Past research has linked passive smoking to an increased risk of obesity, diabetes and even hearing loss. Now, a new study suggests that exposure to secondhand smoke may increase a woman's risk of miscarriage, stillbirth and ectopic pregnancy.

The study findings were recently published online in the journal Tobacco Control - a journal of the BMJ.

In their background information of the study, the researchers note that smoking during pregnancy can increase the risk of miscarriage and birth complications. But they point out that it is unclear as to whether passive smoking can have a similar impact.

To find out, the investigators analyzed data from 80,762 women who were a part of the Women's Health Initiative Observation Study.

All women had been pregnant at least once and had gone through menopause.

Of these women, 5,082 (6.3%) were current smokers, 34,830 were former smokers (smoked more than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime) and 40,850 were never-smokers (had not smoked more than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime).

The women who were never-smokers were split into groups dependent on the levels of secondhand smoke they were exposed to as a child, as an adult at home and as an adult at work.

The longer the exposure to secondhand smoke, the greater the risk

Of all the women in the study, 26,307 (32.6%) reported having a miscarriage at least once, while 3,552 (4.4%) had a stillbirth and 2,033 (2.5%) experienced a tubal ectopic pregnancy.

Women who had ever smoked during their reproductive years were 44% more likely to have a stillborn child, 43% more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy and 16% more likely to miscarry, compared with never-smokers.

However, the researchers found that never-smokers who had been exposed to secondhand smoke also had a significantly higher risk of stillbirth, miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, compared with never-smokers who had not been exposed to secondhand smoke.

Furthermore, the investigators found that the longer these never-smokers had been exposed to secondhand smoke, the greater their risk.

Women with the highest exposure levels to secondhand smoke included those with more than 10 years exposure as a child, more than 10 years exposure as an adult at home, or more than 10 years exposure as an adult in the workplace.

These women were 61% more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy, 55% more likely to have a stillbirth and 17% more likely to miscarry, compared with never-smokers who had low exposure to secondhand smoke.

The phrase "there's something for everyone" has never been so apt. These 27 "gyms" are changing the way we think about working out by offering a veritable exercise buffet, including new twists on traditional iron pumping, classes that teach you how to rebound off walls, and workouts that involve air-drumming to the beat, practicing yoga on a surfboard, or playing dodgeball in a room of trampolines (to name just a few). Check out the full list below and get inspired to move your body in ways you might've never thought possible.

1. Outlaw CrossFit (Alexandria, VA)

Best Combined Training Practices

Photo: Outlaw CrossFit

CrossFit ain’t your regular workout, and Outlaw CrossFit ain’t your regular CrossFit gym. In Alexandria, Virginia, this unassuming gym (or “box,” in CF parlance) has performed the unthinkable: It's made CrossFit more badass. Helmed by Rudy Nielsen, the creator of competitive CrossFit training program The Outlaw Way, the training programs might not seem unusual at first glance, but Nielsen is proud to have invented his own system of training that combines the CrossFit template with the theories of champion powerlifter Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell. The result? A complex hybrid of strength, functionality, speed, and intensity that’s led Outlaw to become one of the premier CrossFit gyms on Earth, regularly churning out regionalchampions and athletes that can deadlift more than 500 pounds.

2. AIR Aerial Fitness (multiple locations)
Best Use of Hammocks

Researchers at the Nanoscience Center (NSC) of University of Jyvaskyla in Finland have developed a novel method to study enterovirus structures and their functions. The method will help to obtain new information on trafficking of viruses in cells and tissues as well as on the mechanisms of virus opening inside cells. This new information is important for example for developing new antiviral drugs and vaccines. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was funded by the Academy of Finland and the TEKES FiDiPro -project NOVAC (Novel methods for vaccination and virus detection).

Enteroviruses are pathogenic viruses infecting humans. This group consists of polioviruses, coxsackieviruses, echoviruses and rhinoviruses. Enteroviruses are the most common causes of flu, but they also cause serious symptoms such as heart muscle infections and paralysis. Recently, enteroviruses have been linked with chronic diseases such as diabetes.

The infection mechanisms and infectious pathways of enteroviruses are still rather poorly known. Previous studies in the group of Dr. Varpu Marjomäki at the NSC have focused on the cellular factors that are important for the infection caused by selected enteroviruses. The mechanistic understanding of virus opening and the release of the viral genome in cellular structures for starting new virus production is still largely lacking. Furthermore, the knowledge of infectious processes in tissues is hampered by the lack of reliable tools for detecting virus infection.

