Imagine having a delicious Mojito or Margarita in your hand as you lounge on a spacious beach chair and let the warm rays of the sun hit your bikini-clad body. Doesn’t that sound like the perfect summer day? After all, summer is all about spending warm sunny days on the beach with your loved ones. Just thinking about it is making you smile, right?
However, with summer comes the dreaded beach body fervor, which can be quite overwhelming because it’s only natural to want to look your best in a revealing outfit, such as a bikini or even a swimsuit. There’s also nothing wrong with setting a fitness goal for yourself so that you can look your best during the season. With that said, it’s important to accept and love your body by setting attainable fitness goals to boost your heart rate for fat burn and weight loss.
With that out of the way, let’s explore 15 incredible tips to get your dream beach body before summer!
- Figure Out a Baseline for Your Workouts
If you want to come up with an effective workout program, make sure to track your progress. If you keep tabs on your fitness, it will encourage you to improve your performance. It’s why you must create a baseline fitness test, which includes workouts that measure the strength of all your major muscles. For instance, you could gauge the number of pushups you can perform, how many lunges you can do in a minute, or how long you can hold a wall squat. Once you have the numbers figured out, set specific goals for yourself to beat those numbers after a designated time. Pushing yourself like this will increase your heart rate for fat burn and help you gain strength and lose fat.
- Embrace Stretching
The true power of stretching is vastly underrated, which means that you end up sidelining this essential part of your exercise regimen. As you age, the elasticity of your muscles lessens, and with exercise, you overwork these muscles, which lead to pains, aches, and injuries. Stretching ensures that you don’t injure your muscles or endure terrible pain. It will help you target the muscles that you use the most in your workouts. It’s why you must devote at least five minutes to static stretching after your cool-down period. Try to hold each stretch for 30 seconds.
- Have a Healthy Breakfast
If you want to lose weight before summer, it’s best to bulk up your breakfast with healthy foods and keep your dinner light. Add eggs to your breakfast for some much-needed protein and essential amino acids. Plus, research indicates that when individuals had eggs in the morning, they felt less hungry during the day as opposed to when they had complex carbohydrates, such as bagels, for breakfast. It’s because the fat and protein in an egg contribute to your feelings of satiety.
4. Get into Yoga
Yoga is an incredible way to stretch, calm your mind, and work on your flexibility. Plus, yoga can help strengthen and tone all the important muscles in your body, helping you reach closer to your beach body goals. You don’t even need a yoga mat to practice the moves. Just wake up early and work some poses in before your morning grind. It will be a relaxing and harmonizing start to your day.
Devote your morning to your favorite poses. Lunge into a warrior III while making your bed. Perform some shoulder openers in the shower. Stretch out your hamstrings by blow-drying your hair upside-down. The more creative you get with your exercise routine, the easier it will become. Plus, performing these poses early in the morning will ease and erase any anxiety that might have settled into your body and mind.
5. Juice It Up
Skip the high-calorie, sugar-loaded baked goods, and manufactured sodas and juices and sip on some hydrating, healthier alternatives. Start your mornings with a healthy, nutrient-packed green juice. If you crave a sweet snack during the day, prepare a healthy and delicious juice made from carrots, apples, beetroot, and some lemon juice. If you want to amp up the nutrients, toss in some kale or spinach. It’s an excellent source of calcium, and it will help you tighten your muscles.
6. Prepare Homemade Meals
It can be quite irksome, time-consuming, and downright boring to prepare homemade meals when you can order take-out and simply eat out, but it doesn’t have to be. Today, you have so many healthy and scrumptious options that you can easily cook in your downtime so that you can have nutritious homemade meals in the office and after coming home from a tiring day at work.
Cutting back on eating out will prevent you from gaining unnecessary weight by consuming unhealthy food. It will also help you save a lot of your hard-earned money. Meanwhile, preparing homemade meals will help you become more conscious of what you’re putting in your body and allow you to understand your dietary needs.
When preparing homemade meals, try to steam, grill, and bake your foods instead of frying them. You can also use an air-fryer to minimize the use of oil as much as possible. Prepare delicious recipes with nutritious foods, such as quinoa, salmon, green veggies, short-grain brown rice, lean meats, nuts, beans, fruits, and more.
7. Explore HIIT
If you want to increase your heart rate for fat burn, try high-intensity interval training or HIIT. It’s a workout routine that comprises bursts of intense workout periods followed by specific, short rest periods. For instance, you could perform 30 seconds of intense jump rope and follow it up with 15 seconds of rest. Continue this cycle and switch up the workout if you want until you’re done for the day.
A full-body workout circuit will help you burn plenty of calories as you sweat. It will also keep your metabolic rate high so that you torch additional calories even while you’re resting. The best part about high-intensity interval training is that you don’t have to spend hours upon hours sweating it out at the gym to see results. You can perform 15 to 20 minutes of HIIT four to five days a week to experience weight loss. The key is to pair your training with a healthy diet and non-HIIT, light exercise on other days.
