It’s that time of year again where almost every beauty magazine, website, and blog are all touting ways to get your perfect beach body for the summer season. You have some magazines advertising that they can get you beach-body ready in only two weeks! All of this pressure can be a little discouraging, especially if you do the two-week diet and still don’t feel comfortable in a bathing suit. So what is a girl to do and what info out there can she trust? In this article, I explain a little bit about what has worked for me and how I have come to deal with this particular area of my life.
A Little Body Honesty
I was never the type to feel confident and comfortable in my own body, and those who have been following this blog for a while know that it took a lot of work and a lot of alterations for me to get to where I am right now. I had to change my way of thinking and really practice body confidence in the moment and I invested in a six-month food transformation that not only changed my body, but changed my life. It is important to keep in mind when you are on the weight loss track, is that you should take your time, do it right and make it last for life, not just for swimsuit season.
And keep in mind that everyone is different, and what works for one might not necessarily work for another, especially not two-week crash diets (I’m pretty sure those don’t work for the majority). At the end of the day, being happy and healthy and feeling confident and comfortable in your own skin is a worthwhile endeavour for life in general, and it is a process that requires dedication and patience.
Exercise
Any of these diets that are based on cleanses or closing a huge amount of weight in a short amount of time are just not healthy. And not to mention that they overlook an incredibly important part of the getting healthy routine, which is exercise. When I went through my healthy eating transformation – perhaps more accurately called a healthy living transformation – it included exercise on a weekly basis. It doesn’t have to be incredibly expensive. I have a gym membership, but you can find ways to exercise for cheap and even free, like walking and running outside.
It can be demotivating to get outside, though, or to head out to the gym when the weather is bad, so I advocate having a workout routine that you can do at home as well. This can include a few choice exercise machines that you will actually use and won’t just collect dust, as well as a yoga mat and some workout videos – this fitness guide has some great workout advice, as well as info on machines to use at home. It doesn’t have to be intense, but it does have to be a part of your routine for you to feel good and be healthy.
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Diet
I’ve said this before, and I will say it again, when it comes to a healthy diet, it is important to eat in a way that makes your body happy. Even if you think a lot of sugar and typical “comfort food” makes your body happy, it most certainly doesn’t. Most likely these foods leave you stripped of energy, feeling sluggish and even sick – especially in my case, as an IBS sufferer. The foods that make your body happy are healthy and fill you with energy. Ultimately, the goal should be to feel better – both physically and emotionally – in your body, not just to be thin. You need to implement lifestyle tweaks to make you feel amazing, and avoid crash diets.
What really helped me was to cut out unnatural preservatives, unnatural sugars, and dairy, but I never cut down meal portions or starved myself – that is actually counterproductive, because then your body will just store everything that you put into it as fat, since it isn’t sure of when it will receive nourishment again. Eating smaller portions more frequently throughout the day is actually a healthier way to go and helps your body use the food for energy instead of storing it.
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