The newly developed method involves a chemical modification of a known thiol-stabilized gold nanoparticle, the so-called Au102 cluster that was first synthesized and structurally solved by the group of Roger D Kornberg in 2007 and later characterized at NSC by the groups of prof. Hannu Häkkinen and prof. Mika Pettersson in collaboration with Kornberg. The organic thiol surface of the Au102 particles is modified by attaching linker molecules that make a chemical bond to sulfur-containing cysteine residues that are part of the surface structure of the virus. Several tens of gold particles can bind to a single virus, and the binding pattern shows up as dark tags reflecting the overall shape and structure of the virus (see the figure). The gold particles allow for studies on the structural changes of the viruses during their lifespan.

The study showed also that the infectivity of the viruses is not compromised by the attached gold particles which indicates that the labeling method does not interfere with the normal biological functions of viruses inside cells. This facilitates new investigations on the virus structures from samples taken from inside cells during the various phases of the virus infection, and gives possibilities to obtain new information on the mechanisms of virus uncoating (opening and release of the genome). The new method allows also for tracking studies of virus pathways in tissues. This is important for further understanding of acute and chronic symptoms caused by viruses. Finally, the method is expected to be useful for developing of new antiviral vaccines that are based on virus-like particles.

The method was developed at the NSC as a wide cross-disciplinary collaboration between chemists, physicists and biologists. Researchers involved in the work are Tanja Lahtinen, Kirsi Salorinne, Jaakko Koivisto and Mika Pettersson from the Department of Chemistry, Sami Malola from the Department of Physics and Mari Martikainen and Varpu Marjomäki from the Department of Biology and Environmental Science. The research was coordinated by Docent Varpu Marjomäki and the Scientific Director of NSC, professor Hannu Häkkinen.

High-Intensity Workouts to Burn Calories  

Don't plan on reading a magazine while you do these workouts. You're entering a no-slacking zone.

Looking to blast calories? Get ready -- it's going to be intense.

"It’s got to be high intensity, whatever the workout is, if you’re going to torch calories -- not just burn them,” says Bret Emery, a behavioral psychologist and weight loss specialist based in Weston, Fla. “Heart rate is key. That’s the speedometer of the body. If we speed the body up, it will burn more calories, just as a car will burn more fuel if it speeds up.”

Speeding up the body burns more calories, "just as a car will burn more fuel if it speeds up." -- Bret Emery 

Also, you need to mix up your workouts so they stay challenging. This will help keep your heart rate up and force your body to burn more calories, Weston says.

The following workouts will zap calories, but they’ll also push your body way past your comfort zone. So check with your doctor before taking on the challenge. Don't just tell your doctor you want to work out -- let him or her know exactly what you're planning to do. That way, your doctor can make sure you're ready.

If you're not active now, remember that it is better to ease into exercise in order to help prevent injury. Even though you may want to go all-out immediately, it's wiser not to.

Interval Workout

Interval training is all about challenge and recovery -- over and over -- for a cardio blast.

You can do intervals many different ways -- running, on any sort of cardio equipment, or in a pool.

This particular workout -- which comes from Michael Banks, certified personal trainer and owner of Body by Banks Corporation in Salt Lake City -- uses a treadmill. If you're already fit, you can add dumbbells for an extra challenge.

1. Warm Up: On the treadmill, with the incline set at a challenging angle, power walk at a speed of 3-3.5 for 7 minutes. Keep your elbows up above your heart. Stop, get off the treadmill, and stretch.

2. Sprint: Drop the incline to 0, increase the treadmill speed, and sprint hard for 30 seconds. Aim for 90% of your maximum heart rate. To recover, bring your speed down to 3 and walk for one minute.

3. Squats: Get off the treadmill and squat, with your bottom out to the rear and your legs slightly apart. Then jump from the squatting position into the air, landing in the same squat position as before. Do this for one set of 15 or 20, working your quadriceps. If you’re already in good shape, hold dumbbells by your sides.

4. Overhead Presses: Do 15 or 20 overhead presses with the weights, pushing them straight up and directly over your shoulders.

5. Sprint: Get back on the treadmill and sprint for 30 seconds (no incline). The goal is to be at 80% of your maximum heart rate. To recover, decrease your speed to 3.0 and walk for one minute.

10 Ways to Boost Your Exercise Motivation

 

Hate to work out? These simple strategies will get you up and going for good.

