Summer Weight-Loss Workout

You had planned to have started that green smoothie habit, the 10,000 steps daily and the booty-blasting beach workout to reach your goal of slimming down and toning up. But it’s July and…you haven’t. It turns out it’s not too late for those of us who feel like we’ve been summer slackers, according to noted fitness coach Nick Tumminello. The author of “Strength Training for Fat Loss” and the popular blog at PerformanceU.net, Tumminello is a regular contributor to major fitness magazines and websites and founded Performance University, which provides practical fitness education for fitness professionals worldwide.

Tumminello says it starts with your goal. To jump-start your plan to lose weight and get fit, ditch the numbers for a different goal: behavioral change. The results, he explains, are more likely to follow: “Eating clean – eating whole, unprocessed foods – will naturally lead you to eat less bread, crackers, pasta, cake and cookies. The byproduct of that behavior is consuming nutrient-dense food that’s naturally lower in calories.”

WEIGHT-LOSS REBOOT IN THREE STEPS:

01

Aim to change one behavior at a time, and don’t start with behaviors that are complex. Breakfast is one example he gives as challenging to change. “Say you’re a busy, working parent, and you don’t like eating breakfast – but you’ve read that you must, to lose weight. Not only that, you have to eat a certain kind of food, maybe eggs or oatmeal, which require preparation, and that’s different from your usual morning coffee.
“You also have to buy the new foods – so you have to change your shopping habits. It turns out that it takes a lot to change your breakfast routine. Most people stick with this kind of change for a few weeks at best.”

02

If you’re going to stick with a change in behavior, make sure it fits your schedule and preferences as well. If it doesn’t work with your normal schedule, or you have to eat certain foods that don’t work for you, it’s not going to stick. Focusing on behavior doesn’t mean you should toss the scale either, says Tumminello. If it’s right for you, regular weigh-ins hold you accountable and can even be motivating – especially when you start to see progress.

03

Simplicity rules. The strict rules or novelty factor of a diet can keep you going for a while, but the diet gets tough to sustain when you have to cook dinner for the kids or go to a birthday party or travel on business. “Set yourself up for success and don’t overcomplicate things to the point that you’re stressing out about what to eat, or you’re putting yourself in socially awkward positions all the time,” Tumminello says. Another reason for small, simple changes is that “willpower is a muscle – you use it all day, and by the time you get home late from work, it’s tired – so you pull out that frozen pizza.”

GET FIT WITH THE FAT LOSS 5 WORKOUT

Tumminello’s answer to restart your fitness habit is the FL5 (Fat Loss Five) workout, designed to make working out a simple “behavior” to turn into habit. The five-exercise “LPPCC” sequence takes five minutes to complete, so that you can do it anywhere, and adapt it to your fitness and endurance level by adding sets.

Here’s how it works:

01 LOWER BODY: REVERSE LUNGES

REPS: 30 seconds
INTENSITY/LOAD: Bodyweight
TEMPO: Slow
REST INTERVAL: 15 sec

02 UPPER BODY: PUSH-UPS

REPS: 30 seconds
INTENSITY/LOAD: Bodyweight
TEMPO: Moderate
REST INTERVAL: 15 sec

03 UPPER BODY: SHOULDER T’S

REPS: 30 seconds
INTENSITY/LOAD: Bodyweight
TEMPO: Slow
REST INTERVAL: 15 sec

04 CORE: SLOW-MOTION MOUNTAIN CLIMBER

REPS: 30 seconds
INTENSITY/LOAD: Bodyweight
TEMPO: Slow
REST INTERVAL: 15 sec

05 CARDIO: SKIP OR MARCH IN PLACE

REPS: 60 seconds
INTENSITY/LOAD: Bodyweight
TEMPO: Slow
REST INTERVAL: 60 sec

SETS: Rest 60, then repeat circuit 2-4 times.