Reclaim Your Waist, Hips, Thighs and Butt

Excerpted from
The Bathing Suit Workout
By Joyce L. Vedral, Ph.D.

Perhaps warmer weather is approaching, or maybe your planned vacation is coming up soon, but despite the promise of sunshine, you're filled with dread. It's bathing suit time! You picture yourself desperately searching through the stores to find a suit that will hide a multitude of sins. Well, there's good news.

You won't have to hide anything if you don't want to, and whether you choose to wear a conservative one-piece bathing suit or a daring bikini, you'll be proud of yourself and you'll never again have to dread donning a bathing suit. What's more, you'll be happy when you catch a glance of yourself when passing a mirror-in your underwear or even in the nude.

How long will this take? Here's the best part: You can achieve a bathing suit body in thirty workout hours-and you can opt to put those hours in as fast as possible. You can go on the 911 plan, where you zap your problem areas every day, or you can take the more relaxed road and work out every other day. You can do the regular plan, where you put in ten minutes a day, or the emergency plan, where you put in fifteen minutes a day. You can do it in record time because you'll be concentrating only on the problem areas, the spots that snug spandex does nothing to hide.

Busting the Bulge in Record Time

Most women have it-at least the women I've met, the women in the real world. It's that area in the middle of the body-you can even draw a circle around it. It begins at your waistline, goes down the front of your thighs to your knees, zooms around to your hips, butt, and back thighs. It's the area that inspires us to cover in the safety of a voluminous T-shirt, the area we are determined to hide, to cover up!

I have good news for you. Finally, once and for all, you can flatten your stomach and reclaim your waistline, firm and shape your thighs-both front and back-rid them of cellulite in the process, bomb away the bulges from your hips, and reduce the size of your butt, while at the same time shaping and lifting it. You can do it whether you're a "fat-fat" (significantly overweight-in which case you'll also follow the eating plan in Chapter 7) or a "skinny-fat" (not really overweight, but flabby or badly out of shape).

How do you do this? Follow this new exercise plan that will zap that "bathing suit area" in a rapid-fire sequence of exercises designed to get you fit and firm-fast!

The Secret of This Workout: The Zap-the-Fat "Tri-Set"

In this book you will find a workout method not found in any of my other books: the tri-set. Simply explained, a tri-set takes three complementary muscle groups and exercises them in sequence, without stopping. You will work your three most troublesome body parts one after another: hips/buttocks, thighs (both front and back), and your stomach (upper and lower-that "pooch"-and your waistline). You'll be zooming around the circle of fat without resting.

Only after you have done one full revolution will you rest for fifteen seconds. (Later, when you get used to the workout, you can even opt to eliminate that rest, burning more fat and reducing your exercise time in the process.) You will continue to use the fat-zapping tri-set until you've transformed your body into a firm, defined, shapely vision of feminine muscularity.

The Magic Seven-The Emergency Ten

There are seven mandatory revolutions in all, with three additional cycles for those of you who are in an emergency and want to get into bathing suit shape as fast as possible.

Never Be Bored! It's Over Before You Know It

The secret of the tri-set is, that it presents a relatively painless way of exercising. You never get bored, and you never get a chance to feel fatigued, because you are doing three completely different exercises in sequence, rather than the same old thing over and over again. In this workout, you will do one exercise for hips/buttocks, one exercise for thighs, and one exercise for the stomach without stopping. But even though you keep moving, certain body parts are resting and recuperating.

Here's how it works. While your hips/buttocks muscles are working, your thighs and stomach are resting, and while your thighs are working, your hips/buttocks and stomach are resting, and while your stomach is working, your hips/buttocks and thighs are resting. But you don't rest. You keep going, and going, just like a certain bunny we know, burning maximum fat and tightening, toning, and defining your bathing suit area.