Debbe Geiger could summarize her feelings about exercise in two words. “It stinks,” she'd say.

But then her thinking changed when -- after much urging from friends who wanted her to play with them -- she joined a volleyball team. Now, she’s at the gym with a convert’s fervor on game nights because she doesn’t want to let her teammates down.

To stick with an exercise routine, you need a reason to carry on when that little voice inside says, "Sit on the couch." 

Her experience illustrates what exercise experts have known for years: To stick with an exercise routine, you need a reason to carry on when that little voice inside says, "Sit on the couch. Have a doughnut."

And just knowing that exercise is good for you doesn't seem to be enough to get you moving.

Carla Sottovia, assistant director of fitness at the Cooper Fitness Institute in Dallas, says, “You may have had a bad experience in school, or maybe you’re afraid you’ll hurt yourself. Maybe you’re even afraid to sweat.”

Want Tots Without Allergies? Try Sucking on Their Pacifiers

Study suggests transferring adult bacteria to infants’ mouths through saliva may train immune system to ignore allergens
MONDAY, May 6 (HealthDay News) — A new Swedish study suggests that parents who want to protect their infants from developing allergies should try a simple approach to introducing their children to the wide world of microbes: Just pop their pacifiers into their own mouths before giving them back to their babies.

Although that may sound disgusting or even risky to some, researchers found that the transfer of oral bacteria from adults to infants seems to help train the immune system to ignore germs that don’t pose a threat.

“The immune system’s purpose is to differentiate between harmless and harmful,” said Dr. Ron Ferdman, a pediatric allergist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “If your immune system is not presented with enough microbes, it just defaults to doing harmful attacks against things that are not harmful, like food, cat dander or dust mites.”

A report released last week from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics showed that the number of American children with allergies has increased dramatically in recent years: about 13 percent have skin allergies and 17 percent have respiratory allergies.

The Swedish researchers set out to learn whether very early microbial exposure during the first months of life affects allergy development. They found that children whose parents sucked on their pacifiers to clean them were less likely to have asthma, eczema and sensitivity to allergens than children whose parents did not clean the pacifiers this way.

The authors concluded that parental sucking of their baby’s pacifiers may help decrease the risk of allergy caused by transfer of microbes through the parent’s saliva.

For the study, published online May 6 in the journal Pediatrics, 206 pregnant women in Sweden were initially recruited as participants, and 187 of their infants were included in the research. The scientists sought families with at least one allergic parent to see if they could identify a different immune response in the children.

The researchers studied the transfer of microbes in the parents’ saliva by fingerprinting bacterial DNA in 33 infants’ saliva, of which 21 had parents who sucked on their pacifiers.

A total of 187 babies were followed until the child was 18 months old, and 174 were followed until they were 36 months old. The researchers chose to evaluate the children at those specific points in time because some diseases, such as eczema, develop early in life, said Dr. Bill Hesselmar, an associate professor at Queen Silvia Children’s Hospital, in Gothenberg, Sweden.

Introducing solid foods into an infant’s diet did not seem to affect the study results, Hesselmar said. “We found differences in the oral microbial flora already at 4 months of age, at an age when most children are still on breast milk.”

Ferdman, who was not associated with the research, urged caution in interpreting the results of the study. “It’s a small number of babies studied, so it’s hard to generalize,” he said.

He also expressed concern that results may not be widely applicable because the data were taken solely from Swedish participants, who are not a genetically diverse population.

Other researchers have expressed concern about dirty pacifiers.

Dr. Tom Glass, a professor of forensic sciences, pathology and dental medicine at Oklahoma State University, presented research at the American Society for Clinical Pathology in Boston last November that found a wide range of disease-causing bacteria, fungus and mold on children’s pacifiers. They also found that pacifiers can grow a slimy coating of bacteria called a biofilm that alters the normal bacteria in the children’s mouths, spurring inflammation and potentially increasing the risk of developing gastrointestinal problems or even ear infections.

The value of using a parent’s saliva to clean a dirty pacifier has been known for some time, Glass said. “We have for a long time advocated that if you’re at the Walmart and the baby drops the pacifier, you’re better off putting the pacifier in your mouth [to clean it] because you have immunoglobulin components that fight bacteria in your saliva.”

Glass expressed concern that the researchers did not identify the specific microbes transferred from parents to the pacifiers. “We don’t know what the parents are actually transmitting to the child,” he said.

