Dear Dee Bretnall, I'm a 35 year old woman in goog health and would like to bring my 25% body fat down to 20% while gaining mussle tone and flexibilty. I'm a little tight (very tight) in my hamstrings and back. I had 20 sessions of Yoga and 10 of Pilates and 1 year of weight training 2 years ago.. What do I do? Thanks, Sara

sounds like you may already know what needs to be done in the weight training area, so i will only talk about the cardio requirements. I usually suggest between 3-4 hours/week of cardio, but for someone that is in pretty good shape and/or needs to lose weight a little faster, I would progress up to 4-6 hours/week. For optimal results, if you are at the gym, don't do one set of cardio for much more than 15 minutes. Switch between the bike, eliptical, treadmill & stair-machine, for example, every 15 or so minutes.

Thank you so much. Could you suggest a special pilates routine to loose 5% fat and work on muscletoning? Sara