As the warm weather nears, our thoughts often turn to spending more time outside, at the beach, or even on a tropical vacation. But, the thought of putting on a bathing suit and hitting the beach can put a speed bump in our sun-drenched plans.
If you want to work on toning up and losing some weight before you put a foot on the beach, there are some steps you can take. However, these changes don’t happen overnight, so starting work on your beach body as soon as possible, rather than crash dieting and training, will ensure you are ready to go on day one.
So what is the best way to get a beach body? Use these tips below to make sure when warm weather rolls around, you’ll be ready to go.
1) Plan Ahead
A goal without a plan is just a wish, as the saying goes, so start planning how to get a beach body now. Creating a diet and exercise plan can give you an edge in achieving your beach body goals. When your goal is to “lose weight” with no specific plan behind it, you’re likely to wander off track.
Begin by listing your goals, a date by when you want to achieve them, and how you will know that you have succeeded, e.g. losing a certain amount of weight or how your body looks in a swimsuit. Plan reasonable, achievable goals and set benchmarks along the way to keep you on track.
2) Start a Food Journal
Start a food journal and plan your meals, buy groceries according to your menu, and avoid impulse eating. In addition, log the food and calories you eat, when you eat them, and how you feel. Reviewing this information can help you identify trouble areas and come up with ways to combat them.
3) Increase H2O Consumption
The benefits of staying hydrated are endless. It can keep your brain functioning, helps your skin look better, flushes out toxins, and more. More importantly, it can help you lose weight by filling you up before meals and curbing hunger. In addition, ensuring that you are adequately hydrated improves blood flow and muscle hydration before, during, and after a workout. You’ll be able to perform better and have more endurance.
But wait, there’s more. It sounds counterintuitive, but increasing water consumption can prevent water retention and bloating. It also helps your digestive system and improves metabolic functioning. Stick to water and green tea to hydrate your system.
The food you eat also affects your hydration, so add some water-rich fruit and vegetables to your diet. These are part of a healthy diet, so they’ll also help you reach your beach body goal.
4) Swap Cardio for Weights
Resistance training is one of the best ways to get more toned, leaner, and stronger. So, add some weights to your workout routine. Cardio alone won’t build lean muscles, and when you have more lean muscle mass, it boosts your metabolic rate, so your body can burn calories faster. Plus, the effect strength training has on the aesthetics of your body can’t be beaten.
5) Don’t Neglect Cardio Completely
However, cardio has benefits for achieving a beach body, too. In fact, ideally, you incorporate both into your workout schedule. When you do cardio, your body becomes more efficient at using oxygen, which means you won’t get tired as easily, and your heart and lungs get stronger. This gives you more endurance generally and helps your other workouts. Hi-intensity cardio can help rev up your metabolism.
6) Train Early in the Day
Realistically, the best time to do exercise is when you have time to do exercise. But, if you can swing it, training early in the day is ideal. Resist the urge to hit the snooze button one more time and snuggle under the covers. Getting your exercise in early, even before breakfast, is a great way to get your metabolism going for the day. It starts the process of fat and calorie burn, and your metabolism will keep going at a higher rate for the remainder of the day, even up to 15 hours.
7) Schedule Recovery Days
Your body needs rest not only to build muscle but to help prevent injury. Progress is made by moving mindfully in the right direction, and rest days are a part of that. One of the best ways to lose your motivation is to overtrain until you dread every workout. When to take a rest day depends on the individual, but you can generally tell when it’s time by how you feel. But don’t take more than one in a row unless you are injured or sick. You don’t want to get out of your regular exercise routine.
8) Eat Right to Lose Weight
Eating a nutritious diet centered around whole foods is one of the best things you can do not only to get a beach body but to maintain your health. This means including plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains, and healthy fats. Keep in mind calories in / calories out, also keep an eye on the number of calories you consume.
Whole grains include oatmeal, barley, quinoa, farro, and other minimally processed grains that are high in fiber. Lean proteins include fish, loin cuts of beef or pork, and white meat chicken or turkey, as well as egg whites, beans, and tofu.