What should parents do to help prevent allergies in their children? “Babies need to be exposed to the world, and exposure to the normal microbial environment is protective,” Ferdman said. “Breast-feed for at least four to six weeks if you can. Don’t smoke, and don’t expose your children to secondhand smoke.”

Health Tip: Think Before You Eat

Are you really hungry?

Mindless eating can cause the calories to add up quickly, and before you know it your pants are more snug than usual.The American Academy of Family Physicians offers this advice to consider before you start eating:

• Ask yourself whether you truly are hungry or if you are eating to fulfill another need, such as stress or boredom?

• Don’t look at some foods as off limits. Instead look at what you eat as part of a healthy diet that includes balance and moderation.

• Discuss with your doctor a healthy eating plan and the issues of food and weight loss.

• Use a food and activity journal to monitor your eating habits — including what you eat and when.

From Yoga Dropout to Competitive Powerlifter and Boxer in One Year

Rebecca Kukla is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, where she is also a Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.

One of the most amazing transformations for me has been the change in my courage. I am not afraid of people looking at my body, nor of what the scale says, nor -- most importantly -- of trying new things. For the first time in my life I feel like I'll try anything at least once.

18:6 diet (a.k.a LeanGains)

Based on an 8-hour feeding period followed by a 16-hour fast

What it is

Fasting used to be forced upon us, usually during winter or a famine, keeping our weight in check before the next kill or bumper crop. These days, food has us surrounded and we’ve had to invent dietsto do the fasting for us.

Various fasting diets have been around since the 1970s to detox the body, manage weight, or both. In recent years, intermittent fasting has gained new traction with the development of the 18:6, 20:4 and, most popularly, 5:2 diet.

“The 16:8 protocol is a brand of fasting also known as LeanGains, as espoused by Martin Berkhan,” says Brian St. Pierre, nutrition educator at Precision Nutrition. “It’s based on an eight-hour feeding period followed by a 16-hour fast. The 20:4 protocol, also known as the Warrior Diet, has you fasting for 20 hours each day, working out during your fasted state.”

The 5:2 is a little easier, which explains its popularity. It involves eating normally for five days followed by two days ‘fasting’, where you consume significantly less calories.

The Claim

The claims are many: that you’ll burn fat, increase metabolic rate, control blood sugar levels and appetite and detox your entire body.

“One of the amazing proven side effects of fasting is that it’s anti-ageing at a cellular level, which is the only place that really counts,” says Amanda Hamilton, nutritionist and author of Eat, Fast, Slim. “This inside-out approach really can help to create a glowing beauty from within.

“I’d go as far to say that I see fasting as the future of weight loss.”

For 

“Research on rodents has found fasting to be helpful for weight loss, glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, inflammation, blood lipids and even life expectancy,” says St. Pierre.

Aside from studies on obese mice, limited research has also shown reduced blood pressure, increased fat burning and increased fatty acid oxidation later in the fast,  and increased metabolic rate due to the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine (again, later in the fasting period).

“It is not entirely clear if this is a result of the fasting itself or simply the weight loss achieved from the fasting,” says St. Pierre. “But we do see occasional fasting as a great way to practise managing hunger.”

Against

“I think the results you see are caused by the calorie deficit not by the fasting itself,” says Kate Gudorf, from the Dietitians Association of Australia. “And in the case of the 5:2 diet, you’re eating 500 calories a day for a woman and 600 for a man. That’s well below what we would recommend.

“Studies have shown that weight loss as a result of fasting is just as good as regular portion control and healthy eating.”

In some cases, people may even put on weight.

“People think of it as a licence to eat freely for five days a week as long as they have the two days of fasting,” says Gudorf. “If you’re eating sensibly and healthily for five days you will see weight loss, but a lot of people aren’t doing that.

“Disappointingly, fasting also seems to be more effective for those who need it the least,” says St Pierre.

“The results we’ve noticed are that intermittent fasting seems to work best in people who are already fairly lean – 15 per cent body fat for men and 22 per cent body fat for women – especially lean young men,” he says. “It seems to be less effective for women.”

