Pare down a pear shape: if you've been struggling to reduce your butt, hips and thighs, try this shape-specific workout

Muscle & Fitness/Hers, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Beth Sonnenburg, Michele Olson

Can you blame your butt on your hormones? Surprising research says yes--at least in part. Sure, your jeans may feel tight from yesterday's Krispy Kremes, but specific qualities in certain women's bodies can make losing fat from the hips, thighs and butt really difficult. This lovely bodypart triad forms the "pear shape" of many women--smaller on top, bigger on the bottom.

here's the bad news: Compared to other body types, it's more difficult for Pears to slim down their lower bodies. Here's the good news: With the right diet and exercise program, Pears can get the body they want. M & F HERS worked with Michele Olson, PhD, professor of exercise science at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama, to give you a guide to paring down a pear shape.

your body type

Female bodies are often referred to as pear-shaped or apple-shaped, or, in more scientific terms, "gynoids" and "androids." Think of these two as forming a continuum, with all sorts of bodies falling in between. You probably know someone who carries almost all her weight in her midsection--a true "apple" shape. An Apple and a Pear may weigh the same but look completely different, thanks to fat distribution.

While apple-shaped women are more at risk for health complications such as high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes, their midsection body fat is easier to lose. Pear-shaped women don't face the same health risks, but their fat is more stubborn.

"It's been scientifically shown that fat in the central-body area, the upper body, chest, thorax and so on, is mobilized much more readily than fat in the gluteal and femoral areas," says Olson. That is, the fat in the hip/thigh/glute region is more resistant to mobilization--it likes to stay put. Thus, Pears are at a disadvantage from the beginning.

fat loss patience

If you're an overweight Pear and you begin to lose weight, will it come off evenly throughout your body? Probably not. "If a woman is overweight in general and she tends to be a pear shape, she's probably going to have a more difficult time releasing lower-body fat than someone who is pear-shaped but not overweight," says Olson, who has reviewed the research.

"Release of fat from the lower body is more blunted the more overweight a person is," she continues. Olson recommends that an overweight Pear first work toward a total weight reduction, without focusing on where the weight is coming off from. "Then, the closer to a normal weight a woman is, the better chance she's going to have of getting that fat to release from the lower body," she concludes.

pear plans to pare down

How can a Pear best pare down her lower body? Olson's cardio plan has three major components:

1) Long cardio sessions

2) Interval aerobic exercise

3) Order of high-intensity intervals

Bonus: More than one cardio session a day.

Time First, let's address the "30 minutes of cardio a day" mantra. While health professionals often advise 30 minutes, it's just not enough for lower-body fat release. "The reason isn't so much having to do with the heart and cardiovascular fitness ... it's because of the overall energy expenditure you get with longer exercise sessions," Olson says. Maximum calorie burn is your goal, so aim for 45-60 minute cardio sessions.

Pear Paring Tip #1: Do aerobic exercise for a minimum of 45 minutes per day, for as many days per week as you can.

Intervals Is it better for you to do "steady-state" cardio at one constant speed, or should you shake it up with varying intensities? "Interval training--absolutely," says Olson. (In interval training, you alternate measured periods of high-intensity and lower-intensity exercise.) Olson explains that interval training typically burns more calories than steady-state cardio does. "The total energy expenditure is the most important thing. As a Pear is working out, her body is going to want to draw fatty acids from her upper body to begin with. You need to get your body over that hump to where it says, Okay, I've used a lot of fat here and I like to take it from the upper body, but now I'm going to have to turn to this other fat storage site. And that is really just dependent on total calories expended," she says.

There's another benefit of interval training for Pears: enzymes. Enzymes act as keys that open certain locks in the body. You can think of fat-burning as a sort of locked door that needs to be opened by enzymes.

"One study found that certain substrate enzymes were increased in the high-intensity interval training group, compared to the steady-state group," says Olson. "The interval group ... lost significantly more fat from these different areas. So much of the fat loss had to do with changes in the enzymes and other kinds of things that you don't see when you're exercising." In this case, the interval group actually burned fewer total calories during exercise, but the post-exercise effects of interval training made them fat-burning machines.

What should your interval training feel like? "It needs to be fairly intense. On a scale from 1-10, 10 being hardest, we're talking 7-8 for the high-intensity intervals. Level five is good for the recovery intervals. Lower does not mean you just plummet down to zero--it's more of a moderate, low-moderate intensity," Olson says.