5 Reasons Your Body is Never Beach Ready

That’s right, it’s that time of year. Well at least it should be if you want to look your best this summer. Here are 5 reasons why you’re never ready for the beach in time and what to do about it.

1. You eat like crap for most of the year

We all have a habit of straying away from our diets the farther away from an “event” we are. The truth is this is normal and acceptable in moderation. Indulging ourselves a little to break the strictness of a diet is good for the consistency of overall clean eating. Sure, in the winter months have an extra piece of pie, no problem. It’s when this gets out of hand and spills over into the rest of your year that’s the problem.

You should aim to stick to the main components of your diet throughout the entire year. Eat a palm sized serving of protein (2 if you’re male), 2 fists of green veggies, a thumb sized serving of healthy fats such as nuts or oils, and a glass of water with every meal. On top of that feel free to indulge once in a while. Maintaining these basic rules throughout the year will ensure that you’re body composition doesn’t stray too far away from where you want it to be when summertime rolls around. It also makes the transition to a fat loss diet easier because you won’t have to completely overhaul your eating habits.

2. You start preparing too late

It’s the end of April which leaves you about a month to start prepping for that beach vacation on June 1st. You look in the mirror and realize you need to put on some muscle mass and lose a ton of fat if you plan to grate cheese on your abdominals like you wanted to. Sound familiar? Everyone takes for granted how long it takes to get into shape for summer, and if you want to look your best you’re going to have to give it time.

Look at bodybuilders and physique athletes who are the best on this planet at getting into pristine aesthetic condition. They spend their off seasons building strength and muscle and start prepping to lean down for their shows as long as 16 weeks out because they know it takes time. This time allows them to make small changes to their diets and observe the results. From here they have room to tweak it based on their rate of fat loss.

Spend your fall and winter months focusing on building strength and muscle mass and start your fat loss diet at least 12 weeks out from your event. Just because you’re starting your fat loss efforts early doesn’t mean you’re resorting to only chicken breast and broccoli on day 1. Day 1 could simply mean starting to remove some indulgences because that in itself will bring about change.

3. You cut calories too drastically
This goes hand in hand with the previous reason because when time is insufficient people turn to extreme measures. Cutting calories too quickly will cause you to lose muscle mass, your metabolism to slow down, and your performance to plummet.

Start by removing 250 kcal in excess carbs from your diet and track your progress for a week. If you continue to lose fat at a decent rate of about 1-2 pounds per week then continue what you’re doing. If not, it’s time to make another small drop in calories. The trick is to remove just enough to affect change and then a little more when progress starts to slow down.

4. You remove too many carbs

It’s common practice to cut carbs when trying to lean down in an effort to blunt blood sugar spikes and keep your insulin levels low. However, many people take this too far and become carbphobic during their fat loss diets. Carbs are not the enemy! They provide the energy needed to fuel your workouts and induce an anabolic state in a highly catabolic time. Sure they must be limited, but not eliminated altogether.

Save your carbs for post workout to refill glycogen stores. As you progress, the amounts can be cycled depending on the volume of your workouts (Workouts higher in volume such as leg day call for more carbs, lower volume workouts such as arm day calls for less carbs).

5. You stop lifting heavy

Switching to only lifting light weights for high reps isn’t the greatest idea. Higher volume training creates more muscle damage and a more catabolic environment. Not such a great thing when you’re calorie intake is limited and you’re already in a catabolic state. Besides, who likes lifting things that are light? Lifting heavy weights gives your body a reason to keep your hard earned muscle while you diet down and gives your muscles a denser look. It’s also a great way to monitor your performance.

Throughout your prep make sure to keep heavy lifting in your programming. 3-4 sets of 4-6 reps of the big basics will do the trick.

Employ these tips in your upcoming beach body preparation and you (and others 😉 ) will be pleased with the results this summer.