[brightcove:5523715639001 default]

This article originally appeared on People.com.

What It Is: Physiclo Compression Tights with Built-In Resistance

Who Tried It: Stephanie Emma Pfeffer,  PEOPLE Bodies writer

Level of Difficulty: 5/10

I was skeptical when I first heard about Physiclo compression tights and the company’s promise of amping up a workout just by wearing special gear. But it sort of made sense, the idea of built-in resistance making a workout harder and more efficient. And since I’m always trying to squeeze the best workout in the fewest minutes possible (who isn’t?), I ordered a pair and decided to take them for a trial run. Literally.

The first thing I noticed was how difficult they were to get on. I mean, these babies were tight! And at $110 for capris and $125 for full-length tights, I was a little annoyed at feeling like I was being stuffed into a sausage casing. Once they were on, though, things felt better — and each time I wore them they were easier to pull on.

The site says Physiclo’s technology uses elastic bands and panels stretching over different muscle groups to generate resistance. My legs definitely felt heavier wearing them.

To test the company’s claim of an increased heart rate and caloric burn, I did the same routine wearing the Physiclo tights one day and my regular workout pants another day, comparing my Fitbit stats both days.

I ran on the treadmill for 15 minutes at a pace of 6.0 and a barely noticeable 1.0 incline. Even with the added weight, the tights didn’t restrict my movement at all, although I imagined it might be hard to do my usual speed work.

Wearing the Physiclo tights I had an average heart rate of 158 (max 170), and I burned 158 calories. In regular pants my heart rate was 154 (max 164) and I burned 133 calories.

So according to my completely unscientific experiment, wearing the Physiclo pants produced not only a higher heart rate but more of a calorie burn! I was sold.

Over the next few weeks I wore them for some other activities. I jumped rope in them one day.  I wore them to the playground to do body weight exercises while my kids ran around. I tried the leg-day workout on the Physiclo site designed by Olympian Stephen Lambdin.

By this time I was starting to dig them and feel a lot more comfortable. I was able to run 5 miles on the treadmill with no problem achieving my usual speed. (Not sure if my legs were getting stronger or what, but I felt great!)

When I most felt the effects was while doing exercises like squats or the Stair Master. I did 15 minutes at level 10 and really felt it in my thighs and butt.  I felt as sore as if I had done a full hour of barre! I wondered if I would grow an awesome peach booty if I wore these consistently.

After a few weeks of wearing Physiclo sporadically, I noticed that my legs felt stronger, tighter and more toned. Not sure if that was the pants or because I was working out a lot more in general.

The one thing I didn’t love was how they looked. Yes, I am a little vain about what I wear to the gym — I find it motivating to look good. And even though I am in shape, these pants squeezed me in ways I felt were slightly unflattering. That’s not to say everyone would have this problem — it’s possible that other body types would be fine. I dealt with the issue by wearing longer-than-usual tops. But this was really my only complaint, and it was not enough to keep me from wearing the pants.

Verdict: At $110, these pants are not cheap, but they run the same amount as some other luxe  brands. If you work out a lot and are looking to add something new or take your routine to the next level,  you should give these a shot! Just don’t size down when you order.

Kayla Itsines, Kelsey Wells and other influencers discuss their bedtime routines.

[brightcove:5377966703001 default]

From the time she was small, Jessica Dolan wanted to be a mom. So not long after she and her boyfriend of nine years got married, they began trying to get pregnant. A year later, with no success, Jessica’s doctor sent her to a fertility clinic for help. Feeling hopeful, the couple began the intense process of in vitro fertilization, with every-other-day visits to the clinic for blood tests, exams, imaging, and injections of hormone-bolstering medications.

Then, in the summer of 2012, they received the news they’d been waiting for: Jessica was pregnant. “I was 37, and we were thrilled to be starting a family,” she recalls.

When she was six weeks along, Jessica started having menstrual-like cramps and feeling lightheaded. At first, she chalked it up to pregnancy, but when the symptoms persisted for several days, she went to her doctor. An ultrasound revealed that the fertilized egg had implanted in her fallopian tubes instead of her uterus—what’s known as an ectopic pregnancy—which meant it wouldn’t survive.

