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I don’t know about you, but I take showers and baths for one primary reason: to get clean. (Secondary reasons: to relax, reduce stress and push through writer’s block.) But if you dissected the average bar of soap or broke down a teaspoon of a popular body wash, you’d probably find a handful of highly unsavory ingredients — harsh detergents, synthetic preservatives, artificial colors and fragrances, greasy mineral oils, even animal fats. How clean is that?

As with all personal care products — I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but I can’t stop … I just can’t stop! — it is essential to read the label on that bar of soap or bottle of body wash before you decide to take it home with you. The ingredients should either a) be extremely easy to decipher; B) be accompanied by clear explanations; c) all of the above. And when shopping for soap, be on the lookout for two of the most common ingredient red flags:

• Parabens (petroleum-based preservatives): These toxic ingredients often sneak into even the most “natural” products. They can be (loosely) disguised by the addition of prefixes like “propyl” and “butyl.” Parabens have been linked to breast cancer, impaired fertility and skin irritation — from mild itching to scaling and blistering.
• Sodium lauryl sulfate and propylene glycol (petroleum surfactants): These synthetic ingredients are often used as foaming agents to create extra-fluffy lather in soaps and shampoos. They’ve been connected to skin irritation and, more alarmingly, to disrupting the structure of the skin to allow deeper penetration of other toxins.

Tailor it if you’re sedentary and your main goal is weight loss. If you work too hard — and tire too quickly — you may not burn enough calories to make a real dent in your weight. A 2003 study of 184 women found that walking at a moderate pace for at least 150 minutes each week for a year was just as slimming as working out more intensely for shorter periods of time. In fact, women assigned to long sessions of moderate exercise lost about the same amount as women who worked harder for shorter bursts — 15 to 18 pounds, on average. To drop weight, exercise most days of the week at a pace that you can sustain for 30 to 40 minutes. You should be able to talk without gasping for air.