How Zoe got her flat tummy

You could have balanced a bottle of lager on it and not spilled a drop. Last week, former ladette now new mum Zoe Ball was pictured on a beach in Barbados with her husband Norman Cook and the flattest stomach in the world - hers not his. Zoe's trim midriff was unveiled barely a year after she gave birth to son Woody. What every mother in Britain wants to know now is: how the heck did she do it?

Almost inevitably, Zoe has attacked her flab by indulging in this year's hot fitness favourite: yoga, the discipline beloved of celebrities from Geri Halliwell to Madonna to Sting. Still, even if Zoe has managed to get herself along to regular yoga classes in Brighton, can that really account for her amazing new figure?

The real key to Zoe's transformation that she has been working out with weights. Weight training is rapidly becoming as trendy as yoga and it's highly effective. I should know. I shed four dress sizes in six months after giving birth by taking up weight lifting. I went from a size 18 to a size 10.

The way to make this combination work is to use weights to build muscle, thus speeding up your metabolism and the rate at which you burn calories. Yoga, at least power yoga, is one way to do this. "Yoga is great. It's a resistance exercise using your own body weight," explains strength and conditioning expert Pete Williams. "But weight training is faster."

Tim Bean, a physique coach, agrees. "Yoga's very good, but not as hard or as fast as weights."

Before I had my baby 20 months ago, I used to do Ashtanga or "power" yoga, the sort that gave Madonna arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger. While it was completely knackering, I can't say that I noticeably transmogrified from heffalump to sylph. Yoga alone is unlikely to deliver such dramatic results as Zoe's even though she has been doing it several times a week, which makes a difference. She admits it is hard work.

Yoga is very good for reestablishing "core" strength, and core strength is what everyone needs, whether they have been pregnant or not. This includes strengthening the pelvic-floor muscles, the stomach and back, and yoga addresses that.

However yoga cannot enable you to target particular areas of the body that need specific reducing, although it will reach all areas of the body in time. Dynamic forms of yoga such as Ashtanga or Bikram burn a lot of calories because you are always working to your limit.

But yoga doesn't only work at a physical level, and this is the most powerful way in which it can help weight loss. Yoga brings mental benefits, and achieving mental balance will make it easier for anyone to shed weight.

Pete Williams - don't call him a personal trainer or he might drop a barbell on you - was the man who shaved the inches off me. My first instinct was to hit the treadmill and run off the weight. He explains why this is the wrong approach: "You see these women in the gym, and they're really hitting it hard and not losing any weight and they don't know why. But the more cardio you do the more muscle tissue you waste, and that lowers your metabolism."

Zoe has other factors on her side when it comes to regaining her figure - such as her age. At 31, your body pings back into shape after a baby a whole lot more easily than it does at 35 or 40. Woody being Zoe's first was another plus. She also has good genes. She is tall and rangy and was as slim as a whippet before the pregnancy.

"Zoe has the perfect body for weightlifting," says Williams. "She's tall and long-limbed and that sort of shape gets all the right results with weights. A shorter, stockier woman might find weights made her more muscular without actually making her any slimmer."

How active Zoe was before her pregnancy and during it might also have been important. She is no couch potato and used to cycle in to work in a bid to stay fit, saying she never had any time to get to the gym.

Tim Bean explains: "If you were fit before, there is less detraining time. With the right programme, you can work out right up to the birth and start again three or four weeks after."

Bean and Williams both recommend three weight-training sessions a week, each lasting 45-50 minutes.

Williams favours free weights over machines. "Machines do some of the work for you," he says. He centres his approach on working with the Olympic Bar, the huge barbell that weight lifters use. The reason is that an exercise such as a squat involves the use of multiple joints.

This stimulates the release of testosterone and growth hormone. It is these that give you the ability to build new tissue, "so long as you get the nutrition right," cautions Williams. Lean protein, oily fish, slowrelease carbohydrate - all the usual suspects - are what you should be eating.

But weight training does have a problem: image. "Traditionally, weights and gyms have been dominated by body-builders," says Bean. "They have been sweaty, clammy places." He also admits that many people want the adrenaline high offered by going for a run or doing an aerobics class. "We've had people who've said they're not going to the weights area because it's too boring. To motivate yourself, you've got to make the work-out a challenge."

Bean's method involves more than just work-outs. He shops for food with his clients and even helped one cook for a dinner party last week. Many mothers would like that service whether they were trying to achieve a Zoe Ball tummy or not.

Pete Williams, West 1 on One, 020 7486 3386.
Tim Bean, Total Physique Management, 07947 329 696.