There’s nothing like the phrase “bikini season” that can cause self-confidence to plummet. There’s a lot of pressure—both internal and external—to lose a certain number of pounds before an upcoming vacation.
Often, this leads to hard, punishing workouts and cutting calories way back. While this “no pain, no gain” mindset may work in the short-term, science is clear that it doesn’t work long-term. According to a widely cited review in American Psychologist that analyzed 31 long-term diet studies, one-third to two-thirds of dieters regained more weight than they lost.
Besides, who wants to spend their vacation counting calories or in the hotel gym? Fortunately, there’s a more effective (and enjoyable) way to transition into summer: soft wellness. Instead of intense workouts and extreme diets, soft wellness encourages slowing down, listening to your body and choosing habits that feel supportive instead of stressful.
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While this softer approach is more effective, it still requires guidance. That’s where BetterMe comes in. BetterMe’s soft wellness approach and bite-sized workouts make it easy to keep up with, even on vacation. It’s not restrictive or time-consuming. It also helps create mindset shifts that make living a soft wellness lifestyle long-term easy.
Keep reading to find out why taking a softer transition into summer is so effective and how BetterMe can help you along the way.
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Why Soft Wellness Is So Effective
Soft wellness can be applied both to how you eat and how you move your body. “Soft wellness is about treating your body with more kindness and less pressure, and nutrition is one of its most important pillars,” says Victoria Repa, CHC, a certified health coach and the CEO and founder of BetterMe.
Repa explains that while many people believe that wellness means following strict dietary rules or cutting out entire food groups, the reality is that the healthiest approach is usually the most sustainable. “A balanced approach to nutrition lays the foundation for all other healthy lifestyle habits, from physical activity and mindfulness to productivity and emotional well-being,” she says.
Scientific research backs this up. According to a scientific study known as the DIRECT study, long-term weight loss success was strongly tied to adherence, regardless of the type of eating plan participants followed. The study showed that no single diet was best for long-term weight loss; what was more important was what was most sustainable.
This ties into something else that Repa says is important: There is not one way of eating that works for everyone. “Our nutritional needs are influenced by age, genetics, physical activity levels, health status, hormonal balance and lifestyle. This is especially true for women, whose nutritional needs can change significantly across different life stages,” she says.
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Repa explains that when it comes to nutrition, soft wellness is about choosing foods that help you feel full, energetic and nourished. “This means prioritizing whole foods whenever possible, listening to your body’s hunger and fullness cues and building a diet that includes a balanced mix of protein, healthy fats, fiber and carbohydrates,” she says.
This same approach applies to movement too. Instead of doing workouts that push your body to the limit, soft wellness prioritizes gentle workouts that feel nourishing instead of draining. Brittni Johnson, NCPT, a certified Pilates instructor and BetterMe’s Head of Pilates, has experienced the difference between intense workouts and a more gentle approach firsthand.
“As a dancer and gymnast, I was very much living that hustle and grind lifestyle with my workouts, but now that I’m older, I craved an approach that didn’t leave me so fatigued and drained. Soft wellness is more sustainable for longevity and is also much more realistic,” Johnson says.
Johnson points out that intense workouts can often backfire, leading to injury or sustained cortisol levels that can make losing weight more challenging. It’s why Pilates is one of her favorite workouts to integrate into a soft wellness routine. “It’s the perfect mixture of both strength and mobility in a very low-impact way,” she says.
Other examples of soft wellness workouts that prioritize low-impact, sustainable movement are yoga, brisk walking, water aerobics or swimming, or leisurely bike rides.
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How To Use BetterMe to Try Soft Wellness This Summer
BetterMe is the quintessential app for living a soft wellness lifestyle. As Repa explained, the most successful plans are ones that are individualized and sustainable, and you won’t find a more personalized app than BetterMe. That starts with the BetterMe quiz, which is designed to understand your goals, assess your fitness levels and factor in other factors such as your age, weight and height to create the most effective and efficient plan for you.
