5 Tips To Fit Into Your Little Black Dress

Here are a series of easy tips to target 4 key parts of the body and also to help with easy weight loss:

1. Arms

Flabby upper arms aren’t going to do wonders for your confidence, so if you are needing to give your arms a toned look then target them with some specific exercises. While you can work on your arms without the need for any equipment, a good fun way of training is to use some dumbbells or kettlebells. With these you can perform a number of exercises, including: kettlebell high pull, tricep extensions, and upright rows.

Recommended exercises to tone the arms without the need for any equipment include wall push ups, floor dips and half-circle arm rotations. Look to complete between 8-15 repetitions of each exercise and do between 3-4 types of exercises on each occasion.

Top Tip : For the best results aim to carry out the exercises 3-4 times a week.

2. Legs

To truly do justice to your little black number you are going to need pair of shapely pins. There are several exercises which can help you get the legs you’ve always wanted. A great exercise for toning up the legs is skipping which also doubles as a cracking cardio workout.

Just a short session of skipping each day will do wonders for your legs as well as your fitness. Crank up the skipping by sticking on some upbeat tunes for extra motivation. In addition to skipping, try some different squat exercises. The jumping squat is a decent exercise for toning legs. Other exercises to introduce include lunges, leg raises and deadlifts.

Top Tip : Nail your technique before starting on squats. Technique is important for getting maximum benefits from these exercises.

3. Stomach

Combined with good diet, a series of exercises focusing on your stomach area can deliver good results. A great piece of equipment to help you achieve a flatter stomach is a stability ball , also known as a Swiss ball. Good exercises with a stability ball include a ball curl-up. To perform this exercise recline on your stability ball with your head, shoulders, and back in contact with the ball, but your backside off the edge and your feet flat on the floor. Contract your abs and pull your bellybutton in towards your spine while slowly curling the torso up to an almost seated position, while the ball should remain stationary underneath you.

Pause briefly before slowly returning to the starting position and repeat. Do 8-12 reps. Other good Swiss ball exercises for toning your abs and stomach area include knee tucks, V-sit with ball, and hanging knee raises. Good stomach exercises to do without a stability ball include the plank and walk out push-ups.

Top Tip : If you can’t manage to find time for your stomach workout, then watch or listen to something funny as laughter is actually a great exercise for your abs.

4. Butt or behind

Butt, backside, bottom, behind, or whatever you choose to call it, some people will never be happy with the shape or size of theirs. One things that is generally agreed is that women want theirs to be toned.

A good toning exercise for the behind is some lying leg raises. To perform these, lie on your side, with both legs stacked on top of one another. Your head should be supported by your outstretched arm (either left or right arm depending on which way you are lying). Proceed by lifting your leg up, toes pointed, keeping the pelvis in position. Pause slightly and then lower the leg and repeat, remembering to do it on both sides.

To add greater difficulty to this exercise, use a resistance band around both ankles. Other good exercises for your backside include: toe taps, various yoga poses, squats and lunges.

Top Tip : If you can’t squeeze in a workout then just squeeze your glutes at various points in your day, holding the muscles for a few seconds a time.

5. Weight loss

You don’t have to go on a major crash diet in order to lose weight. A few small changes can quickly start to produce results without you having a permanent grumbling stomach. One tip is to try and maintain low insulin levels because insulin is known to make the body store fat around your middle. To keep your blood sugar low you should aim to eat small amounts regularly. A good way of doing this is to consume three main meals a day, but in addition to have two protein-based snacks in your day to keep you feeling full and maintain low blood sugar levels.

Another good way for weight loss without having to resort to a major diet is to swap high calorie foods for lower calorie options. There are plenty of good food swap options where the alternative hopefully isn’t that unappealing. Replace ordinary burgers with bean burgers, substitute potatoes for sweet potato, swap your crisps or potato chips for popcorn - just small changes like this should help your transformation in readiness for slipping on that little black dress.

Top Tip : Slightly reduce your portion sizes. Just small reduction across each of your meals can make a surprising difference.