Don’t crash diet. If you fast in the weeks before your trip, you’ll just end up slowing your metabolism, which leads to rapid weight gain when you start eating normally during your trip.

Stroll around the airport. Nix the moving sidewalks and stroll laps around the terminal when you have a roller bag. Window-shop while you kill time. Anything to make up for the calories you won’t burn sitting on a plane.

Bring healthy snacks for the flight. Nuts, protein bars or fruit are great choices. Or eat a satisfying meal, such as a sandwich or salad, prior to departure.

Drink water. Hunger and thirst can feel similar, and since air travel dehydrates you, drink plenty of water before and during the flight. And minimize alcohol and caffeine consumption on travel days.

Plan snacks ahead. If your hotel has a fridge, find a local market and get some cottage cheese and fruit to snack on. Bring nuts, fruit or energy bars when you go sightseeing.

Live a little! Feel like having dessert or wine? Skip the bread and potatoes. Splurge on regional food items and house specialties, not chips or junk food.

Skip sugary beverages and cocktails. Margaritas and daiquiris contain up to 500 calories and can easily pack on 1-2 pounds a week. Is it really worth it? Treat yourself to one on your first day; then avoid drinking your calories for the rest of the trip.

Stay true to your eating plan. Stick with protein-based meals and snacks, high-quality carbohydrates and reasonable portions most of the time.

Get extra physical activity each day. Swim, snorkel, bike the countryside, go for walks after dinner, go dancing.

Back home, go food-shopping ASAP. It’s important to get back on track with your nutrition program right away. By filling the fridge with healthy food as soon as you return, it guarantees you’ll stick to your plan.

According to Liz Elliott, co-founder of Cyclists Inciting Change thru Live Exchange (C.I.C.L.E.), an estimated 40 percent of auto trips are two miles or less, a distance even the most inexperienced cyclist can ride. Considering that motor vehicles contribute almost a quarter of annual U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide (and that the U.S. is the No. 1 global-warming polluter in the world), riding your bike is a great way to go green and save green — gas money, that is.

Elliott believes that bicycling should be as promoted and encouraged in America as it is abroad in cities such as London and Copenhagen, Denmark. “We have to begin emulating these examples here in the U.S., and make the transformation into healthier and more vibrant urban environments,” she says. Here, a guide to get you started.

BIKING BASICS If you’ve never been urban biking before, start off slow. Do short trips (a few miles) before you decide to go on longer rides to work (some urban cyclists commute up to 25 miles one way!). If your daily commute is longer than that, consider taking the bus or train and bringing your bike along with you. Ride with friends who bike regularly, or take an urban street skills class from a cycling instructor in your area. For local resources, log on to bikeleague.org.

Make sure you are comfortable on your bike when in traffic, and wear bright colors and use lights and reflectors when cycling at night. Elliott says all cyclists should be prepared for common mechanical failures, such as flat tires or broken chains. “These repairs are simple to make,” she says. “And it’s tremendously empowering to know that you can take care of it yourself.”

SAFETY FIRST The most obvious danger when urban biking is traffic, so avoid high-traffic streets when you can. Watch for pedestrians and moving vehicles, but also parked ones. One of the most common accidents is what Elliott refers to as “getting doored,” when a parked motorist suddenly swings his or her car door open and hits an oncoming cyclist. To avoid this, always allow 3–4 feet between you and parked cars.

EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS Don’t leave home without the following nine items:

•    Mini air pump

•    Good bicycle-specific multitool

•    Patch kit

•    Spare inner tube

•    Lights for night riding

•    Horn or bell

•    Good bike lock

•    Backpack or basket

•    Helmet

FOR MORE INFO Click here for advice on choosing the right bike, clothing and safety gear. For more tips and information on biking, go to cicle.org.

1. Know all your important numbers with Tanita’s new BC558 Ironman Body Composition scale ($299.99 thecompetitiveedge.com). Smart exercisers know that weight only tells a small part of the story: Just as important are muscle mass, bone mass, visceral fat and body fat — all of which the Tanita tells you.

