Work out every day doing Pilates mat exercises in a structured, supportive environment while enjoying the amenities of a world renowned eco-spa!

Pura Vida Spa, in the Alajuela province of Costa Rica, is a choice wellness destination outside of the United States. Conveniently located 20 minutes from the San Jose Airport, the spa is an oasis of beauty and tranquility, with home-like intimacy. Seven nights comfortable accommodations, three healthful, freshly prepared meals and Pilates classes are included in your registration fee. Also included are airport transfers to and from San Jose International Airport, use of swimming pool and hot tub, Salsa dance class, on site yoga classes, and use of meditation room. Participants have the option of adding additional experiences including spa treatments and eco adventure tours.

All Pilates classes will be geared to your level of experience and each participant can expect to take a minimum of one class per day (experienced students will be able to jump in to lower level classes and beginning students will have options to experiment as space permits). We will focus on different themes daily and instructor will go over a home program of exercises for each group of students to use should they wish to continue this work when their vacation is over. Pilates classes will be taught by Desiree Sanchez, a well trained, bilingual instructor with over seven years of experience teaching Pilates (see bio).

Accommodations range from comfortable tentalow rooms to luxury suites with private Jacuzzi hot tubs and can be arranged with 2 single beds or 1 king sized bed.

Prices for the entire vacation (excluding airfare) range from $1310 per person (for tentalow with double occupancy) to $2115 (private luxury suite with one person).

To register for this vacation, please call Pura Vida Spa at (888) 767-7375 or email registration@puravidaspa.com.

2. Think of all the positive changes you can experience by losing weight.

3. You will need to see your doctor for a physical if you haven't had one recently and you really should get her approval before starting a weight loss regime.

4. You should ask yourself these questions as you begin:
Why do you want to lose weight?
Are you truly committed? Do you have a support system set up?
Can you accept mistakes without giving up altogether?

5. To lose weight effectively, you will have to permanently change four aspects of your life:
1.) what you eat
2.) how you eat
3.) your behavior and
4.) your activity level.

Finetune Pilates Studio

Finetune Pilates Studio is  located on Atlantic Avenue in the heart of historic Brownstone Brooklyn. Their intimate studio, with its trickling fountain, hand crafted equipment, and warm colors, provides a tranquil atmosphere that encourages you to let go of your daily stress, focus on yourself, and achieve your health and fitness goals.

Yoga and Pilates are two of the hottest fitness trends, but how many calories will you burn off if you spend time doing the downward dog? Maybe not as many as you think. More than 11 million Americans practice yoga. It can improve flexibility and balance. Pilates conditions muscles and strengthens core stability. So it's a real calorie-burner, right? "No, it's not unless you're working at a really high intensity, and that's not what Pilates is about," said Pilates fan Kristie Spalding.

"If you really are concerned about aerobic conditioning and burning calories, you need to supplement your Pilates and yoga workouts with more conventional cardiovascular type workouts," said Cedric Bryant, Ph.D. New studies from the American Council on Exercise show that 55 minutes of yoga burn 144 calories. Two, 50-minute Pilates sessions burn about 250 calories.

"An advanced type level workout would really be equivalent to a comfortable walking pace," Bryant said.While study participants thought it was a tough aerobic workout, average heart rates fell below the American College of Sports Medicine recommendations. "The heart rate responses really don't match the true effort that you would see, say, with more conventional aerobic activities like running or cycling or stair climbing or exercising on an elliptical cross trainer," Bryant said.

The bottom line? Mix it up. Complement yoga or Pilates with a half-hour a day of traditional aerobic exercise.In the studies, there were benefits to both workouts.Women who did yoga for eight weeks increased their flexibility by 13 percent. As for Pilates, women doing it felt they were working hard, and they were. They worked their muscles, not their hearts.

Momentum Pilates & Movement Studio  is a fully equipped Pilates studio with incredible instructors!

418 First Avenue West Seattle, WA 98119 info@SeattleMomentumPilates.com 206-282-2775

The Stamina® Products Aero Pilates® features a Cardio Jump Board to provide a non-impact, fat burning cardiovascular workout. By simply lying on your back and rebounding off the Cardio Jump Board you on your way to achieving your weight loss goals. The Aero Pilates also is elevated for easy mounting and dismounting. The ultra-smooth rollers bear the weight of the sliding carriage as you move back and forth for a low-impact workout.

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Over-the-counter drugs are available without a doctor's prescription, right in your local drugstore or supermarket, and are also regulated by the FDA. According to AnneCollins.com, "Products considered by FDA to be over-the-counter weight control drugs [as opposed to dietary supplements] are primarily those containing the active ingredient phenylpropanolamine (PPA)." In 2000, the FDA requested that drug manufacturers voluntary reformulate PPA-containing products in the wake of evidence that phenylpropanolamine can increase the risk of stroke, so there are few diet drugs on the market that still contain this ingredient. OTC drugs also fall under the jurisdiction of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Herbal diet supplements are also available without a prescription. You'll typically find a huge variety of these in health food and nutrition stores as well as in regular supermarkets. Herbal supplements are often labeled "all natural" and are considered by the FDA to be food products as opposed to drugs. As such, they fall under the jurisdiction of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and are regulated differently from OTC drugs.

There is also a selection of diet aids that are administered by patch, as a powder or in liquid form. These types of drugs may fall into any of the above categories -- it is only the delivery method that is unique.

