It might seem like it’s still early in the year, but now that spring is here it means that summer is right around the corner. That doesn’t leave you much time to start on your warm-weather beach bod.
And you do have to get started early. Losing weight and toning up take time, and a lot of people make the mistake of waiting until summer is already upon them. But by then you’re already hoping to be outside someplace, preferably in a bathing suit.
So what can you do to get out ahead of swimsuit season? Here are a few tips:
Get motivated
Sometimes the hardest part about reaching your health and fitness goals involves getting yourself started. Get motivated by getting your friends in on the action. That might mean having someone who will join you, or just someone to talk to and share in your enthusiasm. There are also a lot of great apps and online communities that help you track and share your progress. Nothing drives results like accountability.
Build your indoor workout routine
A lot of people hold off on starting their fitness endeavours until later in the year simply because it’s still too cold and rainy to head outside to run, bike, or get whatever form of exercise they prefer. The solution is simple – bring your workout indoors. For some people that means joining a gym, but working out effectively in your own home is entirely practical.
Owning a cardio machine like a treadmill or elliptical is great, but if you’re concerned about cost or space, a jump rope or even the right series of weighted exercises will work fine. And you don’t need an expensive set of weights – a single adjustable dumbbell can provide hundreds of widely varying workouts.
Make your workout harder
Maybe you’ve already been exercising, but you’ve hit a plateau and you still have a long way to go before you read your fitness goals? Break through by increasing the difficulty of your routine.
This can be as simple as adding new workouts that will challenge new muscles to your repertoire. Or increasing your weight or reps, or even just doing each set faster with less recovery time. As long as you can find ways to make your workout more strenuous, you’ll see faster results.
Don’t put off healthy eating
I know it can be easy to tell yourself “I’ll start eating right next week”, or that you’ll just get through the junk food that you have in your kitchen now, and then buy healthier options the next time you go to the store, but that’s the same kind of logic smokers use to convince themselves to have one more cigarette.
If you’re serious about shedding pounds, you have to get motivated and start immediately. Not only does it take time, but the longer you let a habit like junk-snacking go on, the harder it is to break. So it’s time to clean out the kitchen and replace the garbage with real, healthy foods.
Take up a physical activity
If you’re having trouble getting active, start participating in something that will get you moving. This can be anything from a sport to yoga to hiking, or even simply doing some landscaping work around the yard. Not only does every bit of physical activity help, but group endeavours will help you find more motivation.
Set a goal
You don’t know where you’re heading unless you set a destination. Give yourself a goal to go after. That can mean losing a certain amount of weight, setting a lifting target, or shooting for a particular run time or distance. And as you work toward that goal, track your results.
Be realistic
I know that as summer approaches, the hope that you can melt off 10 pounds a week might be strong. But if you set unattainable goals you’re just going to lose motivation when you don’t realize them, then potentially give up altogether.
Keep in mind that losing too much weight too fast isn’t healthy in the first place. Anything more than roughly 1 percent of your bodyweight per week is both unsafe and unrealistic. And that’s the point of getting started on your fitness endeavours early – so that you have plenty of time to sculpt your bod before summer hits.
So set a realistic goal, find your motivation, and get going on eating right and working out. The results you’re hoping for are just around the corner, and so is swimsuit season.
