Happy almost summer y’all – a wondrous time filled with pools, patios, park days, and a healthy dose of summer bod anxiety. Coming on the heels of baggy clothes and fattening food szn, summer usually sparks many of us into a frenzy of wild diet and exercise routines in hopes of turning our hibernation bods beach ready. These frenzies are often just that though – frenzies, typically lacking in any long-term effectiveness. I previously spent years trying and failing to create the type of lean body I wanted by way of insane/unhealthy exercise regimens that hurt me (literally) while producing next to no results. What I eventually learned was that, like most people, I was focusing on the wrong thing - and that creating the kind of aesthetic I was going for was hardly about exercise at all. It was about diet.

According to this investigative article on weight loss from vox.com, “science has shown us that slimming down by exercising alone doesn't work for most people. Physical activity is more important for weight maintenance than for weight loss. What matters most for weight loss is controlling calorie intake.”

Don’t go getting all crazy though thinking you should cut an insane number of calories, because that won’t work either. According to this article from the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition and another published on Pubmed.gov (both via NCBI), significant calorie restriction will actually counteract weight loss goals in the long run.

To explain the reason for this as simply as possible (Layman’s terms are my favorite terms):

Muscle burns more calories than fat. This means the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism will be.

In order to build and maintain muscle, your body needs enough calories to work with. Aka: You need to eat enough food. Still with me?

Therefore, if you decide to massively restrict your caloric intake (or put another way, if you refuse to give your body what it needs), you’ll gradually lose the muscle you have, fail to create new muscle, and subsequently lower the overall amount of energy (or calories) you need and burn each day, resulting in weight gain long-term.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, AMIRIGHT?

Losing and/or maintaining weight really comes down to two things from a diet perspective:

1. The delicate balance of calories in vs. calories out

2. The quality of the calories you’re consuming.

If you consistently eat less than you burn you’ll probably slim down initially, but if those calories aren’t clean (as in they’re highly processed/high in sugar/high in unhealthy fats, etc.,) the average person will likely find it difficult to create the kind of aesthetic or muscle tone they want.

While ‘eating clean’ has garnered a hell of a reputation for being as difficult as it is miserable, it doesn’t have to be. Armed with the right tools, prep work, and dedication to reaching your goal, cleaning up your diet can be easy to do.

Below are 8 things you can start doing right now to help you both design – and stick to – a new way of eating that will not only massively support the results you want, but help you maintain them through every winter to come.

Understand your body’s specific needs

Attempting to make big changes to your body with only a vague idea of what it actually needs can make doing so difficult. Dietary requirements vary greatly from person to person, and therefore need to be determined via the help of a health professional or via general guidelines like these found online. Whichever route you choose, the objective is to figure out exactly where you’re at now, exactly where you want to be, and exactly what it’s going to take to get there. How much do you weigh today and how much do you want to weigh? What is your ideal calorie range to maintain your weight per your age, sex, and height? What is your ideal calorie range to lose weight per the same? What ratio of macronutrients (carbs, fats, and protein) do you need to consume in order to see results? Figuring out these things beforehand will empower you to create a plan for yourself that actually works.

Meal prep

Once you understand your dietary needs, do some research to identify specific foods that 1. Fall within the acceptable limits for your daily calories/macros. 2. Are healthy. And 3. You know you like. Then hit the grocery store, breakout that Tupperware, and get to work. The importance of meal-prepping week-to-week cannot be overstated because without doing so, you’ll be far more likely to break your diet and ruin your progress. Meals or snacks toward the middle or end of the day are particularly important to prep for, because it’s during those hours our willpower wanes the most. When it’s 3pm and you’re feeling both burnt out from work and hungry, the last thing you’ll want to do is put a healthy snack together. You’ll be a thousand times more likely to reach for that snickers bar without a healthier option readily available, so set future you up for success by giving them the option of a convenient, delicious snack that keeps them on their diet and doesn’t require an ounce of additional energy to whip up.

Get yourself a food scale and some trusty measuring cups

I, too, was previously the type of person who looked down on those that measured their food, deeming them all psycho and “way too intense for me”. TURNS OUT…they’re not psycho at all and, on the contrary, actually have the right idea. The funny thing about serving sizes is that they’re always so much smaller than you think. It’s incredibly easy to underestimate the amount of food and therefore calories you’re consuming, meaning you’ll unwittingly sabotage your efforts if you forgo measuring things out. Don’t risk undermining the whole reason you started this process in the first place - arm yourself with a food scale and measuring cups to ensure you’re accurately accounting for your daily caloric intake.

