, rest for a minute, repeat the set and after another one minute rest, complete the final set of twelve. You don’t want to do two or three sets of 12 – 15 reps with such ease that you didn’t actually work the muscle.

Yes, the heavier weights can be intimidating but that’s no reason to stay away from them. Perhaps you’re afraid of ‘bulking up’. Well, fear not, because women simply lack the testosterone to bulk up and look anything remotely like those scary ginormous body builders. Read More »