THE WORKOUT PLAN

• Basic option: Just 20 minutes of cardio, strength and flexibility exercise, three days a week, it focuses on lower-body strength training with machines. It also includes supplementary stretching (which ultimately helps to build strength) and 10 minutes of cardio work to burn additional calories and thus reduce fat.
• Extended option: For faster results, Westcott encourages 40 minutes, three times a week, including a longer cardio workout and more weight training to build overall body strength. It works best if you do it in a gym with weight machines, so you can "isolate each muscle (group) and increase weight at almost every workout," Westcott says.
• "If you must work out at home, stick with leg moves like squats and lunges, and use as much resistance (dumbbells, tubing) as possible."
• Warm-up: 2 minutes on a treadmill, bicycle, stair climber or elliptical trainer
• Cardio: 8 minutes at 70 percent (or more) of your maximum heart rate. You should be breathing hard but able to talk.
• Strength: Do 1 set of each exercise, fatiguing the target muscle in 10–15 reps. Making sure to use correct form, add 5 percent more resistance at nearly every workout. Each rep should take 2 seconds up, 4 seconds down.
• Stretching: When you finish a set of one exercise, stretch that muscle. Westcott’s research has found that this builds muscle faster. Hold each stretch for 20 seconds.
• Cool-down: 2 minutes

CELLULITE MYTHS -- BUSTED!

"I'm 20 pounds overweight but have no cellulite; my friend is rail-thin and has lots of it. My husband has none. What's up with that?" Think of the legs and butt as quilts. The quilt's top piece of fabric is your skin, the stuffing is your fat and the stitches are the fibrous attachments that course through the fat and attach to the underside of the skin, says Lisa Donofrio, M.D., assistant clinical professor of dermatology, Yale University School of Medicine. The fewer of these fibrous attachments one has, the more likely the skin will lie smoothly.

"The size and thickness of the cellulite attachments are genetically and sexually determined," Donofrio says. "Men have sparser, thinner fibrous bands than women." Age also leads to thicker bands, Donofrio continues, and those changes are compounded by loss of skin elasticity and integrity. Your friend may have more of these fibrous attachments, making dimpling more obvious. Other people, like you, have few enough to have dimple-free skin, even if there's a layer of fat. Meanwhile, if you have enough muscle (as men often do and as you might), your skin may lie more smoothly atop the fat layer.

"If I bust my butt on the treadmill, I won’t get any more cellulite, right?" "Remember, cardiovascular work is not enough to develop the muscles of your lower body," says fitness researcher Wayne Westcott, Ph.D. To see a difference in cellulite, you must strengthen key lower-body muscles. The most effective way is with exercises that isolate and fatigue each muscle.

"Aren't there creams or massage treatments that get rid of cellulite?" Creams, such as those with caffeine, irritate some skin or dehydrate it, which does change cellulite's appearance, says Donofrio. The problem? You must use them consistently to maintain the look.

Massage and kneading treatments (such as Endermologie) also help some women but, again, results are temporary. You have to keep going back for treatments (and they're not cheap). Plus, you're only making a difference in the appearance of the cellulite, not in its actual existence.

"Will toxins from my diet give me cellulite?" No. "Cellulite has nothing to do with trapped toxins," says Lisa Donofrio. It reflects a pattern of fat storage and skin tone. Some fat is stored as a sheet; some is stored as clumps (cellulite). "The appearance of fat changes as we age because we lose muscle and skin tone," says Westcott. Dimpling occurs mainly because skin thins with age and we have less muscle than we need to maintain good tone.

"But I thought cellulite was an issue for cosmetic surgeons, not exercise specialists." Donofrio, who performs numerous body-contouring procedures, says that people who turn to cosmetic surgery to get rid of cellulite are going down the wrong road. "Cellulite exists in the uppermost part of the superficial fat layer," she says. "Liposuction sucks out fat beneath there. You can get liposuction and still have cellulite." So far, anecdotal evidence suggests that some of the most stubborn cases of cellulite are in thin women who don't exercise and have little muscle tone and thin skin.