“I was crushed,” says Jessica. “The clock was ticking because of my age, but I dreaded starting the whole process over again.”

More heartbreak

Shell-shocked and in mourning, they took a year-and-a-half break to regroup, but by December 2013 they felt ready to try again. “My fertility doctor assured us that he’d never seen a woman have two ectopic pregnancies, and he was confident we’d be successful,” says Jessica. Indeed, in January 2014, she learned she was pregnant again.

At five weeks, however, she started having cramping again—and discovered that lightning can strike twice. This pregnancy, too, was ectopic. “Everyone at the fertility clinic was shocked, and I felt defective, like there was something terribly wrong with me if my body couldn’t do what it was supposed to do.”

With one frozen embryo left, Jessica and her husband decided to give it one final try. A month later, she had a positive pregnancy test—but at the following week’s office visit, a second test came back negative. “That false positive marked the end of our dreams,” says Jessica. “But giving up triggered a painful identity crisis. If I couldn’t have a child, who was I? What would I be if not a mom?”

[brightcove:3666271832001 default]

Rock bottom

Jessica spiraled into a dark, lonely place. She could barely get out of bed in the morning and began eating anything that made her feel better in the moment—pizza, ice cream, cookies. Over the next year she gained 30 pounds. “I was too depressed to work, and every morning I woke up and thought, ‘F**k, here goes another day.’ I couldn’t imagine what was going to become of my life.”

Still, there were fleeting moments when she felt more positive, and in one of those she downloaded the 7 Minute Workout app and pushed herself to start doing it. “I’d exercised off and on throughout my life, and even though I was ridiculously out of shape I figured I could do seven minutes,” she says.

WATCH THE VIDEO: Kayla Itsines’ Seven-Minute Full-Body Workout

After a few months, she started running on her treadmill and gradually built her endurance to 10 minutes, then 15, then 20. “Instead of beating myself up for doing so little, I told myself that every minute was a win,” she says. The more she exercised the better she felt—less anxious, more positive, more confident and capable. By early 2015 she had started a new career and began re-engaging with life.

Last June, ready to take her routine to the next level, Jessica hired a personal trainer. “He keeps me accountable and pushes me farther than I thought I could go. Now when he tells me to do 50 push-ups I don’t think, ‘Are you crazy?’ I just do it,” she says.

To get effective workouts delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Healthy Living newsletter

Her weekly routine is intense. She gets up at 4 a.m. two mornings for a bootcamp class, does personal training two days, runs at least three miles every weekend, and takes hip-hop or ballroom dancing a few nights a week.

“The fog has lifted and I’m feeling great. I’ve lost weight, and I’m energized by life again,” says Jessica. “Without exercise I would have been lost. It shifted my thinking from negative to positive. It helped me embrace every day instead of dread it. All my life, exercise seemed like a chore, like something I should do but didn’t really want to do. Now I look forward to it, because I know it keeps my mind as healthy as my body. And it all started with a few minutes a day. That’s how powerful it is.”

[brightcove:5557865222001 default]

This article originally appeared on DailyBurn.com.

This guest post comes from Daily Burn 365 trainer, running coach and three-time marathoner Cheri Paige Fogleman, NASM CPT (pre- and post-natal certified). The opinions expressed below are her own, and should not replace medical advice. After giving birth, it’s recommended to get medical clearance before beginning any exercise/training program.

In so many ways training for a marathon is like being pregnant. Your sleep suffers, and yet all you want is more time in bed. Your thirst is off the charts, despite drinking water non-stop. You try to eat more (because you need more calories), but your belly just can’t handle it. You’d really like a glass of wine, but you know you shouldn’t.

Your every movement is also an attempt to protect your body from injury. You prepare for months for something that scares the crap out of you, and while you just want it to be over with already, you are also still so terrified (so really, let’s not rush things). Your body is totally uncomfortable and achy and you hurt in weird places, but you know that it’ll all be worth it, and you’ll be filled with joy once the big day comes.

