'Wear Your Workout' With Clothes That Help You Tone
CHICAGO (CBS) - It's the time of year when we're all thinking about losing weight and working out. So, what if your clothes could actually help you burn calories and build muscle? It could happen.
As CBS 2's Susan Carlson reports some companies are now marketing new lines that they say enable you to "wear your workout."
The trend started with footwear. Sneakers that promise to shape and sculpt, body shapers that claim to help burn calories and even toesocks to exercise your feet.
Now comes workout clothes that help you tone.
"You can actually feel the fabric exerting some force against your muscle," said Jennifer Estabrook of Fila. "So if you're walking in them, you have to move your leg a little bit harder in order to move it forward."
Estabrook says their clothing line increases muscle exercise by as much as 50 percent.
"The effect is that whatever you're doing in the pant, you expend a little bit more energy and a little bit more workous," said Estabrook.
They're flying off the rack at Chicago's Midtown Tennis Club. Shop manager Lynda Reis says the double layer panels compress your muscles to make you work harder.
"I work out in them and I can feel the compression, and it warms the muscles," said Reis.
Reebok's new easy tone clothing has built-in resistance bands that help tone and target problem areas.
"It smoothes your back. No more of that ugly bra bulge," said Meghan Murphy of Self magazine. "The resistance bands are built right in so you are burning more calories as you work out."
Andrea Jacksson-Williams, 34, says wearing toning pants helps with her running.
"I feel my inner thighs and my glutes compressing when I wear them and I'm held in," she said. "So I don't feel my thighs moving around."
Physical therapist Sonja Mains says you need resistance to make muscles work. But she's not convinced about the benefits of wearing toning clothing.
"If you just have tightened clothing, it might make you look and feel better, but I haven't seen any research that actually makes the muscle work harder when there's just restrictive or tight clothing around it," said Mains.
But, she says wearing toning clothes may give you a psychological edge when you work out.
"If you wear something that makes you look and feel better, you might be more apt to work out a little bit harder," said Mains.
The key is to get moving.
"If you just put them on and sit on the couch, you're not going to get a workout," Estabrook said. "If you put on these pants, whatever you're doing, they make it more efficient. They make you work harder."
Come spring, store racks will also be full of toning bathing suits.
For more information on clothes that tone, click the links below.