The Best Way to Get Your Best Body

Want to achieve your fitness goals in 2014? Accelerate your gains by adding THIS to your gym membership

You shell out  money for a gym membership, but pushingweight by yourself may not be the best way to pack on muscle and shed that winter belly. New research from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that exercising with a personal trainer can increase your strength, cardiovascular fitness, andlean body mass more effectively than flying solo at a health club.
For the study, 34 healthy men at the same Equinox gym exercised at least three days a week for 12 weeks. Half of the men worked out alone, following their own program, and the other half worked out with a personal trainer. At the end of the 12 weeks, men working with a trainer chest pressed 42 percent more weight and leg pressed 35 percent more than they had at the beginning. The self-trained guys increased their chest press 19 percent and their leg press 23 percent. 
Also, when asked to run on a treadmill until exhaustion, men in the personal trainer group saw their cardiovascular performance improve by 7 percent from the study's start. The solo group saw no gain. The personal trainers also helped their patrons increase lean body mass—which helps you look toned and strong—by 2.8 pounds, while the solo group stayed stagnant.
It wasn’t that the self-trained guys spent their time at the snack bar. They actually worked out 22 minutes more each week than the trainer-assisted guys. So why didn’t their workouts pay off as much? When you’re observed by a professional, it makes you work harder and smarter, says study author Thomas Storer, Ph.D. Plus, a trainer will pick up on small—but important—cues as you exercise and tailor workout routines to fit your needs. They can help you break through plateaus, stay injury-free, and challenge your muscles in new ways, says Storer.
While hiring a personal trainer can increase your gains, not just any trainer will do. You need to pick an effective trainer—otherwise you’ll waste your time and money for an express ticket to injury.Don't have the time for the gym or money for a personal trainer? Try the Men's Health Get Back in Shape program, a free, 8-week training plan that will help make 2014 your best year ever. Download the free app and you can take your workout anywhere.

Nia Shanks shows you how you can build the body you want with heavy weight training. It's time to pick up the weights, get toned, and even lose weight! Check out the plan.

Want to Look Better? Want Results Faster? Want More Motivation? Here’s the Solution: Lift Heavy and Get Strong(er).

Back in the day the primary focus and reason for weight training was to get stronger. Just think about that for a second. That is a much different reason than why people join gyms in this day and age. For whatever reasons, the focus has undoubtedly switched from getting stronger to just looking better.

Here’s a quote from Brooks Kubik’s book Dinosaur Training on this very same topic:

. . . they always looked better as a result of their training, but gains in appearance were viewed as a natural by-product of training for strength (my emphasis). You trained for strength and you ended up looking better as a by-product of your strength training. You didn’t train to look better.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to look good. Heck, it’s nice to feel confident in a swim suit, in your clothing, and when you’re naked. But my concern is that most people focus too much on looking good, and that is solely what drives their weight training goals.

Here is something most people fail to realize, and it’s the driving force behind Fat Loss Detour – if you focus your efforts in the gym on getting stronger and improving your performance in big, compound exercises and you eat smart CONSISTENTLY, your physical appearance and body composition will change for the better.

Yes, it really is that simple.

I no longer concern myself with training for pure aesthetics. I’ve been there and done that, and the results weren’t near as great as what I achieve now. My main focus when I am in the gym is not on “toning up” or “shaping” my body; it’s on getting stronger. My priority at the gym is to either:

• Put more weight on the bar.
• Perform more reps with the same weight.

And the best part about focusing on those two things is that they will force my body to change for the better aesthetically without me directly intending to do so. As long as I’m eating properly and resting, my body composition does, and will continue, to improve.

Another great thing about training for strength: it is much more motivating and enjoyable than simply training to look good. Well, at least in my opinion, and those of the people I train.

Think about it. What’s more motivating? Setting a new personal record in the deadlift, or going through the motions and just getting the workout over with hoping you see the fruits of your labor in the near future?

With all that said and out of the way, let’s delve a little deeper into the whole “Lift Heavy. Get Strong(er) and Look Better” title at the beginning of this post.

What Do I Mean by “Heavy”?

First of all, the term “heavy” means different things to different people. Conventional deadlifting 255 pounds for four reps is heavy for me. But, for some people that would be considered light weight. “Heavy” is a relative term depending on the individual and the exercise being performed.

When I tell people to train “heavy”, I simply mean use as much weight as possible for a given exercise for the prescribed reps with perfect form. It doesn’t matter if you’re performing a set of triples on the deadlift or 10 reps on overhead presses. Just make sure you are working very hard with whatever weight you are capable of using.

What Exercises Will Get Me Strong(er) and Make Me Look Better?

This is something I have mentioned on numerous occasions, and one being Back to Basics for Better Results. Here’s a fact for you: if you had nothing to use for your training except a barbell, some weight plates, a bench, and a power rack, you could get far better results than 99% of people who have access to fully equipped gyms.

