It’s that time of year again — Spring Break beach body obsession. Cue the articles titled “10 moves that will tone you in time for Spring Break” and the people swearing off Chipotle and on to juice cleanses.

Exercising or dieting to look good on the beach is a personal choice. But if it’s achieved by counting calories or obsessive exercising, those making short-term lifestyle changes just to look good in a swimsuit should consider incorporating healthy choices into their lives after Spring Break.

Before I start talking about exercise and healthy eating, I want to clarify that I am not an expert and that this is specifically for people who want ideas on how to tone up or make their lifestyle healthier. I’m not trying to say that health should become everyone’s priority. Not everyone has time to fit in a workout, and that’s totally OK.

But if the upcoming Spring Break has made you want to lose five or 10 pounds, this is how you can turn last-ditch weight loss efforts into sustainable habits.

Instead of obsessively counting calories on a fitness app, use it as a way to look at your eating habits. At the beginning of this semester, I started using a fitness app and it told me I should only eat 1200 calories a day in order to lose weight. About a week into using it, I realized I was just trying to stay under the calorie limit instead of actually eating healthy foods.

If you download a calorie tracker, ignore the calorie limit and use it to keep track of what you’re eating. Once you’re aware of the fact that you eat an all-carb lunch every day, you can start to figure out ways to make small changes. If you’ve been eating pizza and pasta every day, for example, just replace the pizza with grilled chicken and maybe add some type of vegetable.

If you’ve been torturing yourself with intense two-hour workouts the week before Spring Break, instead try incorporating short workouts into your schedule throughout the week. According to a Jan. 14, 2014 Livestrong.com article , spending just 20–30 minutes on an elliptical machine three days a week can give you a full body workout and improve your aerobic fitness. And if you’re willing to spend some money to easily increase your activity, invest in a fitness tracker like Fitbit or Jawbone that tells you how many steps you’re taking a day, and how many you should be taking.

Instead of cutting out all sweets from your diet leading up to Spring Break — because you know that can’t last forever — just cut down on how often you eat that extra cupcake or jar of Nutella. If you’ve been having dessert with every dinner, limit it to three times a week. And if your go-to snack from the vending is M&M’s, swap it for trail mix with M&M’s instead.

There are little changes that don’t require eating differently or exercising that can make a big difference in your health. Drinking more water, for example, can help energize muscles and flush out toxins, according to WebMD. FitDay.com  and other sources also claim that drinking a lot of water can help you consume less calories because you feel more full. Additionally, green tea can speed up your metabolism and reduce bad cholesterol, but it has caffeine and zero calories, which makes it a healthy substitute for a latte. And it’s one of the cheapest drinks at Starbucks, so it’s a good “I need the free Wi-Fi but don’t want to buy something expensive” drink.

Nobody should feel like they need to change their body to look better in a swimsuit. But if you do want to look a certain way for Spring Break, take it as an opportunity to change your entire lifestyle when it comes to health and fitness. Making small changes to your diet and exercise habits over time is a lot safer — and probably more effective — than turning to crash dieting or other extremes.

Kate Beckman is a sophomore magazine journalism major. Her column appears every week in Pulp. You can reach her at kebeckma@syr.edu or follow her on Twitter at @Kate_Beckman

Published on March 4, 2015 at 12:01 am