After completing the quiz, you can check the app each day to see your recommended daily workout from the app’s library of more than 4,000 workouts and log your food, water intake and steps. There is also a fasting feature that can be used for intermittent fasting.
“We don’t view nutrition as a separate category from wellness. It’s connected to movement, hydration, recovery, sleep and mindset. That’s how people actually live, and that’s how healthy habits are built,” Repa says. She explains that BetterMe offers more than 20 nutrition plans tailored to different goals and dietary preferences, whether someone follows a plant-based lifestyle, needs gluten-free options or simply wants guidance on balanced eating.
The app also provides practical tools, such as an AI calorie tracker that can instantly identify foods and estimate calories and macronutrients. “We focus all nutrition features on helping people become more aware of their habits. For example, many users don’t realize they’re under-eating protein, skipping meals or not drinking enough water until they start paying attention. Small adjustments in these areas can create significant improvements in energy, recovery and overall well-being,” Repa says.
Part of your personalized plan includes a daily reading centered around building healthier habits through mindset changes. For example, one of the daily readings shares how to challenge negative thoughts you may have about your body. Another reading explains intuitive eating and how learning how to listen to your body can lead to weight loss.
Though the app is comprehensive, nothing is too time-consuming or hard. This is why it’s so easy to keep up with, no matter how busy you are or how much you’re traveling.
The recommended workouts typically take about 45 minutes total, but the videos are broken up into shorter segments, so you can do them all at once or spread them out throughout the day; whatever works best for your schedule. And if a recommended workout is too long or not what you feel up to that day, you can choose another one from the extensive library.
As Johnson explained, Pilates is the perfect soft wellness workout, and BetterMe has tons of guided Pilates workouts you can do anywhere, including while you’re on vacation. If you want to step up your practice, you can purchase the Pilates Power Kit, which includes a toning Pilates ring, soft Pilates ball, sculpt dumbbells, adjustable weight bands, long resistance bands and Pilates loop bands.
If you know you’re going to be traveling this summer, you can opt for the Pilates travel kit, which includes Pilates loop bands, adjustable weight bands and long resistance bands. Everything is small enough to take up hardly any room in your suitcase.
Johnson says she likes that BetterMe offers a wide variety of workout videos that range in how long they are, and she’s also into the app’s step tracker. “I like the idea of workout snacks,” she says. “You don’t have to do everything all at once. You can go on a 10-minute walk in the morning, a 15-minute walk after lunch and a 20-minute walk after dinner. It adds up!” she says.
If you want extra support, BetterMe offers access to a daily coach for daily motivation, accountability and guidance.
My Experience Trying BetterMe
My current workout routine is pretty intense: 30 minutes of strength training followed by a five-mile run, three to four times a week. I liked the idea of dialing it back for a softer approach, but was worried that trading my hard workouts for a gentler routine wouldn’t have the same results. But there was no way that I could keep up my current routine with all the summer travel I have planned, so I decided to see if BetterMe would be a more sustainable approach both at home and while I was on vacation.
After downloading the app, my first step to getting started was doing the BetterMe quiz. The questions asked how active my lifestyle was, how well I slept and what my energy levels were like. Women can also use the app to track their cycle, but I opted not to do that.
It asked for three activities I was interested in and I chose general fitness, Pilates and running. It also asked about my “bad habits,” such as not resting enough, having a sweet tooth, drinking soda or loving salty foods. I copped to liking sweets. Later, I learned through using the app that the mindfulness chapters are partially inspired by one’s “bad habits,” giving practical advice on how to change the behavior by changing destructive thought patterns.
The quiz also asked what my goal was and I said that I wanted to lose 10 pounds. If I stuck to my individualized plan, it said I could meet my goal in 2.5 months.
I was ready to check out my plan. My personalized plan included a daily step goal of 8,500 steps, drinking 92 ounces of water a day and staying within a 1,493-calorie budget each day. That seemed extremely doable to me—a lot more sustainable than plans and calorie budgets I was given with other apps.
