If you want to get fit in time for summer, you need to create a plan and work it. You have to decide what your diet is going to consist of and what kind of exercise or toning strategy you’re going to follow. With a little bit of effort, you can achieve your goals.

Be Honest About Where You’re At and What You Can Achieve

To achieve your goals, you have to start with honesty. It’s easy to lie to yourself that you’re not that out of shape, that you don’t really carry that much extra weight. Most people don’t lie to themselves on purpose.

It’s just that taking a hard look at the shape your body is in is usually done with blinders on. You might see a “few” pounds of extra weight and think that’s not too bad, when it’s actually forty.

When you guess your level of fitness, you may be giving yourself too much credit. You might think you have a small problem area when you actually need all over toning. Sometimes people don’t really know where they stand with their fitness level because they just don’t test themselves.

They don’t step on the scale regularly, don’t really worry or wonder why their clothing is just a bit snugger than usual and they don’t sweat it that they don’t seem to have the same physical ability when it comes to being active.

To get the kind of summer body you want to have, you have to look at yourself honestly. You need to know what your weight is and whether that’s a good fit for your age and height.

Take a look at yourself in the mirror. Turn sideways and see if your stomach has a pooch to it or if you’re carrying a spare tire. Turn your back to the mirror and look over your shoulder.

See if you can spot areas of cellulite and parts that need tightening. Once you know what you need to work on, then you can put your plan into motion. But understand that there’s being honest with yourself about the shape of your body and then there’s being honest with yourself and knowing what you can achieve.

If you set a goal that’s too difficult and tougher than anything you’ve ever tried, you could be setting yourself up for failure. If your goal is unachievable, then all you’re doing is sabotaging yourself.

You’ll end up discouraged and give up before you’ve even really given it a chance. For example, aiming to lose a couple pounds a week is something that can be achieved. Setting a goal of losing ten pounds a week is not.

At least not in a healthy way. When you set your exercise or toning goals, make those realistic, too. If you decide that you’re going to work out for an hour every day, seven days a week when you know your schedule is already overbooked, the odds are not in your favor.

Set realistic goals to achieve the body that you want. These goals should be broken into small steps that you can achieve on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. If you want to lose sixty pounds, the odds are high you’re not going to do that in just two months.

It’s better to set smaller, more achievable goals and reach those to help keep yourself motivated rather than to overshoot and come up short. That can be discouraging and cause you to quit on yourself.

Plan for Fitness Milestones

One of the best ways that you can motivate yourself is to set a series of small goals. If you set a major goal such as having a beach body in time for summer, that doesn’t really give you anything to measure your success by.

So then time passes and you don’t really see any changes. This can lead you to question whether or not what you’re doing is even working. Or it might cause you to get frustrated and quit.

But by setting milestones that you can check rather than your end goal, you’ll stay motivated to keep on going. You can do something like setting a fitness milestone that drops your percentage of body fat.

This is easy to check, and you can use a body fat caliper to do this with. You can check things like your abdominal fat, and it’ll tell you your millimeter reading. You can measure your milestones by observing that your number or percentage of body fat drops as you progress with getting into shape.

Checking your percentage of fat lost using a caliper is one way you can set a milestone, but another way is to check in with the number of pounds that you’ve lost. This is fairly easy to do – you just step on the scale.

But you want to keep in mind that your weight is going to fluctuate based on the time of day, what you’ve had to eat and water gain or loss. Don’t weigh yourself every day. You can fluctuate between 2-4 pounds a day just based on certain variables.

Instead, set a particular time to weigh yourself about once a week or every ten days. Then make sure that you weigh yourself at the same time, the same way and wearing the same clothing as you did all the other times.

Some people weigh themselves first thing in the morning before they’ve had anything to eat or drink to get a more accurate reading. One of the first places that most people notice weight loss is in the face.

When you notice this, you’ve lost between five and ten pounds. Another fitness milestone you can set can be based on sizes lost. It takes approximately ten to fifteen pounds to go down a size of clothing.

So when you notice that the things you wear are getting looser, it’s time to try on a smaller size. Break down your milestones in sizing so that it feels easier to accomplish.

Measuring weight loss by inches lost is another way to plan fitness milestones.

You can tell when you’re losing inches simply by measuring your chest, waist, and hips. You’ll often notice that you’ve lost inches long before you notice a change on the bathroom scale.

