Summer is right around the corner and if you’ve been snacking a lot in quarantine, or skipping workout sessions, but still want to lose weight for summer – you’ve got some work to do! Gyms have been closed for a while and let’s be honest, working out from home just isn’t the same. It’s hard to keep up the momentum when your comfy couch is just a few steps away!
Luckily, if you get started today, you’ll be able to lose weight for the summer by the time all the bars and beaches are open again. Hello, bikini body! These tips are ones that you can start implementing into your current daily practices and you don’t need a gym or equipment to do most of them. Just a little bit of habit adjustment, a positive attitude, and some self-discipline and you’ll be good.
There’s no time like the present, right? Let’s dive into the tips!
1
Clean your diet
Eating clean is one of the most important steps to losing weight and having a healthy body. While creating a calorie deficit (more on this later) is a good way to lose weight for summer, it won’t be sustainable unless you have the right food to nourish your body at the same time.
In order to lose weight for summer, you need to make some better and more sustainable shopping and eating choices. For example, if you have ice cream every night, you don’t need to give up your sweet treat – you just need to replace it with something healthier like a smoothie or some Greek yogurt and nuts! Here are a few other tips for eating clean:
Cut out added sugar. You might be surprised to find out how much sugar is lurking in your favorite foods! Many food items that are labeled as “diet” or “low-fat” actually have a lot of processed additives that are really not good for your body. Check the nutrition labels and ingredients to see how much sugar is in the food you’re eating and if it comes from unnatural sources. You also can check my post “How to quit sugar” for effective ways to reduce the amount of sweets you eat.
Add nutrient-dense foods. This generally means more fruits and vegetables, but it also includes food like eggs, natural protein sources, and healthy grains. What you’re aiming for is a diet that’s packed with vitamins, minerals, healthy fats, protein and fiber.
Cook at home. When you cook your own meals, you know exactly what’s going into them. If you just eat what you can from different restaurants or fast-food places, you might be ingesting a lot more sugar, carbs, fats, and other processed ingredients that you aren’t aware of. Eating clean starts in your own kitchen!
If you want your meals to stay fresh longer, you should use eco-friendly glass containers like these ones:
2
Create a calorie deficit
When you create a calorie deficit, you’re essentially burning more calories than you’re ingesting. This is a surefire way to lose weight for summer because the extra calories that your body doesn’t use for natural processes are stored as fat for your body to use later.
Most people consume many more calories than their body uses or needs. So, in order to mitigate the issue of extra calories being stored at fat, you need to create a calorie deficit! This is done by either consuming less, exercising more, or a healthy combination of both. You can read more about it in my post “How to burn fat fast“.
Lower calorie intake. This can be done by simply eating less or swapping out your current foods with low-calorie options. Eating less can be a slippery slope because you don’t want to eat too little and be unhealthy! But making swaps like cauliflower rice or regular rice or a side of veggies instead of bread and butter will make all the difference, calorie-wise.
Exercise more. The more active you are, the more calories your body needs to make all systems go. You can lose weight for summer without changing a thing about your diet as long as you do some high calorie-burning exercise every day. Some great examples would be jumping rope, running, or bicycling.
Combine low calories and exercise. This is the most efficient way to lose weight for summer! If you cut down your calorie intake and, at the same time, increase your exercise and the number of calories you burn every day, you’ll see a larger calorie deficit at the end of every week. Studies show that you need a calorie deficit of about 3,500/week in order to lose one pound/week.
3
Control your snacking
Have you ever sat down to watch a movie with a bag of chips and suddenly, before you know it, you’ve eaten almost the whole bag? This is called mindless snacking – and it’s a serious problem when you’re trying to lose weight for summer.
One way to control your snacking is to plan out your meals and snack every day and stick to just that plan. Don’t cheat and plan to eat a whole bag of chips! Give yourself a set menu or maybe 2-3 healthy snack options throughout the day so you don’t get hungry enough to binge eat, but you keep those calories down with wholesome snacks
Also, make sure you’re staying well-hydrated and have something to sip on throughout the day! Sometimes, when your body thinks it needs a snack, what it really needs is a little bit of hydration. Keeping something on hand to sip throughout the day like water, herbal tea, or an apple cider vinegar elixir will keep your mind and mouth occupied until the next scheduled snack time You might have to just eliminate all unhealthy or binge-worthy snacks from your home altogether. If you can’t sit down with some chips and dip without eating until your tongue hurts from all the salt, maybe you need to stock up on low-calorie crackers and hummus or some salted roasted almonds. You might find that these healthy snacks become your new favorite!
4
Incorporate cardio
Cardio isn’t just an easy way to lose weight for the summer, it has the ability to benefit your entire body! Just adding as little as 20 minutes of cardio per day helps to strengthen your heart, lower blood pressure, build muscle, control blood sugar, and sleep better. Isn’t that amazing?
You don’t have to hop on the treadmill or train for a marathon to get enough cardio in your diet. In fact, you can do it without needing much space at all!
Jumping jacks. You can burn about 100 calories with just 10 minutes of jumping jacks. It might be too much to do all 10 minutes at once, but if you space them out throughout your day, you could be well on your way to a calorie deficit.
Squat jumps. This simple cardio exercise has the added benefit of squats which, as most people know, are great for the thighs and glutes. Turning a simple squat into a squat jump boosts your heart rate, making it an excellent cardio exercise that you can do anywhere.
Jumping rope. You can burn over 100 calories in just 10 minutes of jumping rope. You’ll need a little more space for this, so it’s best done in a large room with high ceilings or outside on a flat and hard surface. You can add a little bit of difficulty to your jump rope routine by alternating feet, using a weighted rope, or wearing ankle weights.
5
Try intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting for weight loss is a specific eating schedule that you follow in order for your body to reap the most benefits from your food throughout the day. Essentially, you are to eat and not eat at certain times of the day in order for your body to go into “fasting mode” and train your metabolism to work overtime when it needs to.
After you eat, your body stores most of the calories at first. For 8-12 hours after you eat a meal, your body goes into this “fasting mode” and starts to burn stored fat. Normally, you don’t go more than a few hours without eating so your body doesn’t even have the chance to enter into a fat-burning “fasting mode.” By spacing out your meals more through intermittent fasting, you turn your body into a fat-burning machine!
There are a few methods of intermittent fasting, but the most popular one is called the 16/8 method. In the 16/8 method, you are allowed to eat for 8-hours a day, and then fast for the other 16. Many people find that midday eating work the best (between the hours of 12 p.m. and 8 p.m.) and then allow their bodies to enter “fasting mode” throughout the night and into the early morning.
You don’t need to do a complete lifestyle overhaul in order to lose weight for the summer. Just adding in these little changes and replacing bad habits with new ones will get you on the right track to looking and feeling amazing. It’s understandably hard to get going after a long winter and being stuck inside, but you’ve got what it takes to live the life you want with the body you deserve! Don’t wait for “tomorrow” to start. Tie your laces, prep a healthy dinner, or do whatever you can to start making a change right now!
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xo,
Jane
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