8. Target Your Major Muscles
If you want a remarkable beach body, you will have to focus on all of your major muscles instead of trying to target one specific area. After all, we all know what happened when you skip leg day! It’s why you need to find workouts that target your glutes, legs, abs, hamstring, chest, back, shoulders, and arms. Perform exercises such as lunges and squats that target bigger muscles in your body and burn more calories.
Don’t forget to throw combination moves in between these workouts to tone your entire body. For instance, you can do a plank row or add an overhead lift between each squat. Plus, don’t shy away from lifting weights to tone your muscles. If you have never used weights before, start easy with a pair of starter dumbbells.
9. Get Plenty of Sleep
You need to get the proper amount of sleep for a killer beach body. After all, adequate sleep can promote weight loss, reduce stress levels, and boost your overall mood. It’s why you should aim for at least seven to eight hours of sleep every night. If you get enough sleep, you give your body the time to recover and build muscle after working out.
10. Take Up Dance Cardio
Looking for a fun way to lose weight? Try dance cardio! If you enjoy dancing, it’s a thoroughly creative and enjoyable way to push your limits and shed those extra pounds. The bigger your arm and leg movements, the more intense your workout will be. To burn maximum calories while performing dance cardio, exaggerate your lunges, slides, steps, and kicks to boost your heart rate. The best part about partaking in dance cardio is that if it’s something you enjoy, you will feel more motivated. It will help you remain focused on your weight loss goal while having the time of your life!
If you want your muscles to recover after an intense workout, try to incorporate healthy, protein-based snacks in your post-workout diet. You need your muscles to repair after the grueling workout and ensure that you don’t injure them. The best way to do that is by ensuring that your body gets its fill of proteins to support the lean muscle mass.
11. Choose Healthy Protein
One of the best snacks for protein is Greek yogurt. It’s the ideal food for flat abs, and it is packed with protein; it has at least 25g of protein per cup. Plus, studies suggest that individuals who rely on yogurt for their calcium intake rather than relying on other sources lose more weight around their midsection. The probiotic bacteria in yogurt will keep your digestive system functioning optimally, which will result in decreased bloating and constipation.
12. Exercise on the Go
Strapped for time to exercise? Find inventive ways to lose weight! Don’t restrict yourself by thinking that you can only lose weight at the gym. Instead, lump your workout in with your everyday errands. For instance, if you have to go grocery shopping, ride a bike to the store instead of taking your car. Always opt to take the stairs instead of the escalators. When attending a work call, pace around the room instead of sitting in your chair. Make things easier for you and switch to comfortable work shoes instead of wearing high heels. It will make walking more comfortable, and you will look forward to it instead of dreading it.
13. Hydrate, Hydrate, and Hydrate
We understand that you must have heard this a million times, but drinking water truly is one of the most vital keys to losing weight, building muscle, and keeping your body in prime shape. After all, so many of your bodily functions depend on water. So, when you’re not drinking enough water, you are essentially breaking down these vital functions.
Our bodies use water to flush out toxins, cushion vital organs, such as the spinal cord and brain, and maintain our blood supply. It’s why you must drink an adequate amount of water throughout the day to ensure that your body continues to function optimally.
Make sure to have a glass or two of water before each meal. It will not only keep you hydrated but also make you feel full, which will ensure that you consume fewer calories. Additionally, you can incorporate water into your diet in other inventive ways. Try having broth-based soups two times a day to lose weight and avoid having unhealthy snacks. It will help you increase your water intake and ensure that you get your veggies every day.
14. Find a Workout Buddy or Join a Fun Fitness Class
If you want to attain a spectacular beach body but are afraid of losing steam, try to find workout buddies who will help you through the odd slump and keep you focused. If you find a group of people who share the same goals as you, it’s easier to stay motivated and strive harder. So, ask around and find a reliable workout buddy, such as a friend or family member, who will truly help you push your limits and attain your goal.
Having a workout buddy will also instill a sense of accountability and create a shared sense of purpose. If you can’t find a friend willing to join your fitness journey, check out the local fitness classes being offered at a nearby gym. Enroll in fun workout programs, such as kickboxing, Zumba, or Pilates. You might end up finding like-minded strangers with the same fitness targets as you. Such classes will also help you lose weight by boosting your heart rate for fat burn.
15. Be Patient and Kind to Yourself
At the end of the day, you need to remember that life is too short for you to stress over the perfect beach body or run after a false ideal. Ultimately, you should strive for a healthy body and aim to achieve holistic wellness.
Remember to exercise patience and be kind toward yourself. You might falter along the way, but don’t beat yourself up about that and focus on attaining a healthier, fitter body. Lastly, learn to accept your body and love yourself so that when summer rolls in, you can take out your fanciest bikini and head down to the beach for a relaxing day.