Choose a Non Food Reward

Weight loss and getting fit can make you feel good about yourself. It can make you feel like celebrating. And you should celebrate. You set a goal and you stuck to it. You deserve to be rewarded.

But in the area of rewards is where so many people end up sabotaging their best efforts. If you lose weight and then turn around and celebrate by binging on foods that make you gain weight, you’re undermining all your hard work.

Not only that, but you’ll end up regretting the choices you make that take you away from your goal rather than propel you toward it. It’s important that you celebrate all of your accomplishments – even the small ones.

This will help to keep you on track and push you to want to keep on going. However, you want to stay away from ordering your favorite calorie laden pizza and eating several slices of that.

You also want to stay away from doing things that take your eyes off your end results. Don’t skip a workout and go to a party as a reward. You don’t want to switch something that works toward your goal and make that a reward.

That would make exercising seem like punishment. You want to keep all your good habits in place. You want your rewards to be things that back up your goal. These items or actions need to be things that reinforce all your hard work.

So choose things that are related to your fitness goals. For example, a positive reward that would help you stick to your plan would be choosing a new swimsuit. This helps you remember why you’re doing what it is that you’re doing in the first place.

Or maybe you can plan a trip to the beach to lie in the sand or to catch a few waves. Another good idea to choose as a non-food reward is to go get a massage. This will help relax you.

Take yourself out to the movies or buy yourself the new book that you’ve been wanting. Invite friends over and have a girl or guy’s night in. Go buy a new outfit or a new piece of exercise equipment.

Take in a music concert. Choose something that commemorates your hard work at getting fit. This might be something like buying yourself a special piece of jewelry or getting a tattoo.

You can take a weekend trip to the mountains and go hiking or take a long bike ride somewhere you haven’t explored before. You can splurge on hiring a professional trainer to help you tone your body. Take a cooking class or a pottery class. Do something that interests you and celebrates you taking control of your fitness.

Take Before and After Pictures

Progress can happen when you’re trying to get fit. But if you’re not careful you can miss it. When most people are trying to lose weight and get summer fit, they don’t think about catching their progress in ways that they’ll remember.

While stepping on the scale is important because seeing the numbers go down can motivate you, it doesn’t pack the same punch as when you can see what others see. Numbers going down on a scale don’t always translate well into viewing yourself in the mirror.

People become accustomed to what they look like, so you don’t always notice the changes that are apparent to other people. That’s why you need to be sure that you take before and after pictures.

You don’t need a special camera, you can use a digital one or the one on a smart phone. Lighting does matter. If there’s a lot of shadow, it can cast shadows on your body.

You want to make sure whatever area you choose to take the photo in has plenty of either natural or interior light. You also want to be sure that you’re the star of the photo. Don’t have things around you that draw the focus away from you.

It’s best to take a photo in front of a plain wall or in front of a door. What you wear also matters. You want to wear clothing that fits closely. If you wear baggy or loose clothing, you can’t really see the transformation as easily.

Most people dress in clothing they would wear to the beach or they dress in workout clothes. You want these clothes to be revealing enough to show particular areas of your body.

Make sure that your abdomen clearly shows. You want to do this because you’ll be able to see your belly fat then. You’ll be able to compare your after photos to your before photos and you’ll see the change in your body throughout your journey.

The photos that you take should be taken from all angles. Take a photo of you facing the camera. Then take ones where your side is to the camera. This helps you see how much your shape has trimmed up.

How many photos you take throughout your effort matters, too. You don’t want to just take a before photo at the beginning of your fitness goal and then one once you’ve reached your end goal.

Instead, you want to take after photos as you achieve each milestone that you’ve set. If you have a goal to lose thirty pounds and you’ve just lost your first ten, then you should take a photo.

When you do this, you might notice small changes in your body right away. Then take another photo after twenty pounds lost. You’ll see that your stomach looks flatter. Take your final photo once you’ve reached the last part of your goal.

Your photos will each tell a story marking the steps that you took to get where you are. They’re important to keep you motivated as well as to show you how far you’ve come. They can spur you on to other milestones and also prevent you from going back to old habits that were detrimental to your health.

Align Your Food and Exercise Plan with Your Goals

When you decide what your goals are, you have to align your food and exercise plan with that goal. Otherwise, you won’t reach your goals. If you want to lose pounds, you’ll need to follow a weight loss diet.