Thirty Workout Hours to the Bathing Suit Body of Your Dreams

How long will it take you to get rid of your circle of fat and to replace it with lean, firm muscle? It all depends upon how quickly you put in those thirty workout hours. If you do the maximum plan, you'll get there faster than you will if you do the minimum plan, but in either case you'll get there. If you are overweight, you'll follow the bathing suit eating plan-and you'll watch your fat melt away and uncover a tight, toned, feminine body. You will either achieve your goal in thirty workout hours or show so much improvement that you won't give up the workout until you do! (Details on what to expect are found in Chapter 3, "Before and After.")

But They Say You Can't Get Rid of Cellulite

Sound of buzzer. Yes you can! You may have heard people say, "Cellulite is genetic." It is true that some people are more inclined toward "cottage cheese thighs" when they are overweight and/or out of shape, but the only reason for this is "thin skin." That's right. Most of us have bunched-up fat beneath the surface of the skin, but the thinner your skin, the more it shows. If you are among the thin-skinned, don't worry. By following this workout and following the bulge-busting diet, you will replace your cellulite with sleek muscle.

What exactly is cellulite anyway? Cellulite isn't a medical term. It's a term that was coined in the midseventies to describe bunched-up fat, fat that gives the appearance of an orange peel. This fat is made up of enlarged fat cells that conglomerate just beneath the surface of the skin, clinging to fibrous tissue for support.

As you follow my low-fat, balanced eating plan and you do the exercises in this workout, you build solid muscle under the skin, and eventually, the cellulite-ridden area smooths out. No more orange-peel. No more craters. Just curving contours of firm skin.

At first you may find one or two lingering dimples. But if you continue to do this workout, and to follow the eating plan, over time even those few remaining dimples will probably disappear.

No Equipment Necessary

What? Am I kidding? No equipment? That's right. Except for optional dumbbells (handheld weights) for the thigh exercises, you need absolutely nothing to do this workout-nothing except yourself. This means you can do this workout at home, in the office, on vacation-anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

If you want to invest in the optional dumbbells, all the better. You'll get a more intense thigh workout. And in time, as your thighs grow stronger, you have the option of trading in your five-pound dumbbells for tens, and eventually fifteens or even twenties. You may want to do this if you have the sagging thigh problem-you know, where the skin from your lower thigh drops over your knee-the result of Father Time! (A discussion on when to do this is found on p. 52.)

Ten Minutes a Day!

Once you get used to the routine, you will be able to breeze through it in just over ten minutes. How is this possible? It only takes ten to fifteen seconds to perform a set of exercises. You will be doing three sets of each of seven tri-sets, consisting of three exercises each, or twenty-one sets in total for the regular workout. Twenty-one sets of fifteen seconds each takes five minutes and fifteen seconds. But you are resting fifteen seconds between each tri-set. That means you will take six rests. So add a minute and a half for the rests. Now you have seven minutes and forty-five seconds. And six of the exercises are done on one side of the body at a time, so add fifteen seconds times six-another minute and a half-making the grand total ten minutes and fifteen seconds.

Bear in mind that you work more quickly once you get used to the workout. In addition, you can eventually eliminate all the rests. In time, you can finish the regular workout in seven minutes or less.

In the beginning, while you're learning to do the moves correctly and safely and while your body is getting used to the new challenge, the workout will take you longer-maybe as long as twenty to thirty minutes. But that won't last. You'll see. And anyway, unless you are a seasoned exerciser, you won't be doing the entire workout in the beginning. You'll be using a break-in-gently plan where you do no more than one third of the full workout. By the time you get to the full workout you'll be confident and up to speed!

Eleven to Fifteen Minutes for Quicker Results

For those of you who choose to add in one, two, or three exercises and do the Iron Woman, Steel Woman, or Titanium Woman workouts, add a minute or so each. The Iron Woman workout takes eleven minutes, the Steel Woman workout takes twelve minutes and forty-five seconds, and the Titanium Woman workout takes fourteen and a half minutes.

So there you have it. By investing only ten to fifteen minutes a day, and not even every day (you can work out three to six days a week-workout plans are discussed on pp. 43-44), you will have the bathing suit body of your dreams.

Why Isn't Dieting Enough

Why Isn't Dieting Enough to Get Your Hips/Buttocks, Thighs, and Stomach in Shape?

