The Drop-A-Dress-Size Fitness Diaries: Core Fusion, Here We Come

Many of you are following along as my fellow online fashion and beauty writers do our best to adhere to our New Year's Resolution to get fit and smoking hot this year. I, being the overachiever in the group, decided to up the ante and try to lose a dress size before New York Fashion starts on 2/11/10. Well, you've seen us hit Physique 57 so it only makes sense that we try the ultimate total body class, Core Fusion.

Created by Fred DeVito and Elisabeth Halfpapp, the Mind Body Programming team behind the now legendary Exhale Spa, this is the class you want to take to get a Hollywood body in a safe way. Think long, lean muscles with a supple body and increased core strength and flexibility. The class is a mixture of ballet barre work, yoga, gyrotonics and active isolated stretching that uses low weight and high reps to break muscle down in a certain way so it reshapes itself as a longer, leaner fat-burning machine. Think Kim Cattrall and Julia Roberts bodies as examples.

At an invitation from Fred DeVito himself, Felicia Sullivan, Dina Fierro from eye4style, Anne Fritz from The Jet Set Girls and a few of our PR friends headed to the Soho studio in Manhattan to get our workout on. Co-creator Elisabeth was also on hand to correct form and remind me that if it felt easy at certain instances, I wasn't doing it correctly. One hour later, we emerged from the class way tougher than we were when we walked in. The video above is a recap of our experience mere minutes after the class was over. See how sweaty we are? We worked it, folks, no doubt about it. This class is tough but it's AMAZING.

Look, the bottom line is this: losing weight and getting (and staying) in shape is not easy. There's no magic bullet and no way around the hard work. If you want a workout that will give you an amazing body, then I would definitely encourage you to head to Exhale's website and check out a class at a location near you. Exhale's mind body programming and spa therapies are meant to focus on the whole body. Yoga, massage, nutrition - it's all there and the best in the industry are there to help you.

As for me and my money? I'm going back again on Saturday for yoga with my beloved instructor, Exhale's Sebastian White, and I'm definitely heading back for Core Fusion again on a regular basis. In the spirit of full disclosure I used to work for Exhale so I know how good this class is. It gave me the best body of my entire life and last night's class reminded me why. Phone a counselor because I'm officially re-addicted to this amazing class.

Hi, my name is Kristin and I'm a Core Fusion addict. (Hi, Kristin!)