Too many people get so caught up with the “latest and greatest” exercises (I’ve been guilty of this myself) that they lose sight of what will help them achieve great results in the least amount of time – hard work on the basics! They begin to suffer from “paralysis from analysis” because “this trainer said to do this”, and “this trainer said I have to do that”, and “this is the latest and greatest training technique”, and what ever else it’s popular at the moment.

Well, here is something the vast majority of great trainers and strength coaches would agree on: the basics are what matter most and what will deliver the greatest results. Yep, that’s right. Nothing is ever going to replace squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, chins, and dips. (Note: yes I am vividly aware of the fact that some people have limitations that keep them from being able to squat and/or dealift properly. However, most people can, and should, squat and deadlift).

If you have limited time to train or simply want the “biggest bang for your training buck”, then you need to focus on the basics. Forget about the specialty exercises for the time and bust your butt on those primaryexercises. You won’t be disappointed.

Let me put it another way: if you train hard, increase the weight you use for your exercises, and train consistently on the basic exercises, and you are eating smart, then you will have a body that most people will only dream of achieving. AND you’ll do it in much less time than you might think is possible.

There’s a reason for you to focus on the big, basic, compound exercises mentioned above – because they work! And there is a simple explanation for why I don’t tell you to work hard at isolation exercises such as triceps kick-backs, cable pec flyes, leg extensions, lateral raises, and other isolation movements – because they are NOT nearly as effective as the basics.

Brooks Kubik once again sums things up nicely in Dinosaur Training on why you can’t build a strong and great looking body with nothing but isolation exercises:

If you don’t believe me, then train for three months on a program that consists of nothing but leg extensions, leg curls, pec deck movements, concentration curls, and tricep kickbacks . . . After that period of time, train for three months on a program where you do nothing but bench presses, squats, and pull downs on Monday and nothing but presses, deadlifts, and curls on Thursday . . . At the end of the second three month period you will be enormously bigger and stronger than when you started the program. The first program will be a waste of time while the second program will be very productive, solely because you have focused your attention on the important exercises.

Here’s a quick note for all of the ladies who read the “enormously bigger and stronger” part and freaked out – that message is for men, and Dinosaur Training is written for men. However, I train with the same big, basic exercises and train as heavy as possible, and so the women that I train. No one, and I repeat, no one, has gotten “enormously big” or “big” in any negative use of the term when applied to a female. In fact, they look far better when training in this manner than they did when following the typical “women friendly” workouts that are so prevalent in magazines, books, and TV shows today. Ladies, heavy lifting with the basic exercises is your ticket to a better looking body. If that wasn’t true, then I would be out of a job.

Tony Gentilcore had an excellent post on this the other day, and if you want more information about lifting heavy and NOT getting big and bulky, you can check it out here.

Bottom line: man or woman, training hard and heavy with the basics WORKS.

Why YOU Should Train for STRENGTH

This is something I go in depth about in Fat Loss Detour, and it is something I feel very strongly about. But the question remains: why should you train for strength, even if your only concern is to look better in a swim suit?

Simple: because it’s a sure fire way to actually make progress in the gym, and making progress through improved performance in the basic exercises is the fastest and most effective way to transform your body. Combine that with smart eating principles and you will be well on your way to building not only a great looking body, but a strong body as well. What could be better than that?

Look. There is no stock or secret club for hard and heavy training with basic exercises. I have no ulterior motive in making these suggestions. I am sharing with you the information that I have seen produce results time and time again, without fail. If wimpy isolation exercises would transform your body, I would tell you to do them. But I’m not here to lie to you or give you warm, fuzzy feelings about changing your body. If you want results, you’re going to have to work HARD on the basics.

Yoga linked to fat loss

Yoga helps with stress reduction AND weight loss

Yoga linked to fat loss

Yoga helps with stress reduction AND weight loss.

 Yoga linked to fat loss - Women's Health & Fitness

Can’t blame you for following the path of sweat to cardio yoga class, but you can save yourself the grief.

A gentle form of yoga used for stress reduction has been linked to significant loss of stubborn subcutaneous fat in a new study.

When overweight women took restorative yoga classes twice a week for 12 weeks, then twice a month for six months before practising solo, they shifted more subcutaneous fat than a stretching group.

Researchers pinned the effect on slowed production of stress hormone cortisol, which promotes fat storage.