If you are overweight, dieting is absolutely necessary to get your middle body in shape. In fact, it is exactly this area of the body that provides the main storehouse for excess body fat. But dieting alone cannot do the job. No matter how strict your diet, once the fat is gone, unless you work out the right way, your body will feel soft and mushy and, even worse, your skin will sag. You may end up looking like a "skinny-fat."

The truth is, all you can hope to achieve from dieting alone is to fit into a smaller size. Dieting can't make your bathing suit area firm and shapely, nor can it give you definition. Only working out the right way can sculpt your body. You must do a series of specially designed exercises in a specific sequence in order to tighten, tone, and define your hips/buttocks, thighs, and abdominal muscles.

How We Get Tight and Toned

How does exercising the right way do the job? As you repeat a certain number of movements in a specific sequence, inevitably the muscle responds to the "work" being demanded of it. By moving the designated body part at carefully designed angles and planes, your working muscle eventually becomes not only stronger and harder (the muscle cells and fibers strengthen, become more concentrated, and increase, but it also begins to take on a new shape. In other words, your out-of-shape body part will become reshaped by the work being required of it; you will go from flabby to tight, toned, and defined. Your toned muscle is firm to the touch and pleasing to the eye. In addition, the body part becomes stronger-able to do more without becoming tired.

Don't worry that you will look like a bodybuilder if you do this workout. Bodybuilders use heavy weights and work out for hours every day to achieve an exaggerated muscularity. The only weights you will be using for this workout are optional light handheld weights for your thighs. If you wish to put on more muscle, you can go heavier-up to twenty pounds. Bear in mind, however, that female bodybuilders use heavy weights for thigh work-two hundred pounds, not twenty.

What about the rest of the body? This book concentrates on areas most critical to women, the bathing suit area. Later, if you want to shape up the rest of your body, you can get one of my total-body workouts or videos. I discuss this in detail in Chapter 10.

What about Aerobics?

Aerobic exercises are great for getting your heart and lungs into shape and for burning overall excess body fat. Also, being in "aerobic shape" makes all physical activity easier, including the workout in this book. If you are in aerobic shape, you won't get out of breath as quickly as you did before-and you may even be able to eliminate all the rests in this workout. But aerobics, with all their health benefits, won't transform your body. They won't make you look fabulous in a bathing suit. Only targeting specific muscle groups with certain exercises can do that.

Why do people think they can get their thighs in shape, for example, by using a stair-stepping machine? They believe that the repeated movement of the body part will reshape that body part. This movement does help to strengthen the thighs and hips/buttocks, but it cannot sculpt and define the thighs and lift the skin that sags over the thigh to the knee, or lift and shape the butt. Why? You're doing too many repetitions of one exercise without a rest, and you are not hitting the muscle from a variety of angles.

Bodybuilders whose entire careers depend upon body shaping realized this long ago. If aerobics could reshape the body, bodybuilders the world over would be hopping up and down, grapevining or jogging their way to definition. But the truth is that many bodybuilders don't even do aerobics, and those who do rely upon them only for heart and lung conditioning and extra fat burning. Body reshaping is a science. You have to do it a certain way, in a certain sequence, and from certain angles.

Should you forget about aerobics? Of course not. In fact, I advise you to do three to six twenty-to-forty-minute aerobic sessions a week. See Chapter 8 for more about this.

What Kind of a Diet Will Be Required?

Don't worry. I'm not going to ask you to starve to death. In fact, you'll eat plenty of food, and there will be a selection of foods that you can eat anytime, night or day, as much as you want. But you will have to reduce your fat intake and limit most foods. What's more, you will have to eat more often!

Anyone Can Do It-Create Your Own Workout!

There are thirty exercises in this workout, each targeting a specific area of your bathing suit area: waist and stomach, hips, butt, and front and back thighs. No matter how fat you are and regardless of your medical problems (you can work with your doctor), you can create a program tailor-made for you. In other words, you have a selection of so many exercises that even if you cannot (or will not) do certain exercises the Bathing Suit Workout contains enough options for you to create a plan that will work for you.