Establishing a Workout Routine
Find a physical activity that you enjoy. There’s no point forcing yourself to do a kind of exercise that you hate. That won’t last very long! Instead, find an activity you enjoy. You may have to try out a lot: yoga, dance, soccer, basketball, swimming, jogging, running… The options are limitless! You may find you enjoy energetic team sports, like baseball, or that you prefer the solitude of a long walk in nature. Tip: You don’t need to pay for a gym membership to get a good workout! YouTube has lots of free exercise videos, which you can follow in your own room. Once you’ve found a physical activity that you enjoy, aim to do it at least 3 times a week. Try to do some other kind of physical activity 2 other days a week. For example, if you love playing basketball, try playing basketball 3 times a week, and lifting weights twice a week. Switch activities if you get bored. If you get injured, stop doing that activity and go see the doctor.
Find positive friends to exercise with. The best way to motivate yourself to keep exercising is to have other people counting on you to show up. Then you can nag them to show up, they can nag you… A perfect arrangement! If you don’t know anybody who likes to exercise, go to your local YMCA or join a sport or a club at your high school. Or, you can encourage your friends to start working out with you. Plan healthy rewards afterward to make the event more fun and enticing. Like, “We’ll all go to yoga together, and then get coffee.” Or, “Let’s go to the gym, and then go eat dinner.”
Aim for 1 hour of physical movement every day. This doesn’t have to be intense! Just make sure you’re moving, whether that’s walking, biking, lifting weights, chasing your little cousin around the park, or playing basketball. You don’t have to have the hour of movement be all in one go. For example, you could walk your dog for 30 minutes before school, and then play soccer with some friends for 30 minutes after school.
Do strength-training and weight-lifting about twice a week. The weights section of the gym might be intimidatingly crowded with boys, but it’s time to change that! Girls need to be strong to be healthy, and lifting weights is a great way to lose fat and gain muscle. You should exercise your arms, legs, and abs. You can start with body-weight exercises, like push-ups and crunches, and work up to using the weights. If you’re not sure how to use the weights, a lot of gyms have introductory lessons, or you can ask someone you know to give you a lesson. EXPERT TIP Laila Ajani Laila Ajani Fitness Trainer Laila Ajani is a Fitness Trainer and founder of Push Personal Fitness, a personal training organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. With over 10 years as a trainer and exercise specialist, Laila has expertise in competitive athletics (gymnastics, powerlifting, and tennis), personal training, distance running, and Olympic lifting. Laila is certified by the National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA), USA Powerlifting (USAPL), and she is a Corrective Exercise Specialist (CES). Laila Ajani Laila Ajani Fitness Trainer Women shouldn't worry that weight training will drastically change their bodies. Due to hormonal differences between sexes, weight training is unlikely to cause significant muscle mass change in women. You'll unlikely get "bulky" unless you're overdoing it at the gym. Embrace weight training for improved fitness.
Tone your abs with ab exercises. “A combination of clean eating, cardio, and resistance exercises will burn fat overall,” says nutritionist Laura Flinn, but “core exercises will help tone and strengthen the belly” to help you get more defined abs. Try doing planks, where you hold yourself in a push up position with your arms straight or resting on their elbows. Keep your body in a flat line. Hold the position for 30 seconds, and work up from there. Also do leg lifts, where you lie flat on your back and lift your legs up off the ground and back down. Remember that doing abs alone won’t burn belly fat, but it will build muscle. Take rest days in between your ab workouts.
Eating Healthily
Eat a healthy breakfast every day. Don’t skip breakfast! Some people mistakenly think that skipping breakfast will help them lose weight, but it usually doesn’t work. Instead, eat a healthy breakfast, like oatmeal, yogurt with granola, or scrambled eggs. Avoid sugary cereal and doughnuts. Not only are they really unhealthy, but the energy you get from eating them burns off quickly, leaving you hungry for another meal really fast. A bowl of whole-grain cereal with semi-skimmed milk and fresh fruit is a tasty, healthy breakfast. Scrambled eggs with toast is a protein-rich way to start the day.
Eat fresh fruits and vegetables daily. Try to include fresh fruit and veggies in most of your meals. For example, you could eat fruit with your cereal for breakfast, a salad with your sandwich at lunch, and some cooked veggies with chicken and rice for dinner. Try to avoid saturated fat, like butter or lard. But eat plenty of healthy, unsaturated fat, like fish and avocados. “Limiting sugar and simple carbs plays a huge role in shrinking your stomach,” Flinn advises. Replace simple carbs, like white bread or chips, with “complex carbs such as sweet potato, brown rice, vegetables, and fruits.”