Because otherwise, you can work out hard and faithfully but if you’re not eating to lose, then you won’t. Exercise is not a substitute for eating whatever you want. You can exercise and still gain weight.

You need to make sure that your food plan lines up with your weight loss goals. One should complement the other. Each part of your goal is equally as important in order to help the other side.

So if you want to lose pounds, then you’ll have to make sure that your plan lines up with a weight loss diet combined with an exercise routine that includes cardio. It’s up to you to create the plan that works for you.

Watch your calorie intake to lose weight. If your goal is to lose body fat, then you have to do a different exercise routine. To lower your body fat percentage, you’d want to add strength training to your exercise program.

But you’d still need to be sure that you ate a low calorie diet or low carb diet. And because you’d be strength training, you’d have to make sure that diet included plenty of protein.

If you wanted to shed inches off your body, you would need to make sure that your diet was low calorie or low carb but you’d also need to pay attention to the types of exercise that you did.

Different exercises can target specific areas of the body. For example, if you wanted to take inches off your thighs, you would choose exercises that reduced thigh circumference.

You would do this through distance running or by adding squats or lunges to your exercise routine. You can’t only spot train your body to lose weight in one area. But you can work in exercises that help tone and firm up certain areas.

For people who want to tone up their bodies in time for summer, you’d make sure that your eating plan and exercise plan focused on toning more than on shedding pounds. These would be things like ab exercises, bicep curls, pushups or sit ups.

If building muscle was your goal then your eating plan would have to include muscle building foods. You’d need to make sure your diet had a lot of protein in it because muscle building exercises require a lot of protein to be effective.

Your workout routine would be one that’s known as a muscle building workout rather than something like just cardio. You could incorporate gaining and cutting into the routine if you wanted to bulk up a bit, rather than simply tone.

Motivation is one of the main ingredients people fail to have enough of whenever they begin their fitness routine. They have a short supply in the beginning, but then not enough to tap into when the going gets tough and progress slows down.

Make sure you find methods that work to encourage, support and push you to stay on track. If you see that you’ve begun slacking with your efforts, find a way to reignite the passion you previously had for getting fit and healthy and focus on that.

With the number of overweight and obese people rising every year, being in shape has become a desirable goal for more people. There are so many different workout programs, diet options, gym choices, and little tips and tricks available now that you would think more people would be in shape.

But they’re not. This is often because people will walk into a gym after New Year’s Day, do some random exercises with no plan involved, and after a few weeks, just fall off of their routine and never come back. That’s why it’s so important to have a well-developed workout plan.

Define Your Fit Body Goals

When it comes to getting in shape, not everyone is going for the same goal. There’s no good one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to fitness, but rather tons of different body types that people might be going for.

Some people might want to put on weight, while others might be looking to lose pounds. Some might just be looking to maintain where they’re at. When it comes to formulating a good workout plan, you have to have this clear goal in mind, so that you can create a plan that’ll get you there.

For example, some people might want to bulk up and put on more muscle before summer comes around. These people won’t have nearly the same workout plans as someone who’s trying to cut down on their weight.

You should also have a clear idea of what you want to do specifically when it comes to putting on or taking off weight. For example, when it comes to putting on weight, you can either be bulking or just gaining muscle.

Bulking is just getting larger in general, not necessarily retaining the same body fat percent. By putting on muscle, you want to stay at a low body fat percent, but lift weights to put on some more muscle.

The same idea applies when you’re thinking about losing weight. There’s a significant difference when it comes to workout routines if you want to cut, or if you want to just be thinner.

When people cut, they’re shedding their fat while retaining their muscle, giving them a much more toned look. However, by just getting thin, you focus almost entirely on weight loss and not as much on lifting weights.

Having a clear goal is key for any good workout plan, because there’s no way you can create a map if you don’t know where you’re supposed to be going. Generic fitness advice isn’t recommended, since everyone has a different starting point with their body, and everyone has a different goal.

These goals can get as specific as a certain body fat percentage or a certain weight, or as general as just looking good or being able to fit into a smaller swimsuit. No matter what your goal is, you need to be sure it’s something specific and clear, so that you can map out the best workout program possible to suit your needs.

Readymade Fitness Plan Versus Creating One from Scratch

When you’ve decided on your goal, you can start to decide how you’re going to approach it. Deciding what kind of plan you’re going to use in order to get to your goal is important, because it needs to be something that you can reasonably do and something that, if you follow it, will help you attain your goal.