Download MyFitnessPal

And THEN…once you’ve weighed/measured and pre-packed all your food for the week, log that sh*t into MyFitnessPal to track your daily calories and macros. MyFitnessPal is free and truly an amazing resource for many reasons, the main one IMO being the fact that it already has accurate nutritional data for so many common foods stored in its database. I know meal tracking feels tedious, unnecessary, and overall like a total b*tch, but the benefits of doing so far outweigh the annoyance. As soon as you start logging your food you’ll see that it adds up much faster than you think, and probably also realize your daily calorie consumption has historically been a lot higher than you ever thought. MyFitnessPal will help you keep a pulse on where you’re at throughout each day, meaning you won’t stray from your intake goals nearly as much long-term, if at all.

Set up your environment for success

First, have your food scale, measuring cups, and Tupperware visible or easily reachable so that there are as few barriers as possible between you and doing what’s necessary to prepare for and stick to your diet. Get MyFitnessPal on the first page of your phone home screen. Plan to grocery shop after meals rather than before. And most importantly of all: go through your whole house and trash any crap that isn’t conducive to your clean new way of eating. Things that fall within the “crap” category include (but aren’t necessarily limited to): candy, baked goods, refined sugary anything, soda, chips, fried foods, simple carbs, foods high in trans or saturated fats, foods containing partially hydrogenated oils, anything with artificial sweetener, and anything containing ‘High Fructose Corn Syrup’ (a sweetener that will low-key make you eat more by increasing your body’s production of Ghrelin, the hormone that tells our brains we’re hungry). Basically, if it’s fun - it should probably be thrown away (semi-kidding when I say that but also serious). Use your best judgement (or consult the internet) and if it’s processed, just be sure to check the ingredients carefully.

Kick the sugar addiction (including artificial sweeteners)

I love sugar. Looooove sugar. But…as someone who’s also very into health and fitness, I’m also acutely aware of how much it can seriously hamper success (*HEAVY SIGH*). In order to look the way you want to look, you need to cut sugar largely out of your diet (unless you’re bulking, but that’s not what we’re talking about here). According to Dr. Matthias Muenzer, M.D. from Tufts Medical Center, refined sugar (as in the kind we all love) has a high glycemic index, which means consuming it not only makes you hungrier but also triggers “more insulin, resulting in more calories stored as fat – and more weight gained.” Refined sugar also happens to be highly addictive. According to an article published by pubmed.gov, research shows that “sugar and sweet reward can not only substitute to addictive drugs, like cocaine, but can even be more rewarding and attractive.” And as if all that weren’t bad enough, artificial sweeteners are also on the chopping block as Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine found they actually promote weight gain due to a number of factors, including over-compensatory behaviors and increased sugar dependence.

So what’s the solution? Kicking the addiction, obvi. Commit yourself to a sugar-free way of life for at least 30 days to rid yourself of cravings. Understand that the beginning’s going to be tough and you’ll likely become a real b*tch on wheels during the initial withdrawal period. Once you’re over the hump though, you’ll be shocked at how your cravings virtually disappear, your energy spikes, your skin becomes flawless, and you start looking the way you actually want to look.

Check out this article from skinnyms.com on how to commence your own sugar detox, along with these articles from Buzzfeed and Clean Eating Kitchen for tips on what to eat during a sugar detox and how to not lose your mind in the process.

Plan for cheat days

I realize I just went off about eating cleaning and cutting sugar above, but one of the biggest reasons people fail to keep their diets consistently in check is because they refuse to allow any room for ‘error’. When you attempt to always remain strict AF with no wiggle room, your will power burns out fast. Plan for one cheat day per week not only to keep yourself sane, but because knowing reprieve is always in sight will help motivate you to stick to your diet the rest of the week. That said – do not keep your cheat day goodies in the house unless you have iron-clad will power. Plan to buy single servings of whatever your heart desires on that day and that day only, and throw away anything that remains at the end of it.

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The summer bod you want is more than attainable than you think and well within your reach. All you have to do is determine your body’s specific needs, hack your environment so that you’re able to readily meet them, and then support your efforts with complimentary (read: not crazy) exercise. Cleaning up your diet is different from ‘dieting’ in that you’re creating a healthy new way of eating that’s sustainable long-term and not miserable AF. It can be hard to break those bad habits and addictions you have, but once you do, it’s smooth sailing so long as you have the willpower and determination to steer the ship appropriately.

Cheers to nourishing our bodies rather than beating them into submission, and creating real results through the self-care that is eating and living well.

All my love.