9) Reduce or Eliminate Alcohol Consumption
When trying to get a beach body, reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption is a must. Alcohol, especially with mixers and sodas, adds an astounding amount of fat and sugar to your diet. Alcoholic beverages are extremely high in calories, and worse, they are stealth calories.
It’s easy to consume more calories in alcoholic beverages without realizing it. And worse, these calories have no nutritional benefits and don’t benefit your body. Avoid frozen, creamy, or overly sweet drinks, or avoid alcohol completely.
10) Get Enough Sleep
A lack of quality sleep can slow down your metabolism and make it harder for you to lose weight and keep it off. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body feels tired and needs energy. It increases the appetite-stimulating hormone. And it decreases the hormone that suppresses your appetite. Sadly, this does not increase your craving for healthy foods but for carb-rich, sugary junk food. These are the foods that give you a quick jolt of energy.
In order to improve your sleep habits, shut down all screens about an hour before going to sleep. If you think this is totally impossible, start small, about 15-20 minutes, and increase it gradually over time. Eating too close to when you to bed can make it harder to get quality sleep. Plus, you probably don’t need those calories anyway. Spend a few minutes breathing deeply to calm your mind and put it in sleep mode.
11) Eat a Low-Bloat Diet
If you are prone to bloating, then start eating a low-bloat diet. Dehydration can cause your body to retain water and make you look and feel bloated. If you are already following the advice above on hydration, this shouldn’t be an issue. However, there are more steps you can take to reduce the chances of bloating.
Eat more fiber-rich foods to help your digestive system work smoothly. Fiber-rich fruits include strawberries, raspberries, bananas, and oranges. Also include more whole grains such as brown rice, buckwheat, and quinoa. Fiber-rich food also helps you feel full longer and can help keep you from snacking.
Avoid skipping meals, especially if you are trying to lose weight. Eating three balanced meals a day will keep your metabolism running and help reduce or avoid bloat.
12) Cold Laser Therapy for Upper & Lower Body
If you’ve been dieting and exercising but still have some stubborn fat pockets that just won’t budge, consider a non-invasive procedure such as cold laser fat removal. This procedure is fast, pain-free, and has no side effects. Unlike other procedures, it doesn’t damage fat cells, it shrinks them. They then act like healthy fat cells and signal the other fat cells around them to do the same.
The upper and lower body, including upper arms, the armpit area, saddlebags, inner and outer thighs, and the back, are sometimes resistant to traditional weight loss methods. These are the areas that women’s bodies tend to hold fat and often won’t let go of it. With cold laser fat removal, you will be quickly on your way to a slimmer body. This non-invasive procedure is easy to fit into your busy schedule.
13) Get Your Skin Beach Ready
After all this, are you beach body ready? Not so fast. Don’t neglect your skin in your beach-body plan. Level up your whole-body skincare routine so you can trade dry winter skin for healthy, glowing summer skin. Exfoliate and moisturize regularly. Exfoliating sloughs off dead, flaky skin and reveals the fresher skin below. Then, moisturize to soften your skin and lock in hydration.
Pay attention to areas that tend to be neglected during the winter. This means exfoliating the dry skin on your feet and softening calluses with a salt scrub and a pumice stone. Then use a moisturizer specifically for feet.
For smooth, stubble-free legs, plan your attack. Timing is everything, so take this into consideration whether you choose shaving, depilatories, or waxing. Whatever method you choose, be sure to do it in time for your skin to calm down, so you don’t have rashy, itchy skin when you hit the beach.
14) Walk with Confidence
Sometimes, it’s all in the walk. And after you’ve put in all your hard work, you deserve to walk with confidence. Stand tall, keep your head up, and think about how your body moves as you glide across the sand. Good posture and a graceful walk will make you look leaner, slimmer, and longer. It’s the best way to show off your newly created beach body.
If you have stubborn areas that you just can’t get rid of in time for summer beach weather, consider Emerald Laser for fat loss. This cutting-edge treatment shrinks fat cells so that they release the fat they hold, and it is whisked away by your body’s natural processes. This type of laser therapy preserves the smaller fat cells, which is healthier for your body. Get in touch with an Emerald Laser provider near you to try it out.
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