2. How does one jump without a rope? With a JumpSnap ($59.95 jumpsnap.com), a ropeless jump-rope that calculates the calories you burn. No more tangling (or tripping)! Bonus: easy to pack.

3. Listen to tunes and lose pounds with the Sansa Clip (2 gigabytes, $59.99 sandisk.com), an MP3 player that has a built-in microphone and recorder so you can note the distance and time you ran before you forget.

4. Get in shape with the bodybugg (from $399 veritasfitnessgroup.com), a calorie-counting armband (the contestants on NBC’s The Biggest Loser are fans). Simply strap the bodybugg to your arm and go about your daily routine. The display shows how many calories you burn — whether you’re jogging a mile or vacuuming your living room. Also, take advantage of two free personalized phone sessions with a bodybugg coach and a three-month subscription to bodybugg.com.

5. Slide on the MIO Motiva watch ($100 miowatch.com), which records calories consumed and burned throughout the day. It comes with an alarm to let you know if you’ve gone over your daily calorie target and monitors your heart rate, too.

The study, cleverly designated the A to Z Weight Loss Study, compared four popular diets: Atkins, Ornish, LEARN (a diet-and-exercise-oriented plan for behavioral change) and the Zone. Researchers assigned 311 pre-menopausal women to one of the four diets for an entire year. At the end of that year, they found that women on the Atkins low-carb diet lost significantly more weight and had an overall decline in heart-disease-risk factors. But before you ditch that apple for a block of cheese, it’s important to examine the whole story.

As a weight-loss doctor who also specializes in reducing patients’ heart-disease risk, I was not surprised by the findings, but very interested in speaking with the lead researcher at Stanford University, Christopher Gardner, Ph.D., to learn what might not have made it into the final published paper. Here are three important points from our conversation:

• The women on the Atkins diet drank the most water, which is emphasized in that diet more than the others due to the fact that dieters tend not to replace the calories from high-sugar liquids like sodas by eating more food. Therefore, they were likely to be the most successful at cutting total calories.
• The participants found the Zone diet the most confusing, which suggests that they probably did not fully comply with its rules. Gardner noted that all the dieters had some trouble sticking with the diets’ dictates, either because they were too complicated or too onerous.
• All four diets resulted in losses of 30 pounds or more for some participants, although twice as many participants lost large amounts of weight on Atkins.

Although statistics from the study do seem to point to Atkins as “the winner,” Gardner’s two final conclusions, which echo what I see in my own practice, were more complex: First, all diets work for some people for some period of time, but the weight loss can only be permanent if you find an eating strategy that you can live with long term; and, second, that lower-carbohydrate diets can improve some aspect of dieters’ health (heart health, in Atkins’ case) just by reducing the consumption of refined, processed carbohydrates.

So what should all this mean to you when you go to pick “the best” diet of the bunch? Based on Gardner’s study and other research, it appears that some diets do work better for certain women than others. Specifically, women who carry their extra weight around their midsection, aka “apple shaped,” may do best with a higher-protein, lower-carbohydrate approach. Apple-shaped women tend to handle refined and sugary carbohydrates less effectively than pear-shaped women, who carry their extra fat mostly in the hips, thighs and buttocks.

But excess fat around the midsection isn’t just a cosmetic issue; it’s also more dangerous from a metabolic standpoint and often leads to a condition known as insulin resistance — which simply means the body becomes less and less sensitive to the role insulin plays in regulating blood sugar. This condition, also known as “pre-diabetes,” increases the risk of heart disease and stroke and can eventually lead to full-blown diabetes and all its complications.

ARE YOU AN APPLE OR A PEAR?

To identify your body type and determine which diet you should choose, take this simple test.

1.    Have you been prescribed medication for high blood pressure?

2.    Have you been prescribed medication for high cholesterol?

3.    Do you have diabetes or high-normal blood sugar?

4.    Is your waist size greater than 35 inches?

5.    Do you have high triglycerides or low “good” (HDL) cholesterol?

If you answer YES to at least three out of five questions, you are considered an apple and a lower-carbohydrate diet is probably best. If you answer NO to at least three out of five questions, you are a pear and carbohydrate restriction is less important for you, which gives you the option of choosing a diet based more on lifestyle and food preferences. (No matter which shape you are, you should still limit refined carbohydrates for optimal health.)