So, why once you’ve had a baby would you want to run a marathon?

Well, on Sunday, November 5, there I was — jammed into the corral at the start of the 2017 TCS New York City Marathon. Would my race be perfect? No. Would it hurt like heck at times? Probably. But, like most big and scary life events, I had a sneaking suspicion it would all be worth it in the end. And seeing my little girl at mile 25 reassured me of that.

Here are a few things I learned along my post-baby journey to 26.2, which might help other new moms, too.

RELATED: 17 Tips from Real Moms on Finding Time for Exercise

9 Things No One Tells You About Running a Marathon Post-Baby

Photo by Catherine Martin

1. Take advantage of your superhuman body.

The first thing my OB said to me at my first visit: keep running throughout your pregnancy. Postpartum, you’ll be able to get back to running quicker and you’ll still be able to take advantage of all the cardiovascular changes that happen to a pregnant body. These changes include increased cardiac output (up to 50 percent more than pre-pregnancy), increased blood volume (also as much as 50 percent more than pre-pregnancy), and an expanded ribcage (which offers more volume of air in one breath).

Basically, during pregnancy, oxygen circulates through the body more efficiently, and with increased efficiency, the body can perform better — and with greater ease. And, because a woman’s body doesn’t just snap back after delivery, it can take a year for the postpartum body to operate “normally” again (depending on breastfeeding). But that means we can take advantage of that so-called superhuman body for a while. My OB’s advice: Plan to qualify for Boston just shy of a year, postpartum. It’s nice when you can get a running coach and an OB all in one, yes?

RELATED: The 30 Best Marathons in the Entire World

2. Anticipate a drop in breast milk production.

Possibly because of dehydration, maybe because of physical stress, I found that my breast milk production tapered dramatically once my training picked up. If you are exclusively breast feeding and are less than six months postpartum, a few things can help. Oatmeal, for instance, is high in iron, which is believed to promote milk production. Some experts also suggest performing a series of power pumping sessions (as in milk pumping, not pumping iron). This method encourages over-production going into your training so you’ll have extra in the freezer in case you’re coming up short and the little one is hungry. For me, consuming more gels and drinking more electrolytes (e.g. Gatorade and coconut water) while training also helped keep my production from dwindling.

3. Give your feet special attention.

Because it can take about a year for hormone levels to return to normal after giving birth, be cautious of over-stretching and putting excess strain on your feet. The hormone relaxin is present in the body during pregnancy to allow tendons and ligaments to loosen and the skeleton to make space for the baby. If your feet grew during pregnancy, that same hormone can now cause your feet to shift even more. Avoid minimal shoes (unless you’ve been wearing them all along). And don’t skimp on calcium, which has been shown to help protect not just the bones in your feet, but your entire skeleton. Plus, it fuels your body’s energy production — so make sure you fill up on sources like milk, yogurt, spinach and kale. A postpartum body (and a breastfeeding body) is often calcium-deficient due to “mining” calcium from the mother’s bones to provide for the growing baby.

RELATED: 9 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Running

4. Heed the advice about changing up how you hold the little one.

I was told to switch up which hip I hold my daughter on by more than one person. And I’m a trainer, so I should know better, right? (I have even given that same advice to clients for years!) And yet, when life happens, I have been 100 percent guilty of slinging her on my left hip while scurrying around the kitchen slinging eggs and coffee and oatmeal.

It wasn’t until my 15-mile training run that my back started to feel a little twinge…and then my hip and then my hamstring and then my calf. A few weeks later, after an 18-mile long run, I couldn’t walk. A trip to my PT revealed that (due to holding my daughter only on my left hip) my right lower back and the muscles that run up the right side of my spine had all called it quits. That lead to a chain reaction of pain and suffering down my left hip and leg. Which brings me to…

5. Whatever amount of core training you’d normally do, multiply that by four.

During pregnancy, abs have a tendency to stretch or even separate (aka diastasis recti), and if you had a caesarian, the trauma can be worse. This has an effect on not just your ab strength, but also your back stability and the integrity of your entire kinetic chain. As a pre- and post-natal certified trainer, I recommend planks, side planks, bird-dogs, bridges and supermans. And if you can, make an appointment with an MAT (Muscle Activation Technique) therapist. A MAT therapist can determine where muscle weakness might be causing problems. Next, he or she will work to bring that strength back by palpating muscles, then prescribing specific isometric exercises to continue on your own. It’s been a game-changer for me.