There are two large groups of plans out there: premade plans, and plans that you develop yourself. There are tons of premade workout plans, all focusing on different workout regimens for different goals.

They even come in a variety of forms, from all text based, to audio, and even video based. All of these suit the personal needs of whoever’s using them, though there are some advantages and disadvantages between them.

When it comes to videos, you’ll typically need a home gym setup to use them. It’s not exactly convenient to go running around your gym with your phone in your hand trying to keep up with the workout.

Video based workouts also sometimes cost money if you’re getting them as DVDs, but there are some free online videos out there. Videos do give you the advantage of seeing exactly how the workout is supposed to be done.

Text and audio workout routines are often more portable, and a lot more accessible for either little or no cost whatsoever. Creating a workout on your own allows you to craft a workout entirely suited and customized to just you.

You get to pick the days you work out, what you do on those days, how much you do it, and so on. However, with all of these options and customizations, it can be a bit tricky to create a plan that works for you.

This is especially true if you’re new to working out or aren’t really experienced with making a good workout plan. You might not know what workouts to include, or which exercises are even available.

You might not know how often you should be working out or for how long, or even what you can handle. With all of this uncertainty, it’s important that you look at a few premade plans first, and then restructure a workout like that to fit something more suited to you.

However, if you are well versed in fitness, then creating your own workout is like a dream. You know exactly which exercises you like and which ones you don’t. You likely know what works best for you, how it all fits into your schedule, and so on.

This option gives people like this way more flexibility to design something that will suit their needs best. Overall, both options are solid if you know how to use them. If you’re following a flawed premade plan, you’ll struggle with getting the results you want.

If you don’t create a good workout plan, you won’t see much fruition of your work. But if you use these correctly, you should be able to get to your goals. You might even want to hire a personal trainer to help you get started on the right path.

Committing to the Time It Takes to Improve Your Body

There’s one common excuse that almost everyone gives for falling off of their workout plan: time. Every year, thousands of people set out to finally get in shape, and they’ll set their goals and have their plan, but after a few weeks, they miss a day and never come back.

They’ll usually pin it all on one thing – that they just didn’t have the time. It just wouldn’t fit in their schedule – they’re too busy. Time commitment is what ends so many attempts at getting in shape.

One reason that so many people have trouble following their workout regimen is that they put too much on their plates. Someone might already be working full time in addition to other obligations and try to fit in some 4-day per week workout schedule that involved 2 hours a day of working out.

It’s all well and good at first, but they quickly realize that it’s just taking up way too much time in their schedule. When you’re creating your workout plan, you need to be honest with yourself.

If you have a lot of stuff to do, don’t try to fool yourself into thinking that you can cram a ton of extra exercise into your schedule. You will see way more results in the long run if you stick to a modest exercise routine than you ever will with an intense regimen that you can’t keep up with.

Many months or years of working out for half an hour a day will get you in shape, but five days a week for two hours a day for only two weeks won’t get you anywhere. At least not in the long run.

You need to make sure you have a workout that’s feasible, but you should also try to make sure it’s actually a worthwhile workout. If your workout only consists of about 15-20 minutes here and there each week, sometimes it’ll feel like it’s not worth even going.

Who wants to make a 15 minute drive over to a gym so they can work out for that short of a time? You want to make sure you’re actually getting the most of each workout when you go, so try to get in somewhere around half an hour to an hour each time you show up at the gym.

This not only yields better results, but it also makes you feel like you’re actually making progress. That sense of making progress is just as important as the actual results, because not feeling good in either category can drive someone to quit out on their routine.

You should also try to move your schedule around in such a way that you actually have a free slot in the day to work out. This might mean waking up a bit earlier, or going to bed a bit later.

Many gyms these days are open 24/7, so you can go in there as early as 4 or 5 A.M. to get in a quick morning workout or even as late as 10 P.M, to work out before you head off to sleep.

These workouts actually have some decent advantages, as well as working better in your timeframe. There shouldn’t be any excuse for not being able to work out at some point in the day.

Gym Versus Home Workouts

The only way you can successfully work out without bodyweight exercises is by having access to workout equipment. There are a number of places and ways you can work out, but there is one major divide among fitness enthusiasts: gyms, and home.

