Sweating for Summer

Categorized | Beauty, Diet & Weight Loss

Posted on 05 April 2009.

Warmer weather is around the corner and summer fashions have filled the shops…and some of us (okay, me) are doing anything to avoid stepping on the scale and assessing this winter’s damage. I would prefer sticking with my eyeball estimate of 10lbs gained, but something tells me the scale may not be so generous.

However, I’ve decided to muster up what little will power I have and ignore the remaining Lindt chocolate truffles hidden in my closet and lose the extra weight by June. Or June 5th, because we’re already five days into April, or some other excuse.

I’ve managed to lose the weight before, despite much resentment of birthday parties and naturally thin girls. It’s true what they say; if you can’t have something, you’ll want it. And if you can’t have cake, you’ll obsess about it until one night you sneak to the fridge and engorge yourself on the leftovers and down it all with half a liter of cherry Coke, like that one time last year.

This makes it necessary to have a battle plan.

I rummaged through my fitness drawer and determined which workouts I’ll be doing for the exercise part in addition to walking (and I highly recommend these, by the way, they’re very effective):

Windsor Pilates 20 Minute Workout and Advanced Body Slimming on alternating days (do these plus walking 30 minutes a day and you won’t have to do anything else)

Turbo Jam 20 Minute Workout and Turbo Sculpt when Pilates gets boring (these are really fun and you’ll see results after 2 weeks of regular use)

Tae Bo Contact 1 with Billy Blanks, awesome workout and I dare you to try and walk the next day!

Another fun workout is belly dance, but that’s another post (coming soon!).

So now the nutrition part. For me this is more difficult than sticking to a workout routine because I love to cook. How can you try out interesting new recipes when you’re limited to certain ingredients and have to eliminate others?

There are the basics – cut back on sweets, no fried foods, more vegetables, switch to whole wheat everything and drink way, way more water.

It can be done, but it has never been enough for me, so I incorporate the following into my diet:

Grapefruit: I know it’s considered a fad diet, but you won’t be living on it…simply have one in the morning or afternoon. I speak from personal experience; eating a grapefruit a day helped me maintain my weight and even slim down a tiny bit at a time when I lived on nothing but brownies. (To be honest I wasn’t eating the grapefruit for that purpose, I was just lucky enough to really like it.)

Organic Apple Cider Vinegar: There are far more benefits of ACV than I can list here, so visit this link to learn more about its amazing health properties. Even if your ACV weight loss experience is minimal, why not gain the loads of energy, beautiful complexion and overall well-being that apple cider vinegar has to offer?

Green Tea and Sage: Green tea’s health benefits are widely known, but sage was a personal discovery. Brew and drink 2 cups a day of a green and sage tea blend. Pregnant women should NOT take sage!