Swimsuit Ready – Part Two
Swimsuit Ready – Part Two
If you’ve been doing some light cardio every day, and you’ve started to change your diet, you should be seeing changes. Better than that, you should feel a little healthier too.
Now is a great time to plan your swimsuit strategy, based on your body shape.
I have to stress this: Work with what you’ve got, not what you wish you had.
If you’re short and broad, wearing a swimsuit in a big bright floral print will make you look like an overstuffed armchair. Don’t complain too loudly if short sighted people keep trying to sit on you.
If you have big boobs, that tiny bikini top with no support is probably a bad idea.
If you have, shall we say, a generous behind, then bright horizontal stripes aren’t going to help.
Look, I’m a colour blind, short sighted, middle aged man, but even I know this stuff. I used to work in a clothing warehouse. Every year about this time we’d get deliveries of swimsuits, ready to stock the department stores. Every design came in several varieties to match different body types. Tops were either underwired or unsupported, bottoms came in different lengths, from skimpy bikini bottoms to substantial shorts. Somewhere out there is a swimsuit that suits you. Take a little time now to decide exactly how it should look, then go out and find it. And don’t just buy it – try it on first.
Obviously, being a woman, you’re not going to ask your man for advice when it comes to choosing a swimsuit, any more than you’d send him out with some vague instructions and a blank cheque to buy you a year’s supply of underwear. Men and women have such different notions as to what constitutes suitable attire in either case that I sometimes wonder if we’re really from the same species.
If you’re really stuck, and your nearest and dearest aren’t exactly being helpful, do what I just did and you’ll be swamped with good advice. Go to Google, type ‘picking swimsuit styles’ into the search box, and check out the first few answers. Here’s three pages I found that look like a great place to start:
Your light daily cardio probably isn’t much of a challenge anymore after four weeks. Time to up the pace a little. If you have some running shoes, dig them out. Wear them on your walk. Break into a trot now and then, just fast enough and just far enough to get a little out of breath and raise your heartbeat. Do not attempt to run a marathon. Seriously. There are no prizes. It’s not a race. You’re just trying to raise your metabolic rate a little, and running is a good way to do it. Walk a little, run a little, slow back down until you get your breath back, then repeat until you’re back home again.
And now it’s time to introduce some light resistance training. Relax. This stuff is easy.
After your cardio, while you’re still nice and warmed up, lie face down on the ground and put the palms of your hands flat on the floor below your shoulders. If you can manage it, do ten press ups, lifting your body weight off the floor, with only your toes and hands touching it. If you can’t, leave your knees in contact with the floor and try it that way. Easier, isn’t it? The press up works your upper arms, especially the triceps. Which will firm up and sort out that bingo wings problem in time.
And having worked out your top half, time to balance it out. Stand up with your feet shoulder width apart. feet slightly turned out. Squat down as if you’re about to sit on a chair, until your thighs are parallel to the ground, then stand back up straight. Repeat ten times. The squat, even without extra weight, works the quadriceps in your thighs. Chunky thigh problem? Work on this.
Work some stretches and flexibility training into the mix too. Resistance exercise can leave you a little stiff, so it’s as well to remember to stretch and keep flexible. For a simple whole body stretch, try this: stand up straight, then reach for the ceiling, standing on tip toe. Stretch and keep stretching until you feel like stopping, then relax back down. If you have a cat, keep an eye on the way they act. They stretch when they feel like it, and enjoy doing it. So should you.
That was part two. In which we:
- - Picked the right swimsuit.
- - Did a little jogging.
- - Started resistance training, and added some stretches to the mix to keep from getting stiff.
Next week comes the third and last part. We’re going to:
- - Go to the gym
- - Get some sleep
- - And generally look lovely.
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