Drink water instead of soda or juice. Drinking soda or juice sends tons of sugar straight into your bloodstream, which is really unhealthy and makes you gain a bunch of weight. Instead, drink 6-8 glasses of water per day. Get into the habit of bringing a water bottle with you during the day so that you can sip regularly, instead of waiting to get super thirsty. Staying hydrated is really important for your body’s health and can help you lose weight. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you slip up and drink soda or juice. The point is to drink it as an occasional treat, and have water be your go-to beverage.
Serve yourself a reasonable portion at meals and hide the serving bowls. Everyone knows that feeling when you’re sitting around the table for ages talking, and you keep eating because the serving dish is in front of you, until you feel uncomfortably over-full. Avoid this common pattern by serving everyone a reasonably sized portion. Putting away the serving dishes immediately will help you resist the temptation to overeat. If you find yourself very antsy during a long meal, and you want something to do with yourself, try pouring yourself another glass of water, or taking a quick break to walk around.
Avoid fast food. This is a tricky one! What do you do when all your friends want to hang out at McDonalds, yet again? Well, you can propose a different activity for right after school, like hanging out in the park, or listening to music. If that isn’t an option, consider eating a healthy meal before you go join your friends. Then when you get there, just get some water to drink. You can still hang out with your friends and have a good time, but you won’t have to eat unhealthy food. Lots of fast food restaurants have healthier options on the menu that people just don’t know about. You could get a salad with low-fat dressing.
Making Healthy Lifestyle Changes
Make sure you actually do need to lose weight. Many girls think they need to lose weight based on what models look like. It turns out, a lot of the girls who model in magazines are pressured into being unhealthily skinny, so it’s best not to judge a healthy weight off of magazines. Talk to your doctor if you’re not sure if you need to lose weight. BMI shows you generally if you are underweight, a healthy weight, or overweight. However, it sometimes is inaccurate, and doesn’t take into consideration all body types. If your BMI is slightly off, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re over- or underweight, so don’t rely on BMI alone. Girls typically fill out as they hit puberty. The same fat that gives you breasts and a rounder butt gives you a bit of fat around the stomach. This is normal!
Aim to lose a maximum of 1 pound (0.45 kg) a week. Unhealthy fad or fake diets will claim to help you lose weight faster, but the only real way to lose weight is to establish reasonable, healthy habits, and then stick to them. “When I work with someone on their weight loss goals,” Flinn says, “I advise them to aim for 1–2 pounds (0.45–0.91 kg) a week for a healthy weight loss, which is around 9–18 pounds (4.1–8.2 kg) in 2 months.” If you try to lose weight faster, you’ll end up gaining it all back at the end of the fad diet, because you won’t have built healthy habits. Losing 1 pound (0.45 kg) a week might not sound like much, but it’s the healthy way to do it, and it really adds up. In just a year, you could lose 52 pounds (24 kg). Avoid weight-loss pills, laxatives, inducing vomiting, and under-eating. These are dangerous techniques that are really bad for your health. If you hear about your friends doing these things, check in with them, because that’s a sign of having an eating disorder, and they need professional help to get better.
Eat when you get hungry. Don’t try to lose weight by not eating enough. You’ll feel tired and grumpy and won’t be able to concentrate in school. Instead, bring healthy snacks with you to school or work. Try crackers with cheese, an apple, a banana, a peanut butter sandwich, or carrot sticks. Packing healthy snacks will mean you won’t have to rely on a vending machine when you get hungry. Eat before you get super hungry, because when you’re super hungry, it’s harder to make good decisions about nutrition—you’re more likely to just eat anything in sight.
Get 8-9 hours of sleep a night. Getting enough sleep is super important for health and weight loss. 8-9 hours of sleep will make you energetic, alert, and able to make smart decisions about what food you’re eating. It also reduces stress and sadness, which are 2 major causes of over-eating. Going to bed at a good time will reduce late-night snacking on junk food. The same way you set an alarm to wake up, set an alarm to go to sleep. Going to bed at the same time every night makes you sleep deeply and wake up feeling refreshed. Go to bed and wake up at around the same time on the weekends too. This might seem crazy, but it actually feels great and makes you lose weight. You can sleep in a little later on the weekends, but don't stay up crazy late.
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