What if I told you: that elusive “summer body” can be maintained year-round?  Here, some tips on dodging the headline hype and staying on course with your fitness goals from season to season.  

Disclosure: this post is brought to you by the Northeast Beef Promotion Initiative, a subcontractor to the Beef Checkoff.  As always, thoughts are my own, and my love of all things beef is true.  Thank YOU for your support of Enjoy Food, Enjoy Life!

Summer is now officially right around the corner.  Even if you reside in a less than temperate locale, surely you’ve heard the screaming headlines at the grocery aisle checkout – “How so and so got her summer body!” or maybe “eat this one food to lose x amount of weight by summer!”  Often accompanied by photos of bikini-clad celebrities (who, more than likely employ a squad of trainers, personal chefs, and maybe their own spray tan butlers), these headlines are the banes of even the most confident woman’s existence.

Instead of lamenting the onset of warmer weather and fewer layers of clothing, why don’t we let go of the idea of the “summer body”?  What if I told you: the secret to feeling your best is to stay the course year-round? 

The secret to staying the course and maintain a “summer body” year-round is really no big secret by now: it’s good, old-fashioned strength training – fueled by a balanced diet anchored by protein paired with plenty of plants and accompanied by fiber-rich carbohydrates.  Of course, there’s always room for a treat, because a body obtained through restriction isn’t sustainable, and that sort of defeats the point here!

You might here “strength training” and think of an intimidating commercial gym setting.  While I’d strongly encourage you to head into such a space to maintain a “summer body” year-round, you don’t HAVE to start there – or step inside one ever!  You can use resistance from your own body, bands, and props around the house.  Lance Pekus makes a great point in Dr. Mike Roussell’s Strength The Field Manual:

“People think you gotta go out and kill yourself with the workout every day to get physically fit, but a lot of times I don’t have time in the day to go put a two- or three-hour workout in.  I squeeze them in throughout the day.  If I can get a five-minute workout in here and a five-minute workout in there, maybe throughout the day I might get a total of an hour- or two-hour workout, but it’s not all going to be at once.”

If you’re looking to maintain a “summer body” year-round, it helps to have an arsenal of easy-to-execute strength moves that can be squeezed in any time of day, like Pekus mentions above.  Whether indoors or out, I know you’ll love these Farm to Gym workouts as much as I do!  Each one requires little more than your own body weight, and the entire sequence will not only help set a foundation for strength, but also help develop agility and balance.   Check out highlights, live from the farm, here!

And because maintaining a “summer body” year-round might SOUND like a daunting task, one of my lucky readers is going to get some goodies and get a head start!  Enter HERE for your chance to win Dr. Roussell’s Strength the Field Manual, packed with strategies for fueling your strength training endeavors with optimal nutrition, plus other beefy goodies.

So tell me, are you ready to feel your best year-round?!

Enjoy your food.  Enjoy your life!