Review: Body By Bethenny - Unleashing My Inner Skinnygirl!

If you are a fan of The  Real Housewives of New York City, you know Bethenny Frankel. She is a straight shooting, no B.S., healthy food chef, reality star and author. Bethenny's enterprise also includes this workout DVD called Body By Bethenny. If you own this DVD or are interested in purchasing it, it is probably because you already know of Bethenny either from the Housewives or her newest show Bethenny Getting Married. She is not well-known for being a fitness expert, although she is well-known for being healthy and in-shape. This isn't like the Jane Fonda Workout, where Jane was the fitness guru who led and directed all of the workouts on her videos back in the day. Bethenny is essentially showing us, as she says on the DVD, what she does to get in shape. And that, my friends,  would be doing yoga with a qualified instructor.

In the introduction, Bethenny stresses that it is important for us to be realistic in our workout goals, and how it is important to just do what we can do and work with what we have. It really makes fitness out to be un-intimidating, which is nice. For 55 minutes, Bethenny works out with Kristin McGee, who is a certified personal trainer, Pilates master and yoga instructor. There are no other students in the room, its just Bethenny and Kristin. Their easy flow of conversation throughout the work out is not strictly teacher-pupil, its almost like two girlfriends working out together or the relationship you might have with your hairdresser where you become really close buds with the expert who makes you pretty. There is some banter back and forth and typical funny Bethenny comments - such as "Ugh, my hideous feet" when we are directed to reach down and grab our toes. And when we are doing  a forward bend she calls it the "boob-to-knee" pose and says "We should write to India and tell them to change the language."  Such a character!

This is definitely a good workout for a beginner yoga student to work up to. It's nice because the yoga portion is only 40 minutes, so its great if you don't have a lot of time, or if you are just starting to try to get in shape the duration of this workout won't kill you. But this is not a super easy work out, there were times when my arms were burning and the poses were hard to hold. I have a lot of work to do on my core strength, which will help me balance better. I noticed I was even better the second time I did the DVD, and the backs of my legs (hamstrings) were pretty sore. As they mention in the DVD, if you sit at a desk all day like I do, your hip flexor muscles get very tight and had a great stretch for that. I really felt that for me, this DVD was an excellent compliment to my running.

There were also 10 minutes of strength and toning, with light arm weights. The last 5 minutes were fun "booty blast" moves which consisted of leg lifts and squats. I felt like the 55 minutes flew by fast and because of that see this DVD and something I will be doing often. It's a realistic workout, just like Bethenny says. Being a busy mom of 2, I need to work out regularly but don't have 2 hours to commit to it every time. With this DVD, I don't even have to drive anywhere, just pop it in while the kids are playing, napping or even better yet before they wake up in the morning. Before you know it, you'll be done and you'll feel much better about yourself. You'll unleash your Skinnygirl in no time!!