WHICH DIET IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

Now that you know your body type, think about your lifestyle and eating habits. It is important to find a diet that you can stay on long term or the weight will creep — or flood — back on when you return to your old eating habits. And don’t forget about regular exercise. That is just as important as diet for keeping the weight off!

Diet: Atkins, South Beach
Description: Low-carbohydrate
Best for Body Type: Apple
Pros & Cons: Difficult for women who travel, entertain or dine out often

Diet: Ornish
Description: Very lowfat
Best for Body Type: Pear
Pros & Cons: Good for women who enjoy larger portions; hHard dining out

Diet: French Women Don’t Get Fat
Description: Portion control
Best for Body Type: Pear
Pros & Cons: Great for the foodie who loves to cook; not great for women with portion-control issues

Diet: Zone, Sonoma
Description: Lower-carbohydrate
Best for Body Type: Apple or pear
Pros & Cons: Slightly more time-consuming; less flexible for travel and dining out

Diet: Weight Watchers
Description: Portion control
Best for Body Type: Pear
Pros & Cons: Convenient, easy, on-the-go options; great for busy women

NOT ALL GUILT IS BAD

Guilt has its place, according to behavioral experts. “It is an important emotion,” says Karen Reivich, Ph.D., co-author of The Resilience Factor: 7 Essential Skills for Overcoming Life’s Obstacles (Broadway, 2003). Reivich also is the co-director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Resiliency Project, a 15-year ongoing series of studies that aim to help participants increase positive emotions and decrease feelings of depression and anxiety. “If you were to eradicate guilt, we would be doing the human race a disservice,” Reivich says. “[It’s an] emotional system signal that we’ve caused harm. People experience anticipatory guilt. You start thinking [of the consequences]. [You realize] uh-oh, you’re veering off course.”

“Having mild guilt is very helpful in a lot of situations,” says psychologist Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., director of The Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research in Philadelphia, and author of The Beck Diet Solution (Oxmoor House, April 2007). “If we feel guilty it is because we violated a rule we have. That nudge of negative emotion can tell us that next time we want to do things differently.”

HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

Guilt becomes unhealthy, however, when it takes over your life. The guilt-prone person who is late to a meeting assumes she has ruined her boss’s day, for example. She tends to overreact, Reivich says. “Instead of having guilt that’s in proportion to the event, she has overblown guilt. That really undercuts health and resilience. If [your] guilt is out of proportion, you are unable to do anything about [the situation].”
Magnifying a negative event can send you on a downward spiral that petrifies you with anxiety and shame, leading you to sabotage your goals. Suddenly, that bagel with extra cream cheese you had this morning means you’ll never lose weight. Cognitive psychologists call these absolutist thoughts “all-or-nothing thinking.”

When you think like this, you relinquish the opportunity to do anything about the mistake you’ve made, Reivich says. The result is helplessness.

MINIMIZING GUILT

So what’s the answer? You’ll feel better if you look for solutions rather than expend time and psychic energy blaming yourself, Beck says. “Ask yourself, ‘What should I do the next time?’” Stop seeing your shortcomings in black-and-white terms and search for shades of gray, the experts here advise.

Take the judgment off of yourself, Beck suggests. Don’t label yourself lazy or think you’ll never get in shape if you’ve missed a workout. When you have a setback, you can either beat yourself up over it and use the mistake as an excuse to stop working toward your goal, or you can address the problem, says Joseph R. Ferrari, Ph.D., professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, who studies the emotions of guilt and shame. “All successful people know that it’s not whether you win or lose, but how well you pick yourself up after failure” that counts.

Benefits: Strengthens back muscles, opens entire front of torso and boosts energy.

“Bending backwards, opposite to everyday forward bending, reverses all of that gravity pulling us down, opening the heart to bountiful potential.”

