photo by Matt Rose1. You can do yoga in your sleep.

You don’t have to bike up Mt. Mitchell or run five miles to lower your blood pressure and cholesterol, says Rowan Lischerelli, who graduated last year from UNC-Asheville with a degree in health and wellness. You can just do yoga instead. And in fact, you can do yoga while sleeping. In May, Lischerelli was certified at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to teach yogic sleep, or yoga nidra. "The students just lie down," she says. "A teacher guides you through various levels of consciousness." A session takes 30-45 minutes, and if you fall asleep, great. If you stay awake, you get the same benefits, she says. Lischerelli says she’ll start teaching yoga nidra classes at local centers this fall.

2. It doesn’t matter what time you eat.

Oprah might be to blame. Or Suzanne Somers. We can never keep celebrity diet plans straight. "Many trendy diet plans have told women they should not eat after 7pm to lose weight, but it doesn’t matter what time you eat. What matters is what you’ve been eating all day," says Denise Barratt, a registered dietitian in Asheville. So polishing off your cheeseburger and French fries is simply not good, no matter what time you do it. Barratt recommends healthy meals throughout the day—mostly whole grains, fruits, vegetables and low-fat proteins—to avoid overeating in the evening. For more on healthy meal prep, Barratt teaches cooking classes at the North Carolina Arboretum this fall.  Register at ncarboretum.org.

3. Don’t worry about bulking up.

Weights are your friend. No matter how much you pump the iron, most women simply won’t bulk up the way a man will, says Ellen Garrison, a UNC-Asheville health professor and fitness trainer at Training Partners in Asheville. An extra shot of testosterone is the only way to look like a female hulk. If, thousands of crunches later, you’re still struggling to perfect your six pack, add a little cardiovascular training and be patient. "You can’t really isolate muscles when exercising," says Stacey Stone, a professional trainer at Biltmore Fitness in downtown Asheville. Without fat-burning workouts for about 45 minutes twice a week, toned-up abdominals will probably still be hiding under a layer of flab. Visit stonebodyworks.com for more tips and training sessions.

4. Your chocolate chip cookie might be healthier than the milk you drink with it.

Despite decades of studies touting milk as the top source of osteoporosis-fighting calcium, UNC-Asheville health professor Amy Lanou argues that you can get more calcium from a steaming heap of broccoli. And with broccoli, you skip all the extra fat and hormones. "I’m not out to get the dairy industry," says Lanou, who has degrees in nutrition from UC-Davis and Cornell. In her book Building Bone Vitality, published in May, she reviewed more than 1,200 studies dealing with risk factors for osteoporosis and argues that milk, cheese and yogurt—the usual prescriptions for battling the disease—simply don’t do a body much good. Young women in particular should ward off osteoporosis with a plant-derived diet and weight-bearing exercises. "You don’t have to be in the gym lifting weights everyday," Lanou says. "Simple activities like gardening or hiking can help build strong bones."