Each one has their own unique benefits and drawbacks, and either one might suit you more or less. Once you decide where it is you’re going to be working out, you’ll be all set to get started with your regimen.

When it comes to working out at home, there can be some initial complications. First, you essentially need to find a room that you can dedicate to a workout room, unless the equipment you buy won’t take up too much space.

On that note, you’ll need to buy the proper equipment, which can be expensive, bulky, and somewhat difficult to transport and put together. You can always purchase space saving equipment, too – those that fold up and stash away out of sight.

However, once you have a home gym completed, it can be quite nice. It’s entirely customized to what you want in a gym. If you’re new to working out, you never have to feel as if someone else is judging you, because you’re likely the only one there.

You’ll never have to wait for a machine to be open, or worry about someone using a set of dumbbells you’re waiting to use. The music playing or TV channel is whatever you want it to be.

Most importantly, it’s always accessible whenever you want to use it. When it comes to gyms, there are many different kinds, each with differing equipment, costs, and general personalities.

You’ll find gyms that are really fancy, and some that are strictly barebones. Some gyms attract a more easygoing crowd, while others are homes to serious weightlifters and gym rats.

One downside to a gym is that you’ll always have to pay for a membership. With a home gym, it’s expensive at first, but from then on it’s all free. With a gym membership, it can be as low as $10 per month, but that fee never ends.

Some gyms have limited hours, so you’ll have to work it into your schedule a bit more carefully. You’ll also have to travel to your gym, even if it’s only a few minutes away. Sometimes this can hurt your motivation.

Gyms also have their fair share of benefits, though. At a gym, you’ll find that there’s tons of specialized equipment you may have never even heard of, and hopefully plenty of space to go around.

There’s also no serious commitment when it comes to a gym. If you don’t like it or you stop working out, you can just cancel your membership. Some have annual fees or contracts, but you can choose a gym that allows month-to-month plans if you prefer.

With a home gym, once you’ve bought and moved in all of the equipment, it can be hard to get rid of it all. Most people start off at just a regular gym to see if they enjoy working out, and then might move up to a home gym if they decide it’s right for them.

Tracking Your Progress and Leveling Up

A very serious problem that many people have when it comes to working out is the feeling that they’re not making progress. When you’re working out frequently, it can be hard to feel as though you’re making any kind of genuine progress.

You see yourself in the mirror almost every day, and so the changes you’re making are so gradual that you almost don’t notice them at all. This can turn out to be discouraging to a lot of people, and might even drive them to stop working out altogether.

First, there’s one thing more people need to realize. When you start working out, you won’t see results after just a few days or sometimes even a month of working out. It simply doesn’t work that way.

It takes some time to build up your muscles or break down fat. People set expectations way too high when it comes to workout routines, as if they’ll be able to just lose all their fat in 3 weeks.

That’s usually not the case. Another reality about working out is that there will be times when you hit plateaus, where some weeks your weight will remain the same instead of losing a certain amount.

Next, there are plenty of other ways you can track your progress without just looking in the mirror or stepping on a scale. For example, if you’re working on building up muscle and getting stronger, you’ll be able to track your progress easily by the amount of weight you can lift.

If, when you first started out, you were bench pressing 115 pounds, you’ll know you’ve improved once you can handle 135 pounds. Even if you don’t look much more ripped, you’ll know that you’re making positive progress.

Many people like to take progress pictures to help them along their journey. It’s recommended that you take some frontal and profile view pictures of yourself, and then check back in on it every few months.

By seeing the pictures side by side, you’ll get a much better idea of how much you’ve changed than you do just checking in the mirror each day. When you try to view your progress that way, you won’t notice it, since the daily changes will be so minute.

Some people have employed the use of technology in order to better track their fitness efforts. One of the most popular brands, FitBit, offers tons of wearable technology that helps you track your weight and exercise on graphs, which can often give you a very clear view of what you’ve been accomplishing.

You’re able to set personalized goals with them, and can view your progress from your phone or online. This can really help motivate someone to keep on working at their routine.

You can also use a gym tracker or at home tracker to give you statistics on your BMI, bodyfat measurements, muscle and more. Don’t just go by the scale if you tend to lose motivation, because your bodyweight will fluctuate as you work to achieve your goals.

You can order an at home scale and some calipers to track fat loss and muscle toning as you work out. You’ll know which exercises are working to move you closer to your goal and which are simply a waste of time.