While very few diets teach healthy low-fat shopping, cooking, and dining-out strategies, many offer unrealistic recommendations and encourage health-threatening restrictions. Even more important, diets don't teach us the safest, most effective ways to exercise; they don't teach us how to deal with our cravings and our desires, or how to attend to our feelings of hunger and fullness. Eventually, we become tired of the complexity, the hunger, the lack of flavor, the lack of flexibility, the lack of energy, and the feeling of deprivation. We quit our diets and gain back the weight we've lost; sometimes we gain even more!

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Each time we go on another diet of deprivation, the weight becomes more difficult to lose, and we become even more frustrated and discouraged. Then we eat more and exercise less, causing ourselves more frustration, discouragement, depression. Soon we are in a vicious cycle. We begin to ask ourselves, "Why bother?" We begin to blame ourselves for having no will power when what we really need is clear, scientifically-based information that will help us develop a healthier lifestyle we can live with for the rest of our lives.

Deliberate restriction of food intake in order to lose weight or to prevent weight gain, known as dieting, is the path that millions of people all over the world are taking in order to reach a desired body weight or appearance. Preoccupation with body shape, size, and weight creates an unhealthy lifestyle of emotional and physical deprivation. Diets take control away from us.

Many of us who diet get caught in a "yo-yo" cycle that begins with low self-acceptance and results in structured eating and living because we lack trust in our body and are unwilling to listen and adhere to our body's signals of hunger and fullness. On diets, we distrust and ignore internal signs of appetite, hunger, and our need to be physically and psychologically satisfied. Instead, we depend on diet plans, measured portions, and a prescribed frequency for eating.

As a result, many of us have lost the ability to eat in response to our physical needs; we experience feelings of deprivation, then binge, and finally terminate our "health" program. This in turn leads to guilt, defeat, weight gain, low self-esteem, and then we're back to the beginning of the yo-yo diet cycle. Rather than making us feel better about ourselves, diets set us up for failure and erode our self-esteem.

The attitudes and practices acquired through years of dieting are likely to result in a body weight and size obsession, low self-esteem, poor nutrition and excessive or inadequate exercise. Weight loss from following a rigid diet is usually temporary. Most diets are too drastic to maintain; they are unrealistic and unpleasant; they are physically and emotionally stressful. And most of us just resume our old eating and activity patterns. Diets control us; we are not in control. People who try to live by diet lists and rules learn little or nothing about proper nutrition and how to enjoy their meals, physical activity, and a healthy lifestyle. No one can realistically live in the diet mode for the rest of their life, depriving themselves of the true pleasures of healthy eating and activity.

We Don't Fail Diets; They Fail Us!

Decades of research have shown that diets, both self-initiated and professionally-led, are ineffective at producing long-term health and weight loss (or weight control). When your diet fails to keep the weight off, you may say to yourself, "If only I didn't love food so much . . . If I could just exercise more often . . . If I just had more will power." The problem is not personal weakness or lack of will power. Only 5 percent of people who go on diets are successful. Please understand that we are not failing diets; diets are failing us.

The reason 95 percent of all traditional diets fail is simple. When you go on a low-calorie diet, your body thinks you are starving; it actually becomes more efficient at storing fat by slowing down your metabolism. When you stop this unrealistic eating plan, your metabolism is still slow and inefficient that you gain the weight back even faster, even though you may still be eating less than you were before you went on the diet.

In addition, low-calorie diets cause you to lose both muscle and fat in equal amounts. However, when you eventually gain back the weight, it is all fat and not muscle, causing your metabolism to slow down even more. Now you have extra weight, a less healthy body composition, and a less attractive physique.

Diets require you to sacrifice by being hungry; they don't allow you to enjoy the foods you love. This does not teach you habits which you can maintain after the diet is over. Most diet programs force you to lower your caloric intake to dangerously low levels. The common theory is that if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. But when you eat fewer calories than your body needs to maintain its life-sustaining activities, you're actually losing muscle in addition to fat. Your body breaks down its own muscles to provide the needed energy for survival.

Traditional diets which use calorie restriction to produce weight loss are no longer appropriate. Most weight-loss programs measure success solely in terms of the number of pounds lost per weight loss attempt. Diets don't take into account the quality of the process used to achieve that weight loss or the very small likelihood of sustained weight loss. For long-term good health, you need to move away from low-calorie diets and focus on enjoyable physical activity and good nutrition. Exercising regularly and eating lean-supporting calories, protein and carbohydrates, and reducing fat-supporting calories will not only help you look and feel better, it will also significantly reduce your risk of disease.

America spends billions of dollars on different ways to fix people. If we focused more on prevention and on improving our day-to-day behaviors, we could cut health care costs in half. Contrary to popular belief, leading a healthy lifestyle doesn't have to be difficult; it doesn't have to painful or time-consuming. Making gradual, simple changes in your diet and physical activity will make great improvements in your health and well-being, and they can drastically reduce your risk of disease.

If your weight management program is to be a success, everything you eat and every exercise you do must be a pleasurable experience. If you're not enjoying yourself, it is unlikely that you'll continue your program. It's that simple. These small, gradual changes are not painful or overwhelming but rather the core of an exciting lifestyle that you will look forward to.

Take the frustration, guilt, and deprivation out of weight management, and allow yourself to adopt gradual, realistic changes into your life that will make healthy eating and physical activity a permanent pleasure. You will soon discover what your body is capable of and begin to look, act, and feel your very best. Good luck and enjoy all the wonderful benefits of a healthy, active lifestyle.

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