Beat The Heat | How to stay fit in summer
By Martin Ebner
The summer months for many signify care-free living: with summer holidays, beach days, parties, and countless social events. It’s a fun time of year. Unfortunately, for many, this lack of routine and easy-going attitude can quickly result in falling out of your healthy eating and fitness routine. Thankfully with a few tweaks to your diet and workout plan, you can still have a fun-filled summer whilst keeping fit at the same time.
Think Maintenance not P.Bs
With scorching weather and packed social calendars sapping energy levels, your summer fitness plan should be approached with a hint of caution. Think maintenance, not personal bests.
As opposed to opting out of exercise altogether, keep your workouts short but high-tempo and limit your workouts to no more than 60 minutes. This way you’ll preserve enough energy to fulfil your work, busy social life and exercise commitments all summer long.
If you need extra help, why not hire a private personal trainer or get a tailor-made summer exercise program. Both offer excellent motivation and accountability for your workouts.
Portion control
Considering you are now in “summer body maintenance mode”, you no longer require such large quantities of fuel to power you through those grueling pre-summer workouts. Your diet plan should be representative of your exercise routine and calorie requirements.
The simplest and most effective way to stay lean and deflated during those all important poolside parties and beach days is to eat little and often. By eating 4-5 small meals a day, you’ll keep your metabolism ramped up and limit bloating throughout the day.
Exercise in the morning
With an abundance of social events already in the agenda, your best chance of sticking to your exercise routine during the summer months is to get up and get moving first thing. By getting your workout out of the way early you’ll avoid the all too common temptations to procrastinate and find excuses not to exercise later. Not only that but when the after-office happy hour drinks do roll around, you’ll be able to indulge guilt free in the knowledge that you’ve earned it.
Related: 6 tips to keep you motivated to exercise
Dance your way to a six-pack
Take advantage of all the late nights out to burn off a few calories on the dance floor. Dancing burns up to a whopping 500 calories per hour. Needless to say, the more vigorous your dance moves, the more calories you’ll expend. As ever you needed another excuse to twerk it! Just make sure to rehydrate with water and not high-calorie alcoholic drinks post dance-off.
Hydrate
Water regulates your body temperature. An important factor during the hotter months. Just 2% body weight dehydration can drastically restrict your body’s ability to perform to it’s highest level - something you'll need to to keep up your exercise, work, and social commitments.
If you experience any symptoms of dizziness, muscle cramps, lethargy, and tiredness, you could be experiencing dehydration. To avoid this, make sure to drink adequate H2O before, during and after your workouts.
Active beach days
The beach hosts a variety of ways to help keep you in shape during the summer month: from paddle ball to volleyball, snorkeling and surfing. There’s literally no shortage of great ways to keep fit at the beach. As an added bonus, you’ll get a cracking and perfectly even suntan while you workout. It’s a win-win.
