Best Workouts for Your Body Type

Apple Shapes: Tone Your Tummy If you carry most of your excess weight around the waist and tend to have narrower hips and bigger breasts, you’re an apple. Some researchers believe that apples have an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and early death while others think that waist circumference may be no better an indicator of your likelihood of having a heart attack than any other measurement of body fat. Still, being overweight, no matter where you carry your fat, puts more strain on your heart and increases your risk for heart disease. What you can do: You can’t spot reduce to get r

Pear Shapes: Tighten Your Thighs If you’re a pear, you carry fat around your hips, thighs, and buttocks and are more likely to have a small upper body (including breasts) and a heavier lower body. If you want to shift the emphasis away from your hips, there are fitness improvements you can make for a better body image. What you can do: Bicycling is an excellent aerobic exercise to help tone your lower body, Allen says. Although you can’t spot reduce, you can tone your legs with squats, leg presses, leg curls, and calf raises.

Hourglass Shapes: Tone All Over You’re curvy, and your bust and hip measurements are just about the same while your waist is narrow. If you have an hourglass figure and you’re overweight, you will likely be overweight all over. What you can do: To enhance an hourglass body type, follow an exercise program that works both your upper and lower body. Your upper-body weight-training program to define muscles could include dips, lat pull-downs, tricep extensions, and bench presses, Allen says. Good aerobic exercises for the upper body are swimming, rowing, and cross-country skiing. Tone your lower

Plus-Size Shapes: Trim Down and Tone Up You’re a full-figured femme. Your weight may be evenly distributed, or you may carry more weight on your lower body. What you can do: Some good news is that when you lose weight, you’ll lose it all over. Because being overweight increases health risks, consider working with a nutritionist on a healthful eating plan and with a personal trainer for exercises that will help you trim down and tone up. You have your choice of fitness options to trim down — what matters, Allen says, is that you make the commitment to exercise regularly.