Movement:

• With legs and toes extended and elbows bent, press hands down onto the mat. Inhale, lifting your chest as if to pull your torso forward through your hands.
• As you straighten your arms, keep your spine long and shoulders down and away from your ears
• Keep hipbones on the floor to support your lower back.
• Exhale, bending elbows and lowering torso back down onto the floor.
• Keep elbows close to the body, so shoulders can roll back.
• Keep elbows slightly bent so that they can hug into the body.
• Keep hands flat on the floor, not bubbling up, to protect the wrists.

DOWNWARD FACING DOG
Sanskrit: Adho Mukha Svanasana

Benefits: Increases leg and core strength, and hamstring flexibility; increases circulation.

“When we put ourselves physically upside down, we have the opportunity to see things from another perspective.”

• From Cobra, turn toes under, pressing hands into the floor, straightening arms and legs. Exhale, lifting hips up toward the ceiling in an inverted V.
• Bend knees as much as needed to extend spine by pressing thighs back and chest toward the floor, aligning head, neck, shoulders, back and hips.
• Once the spine is extended with knees bent, begin to press the heels toward the floor as much as you can.
• Press down the inner edges of your hands and squeeze upper arms together; draw shoulder blades back and down; rotate shoulders open so insides of forearms face each other.
• Stay in this pose for 3 to 5 breaths.

Continue to next step

Benefits: Strengthens leg and back muscles; stabilizes hips; stretches hip flexors; and improves balance.

Movement:

• Bend knees (if needed) to place hands flat on floor, wrists in line with shoulders on either side of your feet and arms straight. Inhale and step back with your right foot, placing ball of your right foot on the floor, leg extended behind you, heel lifted.
• As you step, bend your left knee to align with your left ankle, foot flat on floor.
• If you can balance, sweep your arms up overhead, forearms parallel; keep breastbone lifted, spine long, abdominals in and tailbone down.
• Otherwise, keep hands on the floor. Exhale and hinge forward from your hips as you lower hands to place them on the floor on either side of your left foot.

PLANK POSE
Sanskrit: none

Benefits: Strengthens core, upper body, leg and hip muscles.

“A lot of us give away our energy and end up feeling depleted. Creating core strength is about more than getting flat abs, it is about bringing new energy into the center of ourselves, recharging and getting stronger.”

Movement:

• Keeping arms straight but not locked, inhale and step backward with left foot to meet right, balancing on the balls of your feet, legs straight, feet hip-distance apart and pressing back through your heels.
• Lower your hips if they’re hiked up and press them gently forward until your body is parallel to floor and in one straight line from head to heels.

YOGA PUSH-UP
Sanskrit: Chaturanga dandasana

Benefits: Strengthens core muscles and upper body, particularly triceps and chest; boosts confidence.

“It is amazing what can happen when a woman develops upper body strength. Not only does it change her whole posture, but she gets a spring in her step, a boost in confidence.”

Movement:

• Maintaining plank position, exhale and bend elbows, hugging them close to your sides all the way down, lowering your body toward the floor without rounding your shoulders, lifting your butt in the air, or letting your hips sag.
• Use your abdominals to maintain equal body weight between your torso and legs as you “hover” above the floor with elbows close to body and bent at a 90-degree angle. Don’t let the belly sag or the butt stick up.
• Continue to exhale as you lower your body to the floor, elbows in line with your shoulders, forearms and hands on the floor, palms down, toes turned down.

Continue to next step

Benefit: Strengthens leg and back muscles; stabilizes hips; stretches hip flexors; and improves balance.
“In yoga, we practice challenging our balance physically so we develop patience and skill to practice balance in the rest of our lives.”

Movement

• From Downward Facing Dog, inhale and step forward with your right foot through your hands, placing foot flat on the floor and lowering hips into lunge so your torso forms one straight line from head to hips, right knee bent and aligned over right ankle, left heel lifted.
• If you can balance (and did so on the other side), sweep arms up overhead, forearms parallel; keep your breastbone lifted, spine long, abdominals in and tailbone down. If you can’t balance, keep your hands on the floor.
• Exhale and hinge forward from your hips as you lower your hands to place them on the floor on either side of your right foot.