Mindfulness
Now that I had my plan, I started with the daily reading. Throughout my whole experience using BetterMe, the daily readings ended up being one of my favorite features because it was like nothing I had seen before on other wellness apps. Over time, it truly did help me challenge negative thoughts that would sabotage my progress in the past.
For example, in the past, I would eat a calorie-loaded sweet treat and then immediately feel bad about it, thinking, “I can’t believe I ate that. I’ll never meet my weight loss goal now.” But BetterMe’s readings taught me how to challenge negative thoughts like these before they completely derail my progress.
Nutrition
The food log made staying within the calorie budget easy—especially since the budget isn’t super restrictive. The app has an AI calorie tracker where you can take a photo of your plate and it calculates the calories and nutrients. I personally didn’t find this feature as accurate as using its food library. The library is super extensive, including specific brands as well as the foods themselves. I was never not able to find a food or ingredient in the app’s library.
For my first few days using the app, I would input each food right before every meal. Over time, I found that I preferred planning my day’s meals in advance and then entering everything in the morning. That way, I wouldn’t get to dinner with only 400 calories left, for example. Not only did inputting the foods in advance make staying within the calorie budget more manageable, it also meant I could dig into lunch and dinner without stopping to enter the foods into the app first.
BetterMe also offers different intermittent fasting plans, with a timer telling you how much time is left in your eating or fasting window. I found this helpful and was grateful to offload the mental energy of looking at the clock and doing my own calculation.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t very good at tracking my water intake. But I could see how people who struggle to drink enough water could benefit from tracking their hydration.
Fitness
Emily Laurence
Going off my interests for general fitness, Pilates and running, my recommended daily workout came in three parts. The first part was a guided workout video that was 15 to 20 minutes long (depending on the day and the other workouts it was paired with) that targeted the abs, which is what I requested through the quiz.
I liked the rhythm of these guided workouts. They always started out with some easy stretches before getting into more intense ab-targeting moves. They always ended with a few minutes of easier stretches to cool down. I definitely felt the burn!
The daily Pilates videos followed a similar structure. They started off with some easy stretches before transitioning to more challenging moves. The Pilates workouts that were recommended as part of my daily workout didn’t require any equipment, but since I had the Pilates Power Kit, I often chose Pilates workouts from the library that used the kit. I especially liked videos that incorporated the adjustable weight bands and long resistance bands.
The recommended running workouts were shorter than the general fitness and Pilates workouts; typically between 10 and 15 minutes, though once a week there was a 24-minute guided long run. I did these runs on the treadmill, but they could easily be done outside. The guided interval training—saying how much exertion to give for a set amount of time—made it feel like I had my own personal running coach. The intervals made the time fly by too.
Final thoughts
Though my new routine with BetterMe was gentler than my typical routine, I can honestly say that it worked just as well. After just one week using the app, I felt stronger and more toned. I also felt much more energized, which made me realize that my old routine left me depleted.
The guided workout videos are perfect for traveling because they don’t require much space or any equipment. Since I’m loving the Pilates bands that came in my box so much, I do plan on tucking them into my suitcase when I travel and choosing videos from the library that integrate them.
The biggest lesson BetterMe taught me was that a routine that’s sustainable is much more effective than one that’s extreme. Listening to your body and being kind to yourself can still bring results. It’s a lesson I plan on putting into practice not just during the summer, but all year long.
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Sources
- UCLA Study: diets not a long-term solution for weight loss: ‘rest-of-your-life’ changes like eating fewer calories and exercising regularly are needed to lose weight permanently. Healthy Years.
- Victoria Repa, CHC, certified health coach and the CEO and founder of BetterMe.
- Brittni Johnson, NCPT, certified Pilates instructor and BetterMe’s Head of Pilates.
- Greenberg, I., Stampfer, M. J., Schwarzfuchs, D., et al. (2009). Adherence and success in long-term weight loss diets: the dietary intervention randomized controlled trial (DIRECT). