Pilates is a hot workout that is fun and can help you shed pounds helped dancer shed pounds

In the pictures, P.J. Catalano doesn’t look like a dancer. She is very heavy, and it is tough to imagine she had ever danced or taught dance professionally. Somehow, she had lost control of her life and her weight.

“My mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, so I was in a pretty rough spot and going through a divorce,” Catalano says. “I was pretty unhappy and I had put on a lot of weight.”

She would try to hide the extra pounds under clothes, but it wasn’t working anymore. A mother of two, she was having trouble moving.

“It was a chore. It was difficult to keep up with the kids,” Catalano recalls.

But if you meet Catalano today, you’ll have trouble picturing her overweight. How did she make the transformation? She says she walked into a pilates studio and it changed her life.

“The weight started to drop off and I wasn’t even trying,” she says.

Catalano is now a thin, firm and highly energized version of herself.

Pilates (pronounced puh-LAH-tees) is one of the hottest workouts of the decade, though it’s more than 80 years old. It was created by German fitness guru and nurse Joseph Pilates, after World War I. His goal was to create a way for bedridden hospital patients to exercise and regain muscle strength. His system of movements involving coordinated breathing techniques has been favored by dancers for years.

Catalano studied a Detroit version of those movements.

Her teacher was Trent McEntire, a former professional dancer who was injured and started using pilates as a way to recover from his pain and keep moving. He spent 10 years developing his “McEntire Workout Method” (www.mcentiremethod. com). According to McEntire, it’s based on Pilates, but with his own movements and flavor. His goal is to deliver a workout that improves coordination and circulation, while relieving tension and stress.

“It includes a whole body workout,” McEntire says. “You work the whole body every time you come in for a session.” Those sessions last an hour and a half. They can be done solo, as a duet or in a class.

“We’re not isolating muscles, we’re integrating how the body works,” he says. “It’s to stretch and to strengthen and to give them control, which leads to giving them some empowerment so they feel good about themselves and just have a healthier lifestyle in general.”

During the session, exercisers use mats on the floor or use specially designed exercise machines.

At all times, the focus is on controlling breathing, keeping the spine in alignment while stretching and strengthening the body.

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