30-Day Summer-Body Diet Challenge

Follow the Whole30 plan to reboot your eating habits, shed fat, and rev up your energy.

- Alyssa Shaffer

New year's get all the buzz when it comes to making healthy-eating resolutions, but summer is the perfect time to revamp your diet. Fresh produce is at its peak, lean proteins are beckoning to be grilled, and you’ve got plenty of incentive to show off your results in a sexy swimsuit or shorts. But it’s not just about how good your abs look in a bikini. This is a great time to regain a smarter relationship with food. One way to do this is by using the wildly popular Whole30 program, which has helped hundreds of thousands of people reset their diets by focusing on clean foods and eliminating sugar, grains, alcohol, dairy, and more. The premise: These foods have the potential to cause digestive, metabolic, and inflammatory disorders that can compromise your health. “The only way to know what foods might be causing problems is by pushing them off your plate for 30 days,” says Melissa Hartwig, the co-creator of the Whole30 program. Even if you don’t have any food sensitivities, it’s still an opportunity to get the junk out of your diet while crushing your cravings for sugar and processed carbs and adding in more fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, meat, and seafood.

It’s also perfect for active women who want to fuel up for performance. “Your blood-sugar levels will be better regulated, so you won’t have those highs and lows,” says Hartwig. Plus, without inflammation-causing sugar and processed carbs, you can recover faster post-workout. Try the Whole30 diet for one month, then follow the guidelines for adding foods back to your diet. You’ll soon feel lighter, stronger, and ready to take on all that the season has to offer.

THE RULES