RELATED: 6 Core Exercises for New Moms with Diastasis Recti

6. Make it worth it.

In my before-child days, I never realized I was taking for granted the freedom to run at any time and for any distance. But now I know. The acrobatics of juggling childcare for training has meant driving 45 minutes to my brother’s house to drop off my daughter, squeezing my long run into two hours, and then rushing back home for her nap time. It’s meant waking up in the pre-sunrise hours to run and get home before she wakes. I joined a gym specifically because it has childcare. And, I went out and bought a jogging stroller. While there is a certain amount of peace and quiet that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed while running, the extreme inconvenience of every single run is unavoidable. Whereas my biggest decisions were once which leggings to wear, or which route to take, now it’s: where my daughter will be, if she’ll need food or milk, and when she’ll take her next nap.

Because my better half, my brother and sister-in-law, my friends, my wallet and even my daughter have all made sacrifices for the sake of my training, my performance on November 5 was more important than ever. It took a village to get me to the starting line. For their sake, I could not let the village’s efforts be in vain.

RELATED: How to Run (And Watch!) the NYC Marathon Like a Pro

Photo by Janice Lancaster

7. You’re stronger as a mom.

There’s no way around it: Hitting the wall sucks. But the sudden fatigue caused by depletion of glycogen stores is something all endurance athletes have to learn to push through. As a running coach, one of the ways that I familiarize clients with that “wall” feeling is through repeat speedwork. (Think: repeat 400s, 800s and miles.) It’s brutal, and it perfectly recreates that hopelessness and defeat as your legs feel like they are going to fall off or melt and you crumble into a pathetic heap on the ground.

The “good” news? I now know that the first three months of my child’s life was just hitting the metaphorical and literal wall over and over and over again. I went weeks on mere hours of sleep and then managed to not wake her as I cradled her, stood up from seated on the floor, tripped over the cat (and a pacifier), and finally lowered her into the bassinet. That is pushing through the wall! I now know that motherhood makes you an expert on perseverance. All of my training on the road and the treadmill prepared me for the marathon, but it was my training as a mom that prepared me to win it.

8. Your little one will help you recover faster.

Don’t worry for a second about how you will run 26.2 miles and then be able to squat down to tie your baby’s shoes. You already do daily functional training in the form of squatting, bending, twisting and lifting with your little one. So, as you add on miles, you will naturally continue your feats of strength and acrobatics. In fact, in my before-child days — when I’d allow myself to lounge around after a long run with my feet up — recovery actually took a bit longer. But, because blood flow (from movement) encourages recovery, and a toddler doesn’t allow days off from chases through the apartment, my muscles were surprisingly chipper the day after long runs. They even felt pretty great the day after the marathon!

RELATED: 5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Reduce Muscle Soreness

9. It’s no longer about you.

One of the overwhelming takeaways of running the NYC Marathon is how spectacularly the spectators cheered. Their emotional shouts of encouragement contained something more than inspiration. I felt a very strong sense of appreciation that I was achieving this marathon goal for them — on their behalf. While that’s a humbling duty I’m honored to carry out, I’ve begun to think more about how my every action impacts my child. It’s cliché, but true: Having a daughter has made me want to be a better version of myself. And more than ever, I’m aware of how I can lead by example.

I want my little girl to see that setting your sights on a goal and working to achieve it are key to excelling in life. And, for me, running 26.2 miles through the five boroughs of New York City was achieving a goal on my daughter’s behalf. It was my way of showing her that she has the necessary stuff in her genes to power through the seemingly impossible. That she can achieve things beyond her wildest dreams.

Steal these exercises from stars like J.Lo and Khloé Kardashian to lift and tighten your rear.