[STANDING] FORWARD BEND
Sanskrit: Uttanasana

Benefit: Increases mobility of the spine and hamstring flexibility.

“The action of bowing is an action of gratitude, a chance to be grateful for the body we have, bowing to our own divine light.”

Movement:

• From the Lunge, keep hands on the floor, then inhale and push off your left foot to bring your left foot next to your right foot, big toes together and heels slightly apart.

• Exhale and hang in a forward bend as you hinge at your hips, to “fold your torso” over your thighs; keep knees bent if you need to, otherwise straighten legs.
• Hang upside down with head and neck toward the floor. Don’t let your shoulders hunch; you want to create maximum length in your neck by keeping your shoulders pulled away from your ears so you feel no tension in your neck as you hang. Keep your neck in line with your spine.
• Let your fingers touch the floor on either side of your feet or place hands on your shins if you have less flexibility; straighten legs only to the point that it is comfortable.

REVERSE RAISED HANDS TO MOUNTAIN POSE
Sanskrit: Reverse Urdhva Hastasana to Tadasana

Benefits: Improves muscle balance; posture; spine and core strength; and increases energy.

Movement:

• Inhale and straighten torso upward as you bring arms up, out and overhead, arms straight and parallel as you reach a fully upright position, legs straight, tailbone pointing down toward floor, chin level.

• Exhale, lowering your arms to your sides and come to standing position in Mountain Pose.

Continue to view Full Sun Salutation

• Start in Mountain Pose: Inhale, sweeping arm up and above head, arms parallel, palms facing in (2).
• Exhale, swan dive forward, hinging forward at hips to a Forward Bend (3), legs straight (or slightly bent if needed). With fingertips touching floor, inhale and look forward, elongating spine so it’s straight. Exhale and step back with right foot into Lunge (3).
• Inhale in the Lunge, lifting arms parallel overhead. Exhale, and bend forward, placing hands on either side of left foot. Inhale and step back with right foot to place feet together to Plank Pose.
• Exhale, lowering torso to hover above the floor; then inhale, pressing upper torso up off floor into Cobra. Exhale, lowering torso to floor. Inhale, turning toes under, then exhale, lifting hips up in the air into the Downward Facing Dog.
• Inhale, bringing right leg forward into Lunge. Inhale, bringing the left leg forward so feet are together in Forward Bend. Exhale deeper into bend, releasing head down. Inhale, sweep arms back up in a reverse swan dive to bring to arms overhead.
• Exhale and release arms to sides to Mountain Pose. Repeat the entire sequence, beginning with the left leg.

Benefits: This is a good alternative position to lotus pose for practicing seated alignment, breathing and meditation. Adding the twist increases circulation and warms up the torso and shoulders.

“Every time you twist and rotate your torso, this is the action of wringing out toxins and detoxifying your body.”

How to Begin:

• Sit with your legs crossed comfortably so your ankle bones line up; reach under your seat and pull the fleshy part of your butt out and away from your tailbone so you can feel your “sitting bones” anchored on the floor. Now let your knees fall open naturally.
• Place fingertips on the floor, arms extended and “active” as if to draw a direct line from the center of your shoulders through your wrist to your middle finger.
• Sit up tall and erect without tension in your legs, your head and neck lifted, shoulder blades down and back and abdominals drawn inward; pretend as if a string is running through you body, lifting you upward
• Hold this pose for 3 to 5 breaths

Movement:

Inhale, lifting arms upward and overhead, palms facing in

Exhale and lower arms down as you rotate your torso to the right, placing your right hand near your buttocks and left hand on the floor in front of your right knee

Inhale arms up overhead, exhale and repeat twist to the other side

Keep breath smooth and even between inhale and exhale. Keep breastbone lifted and shoulder blades drawn down.

Repeat the twist 4 to 6 times (twisting to both sides equals one repetition)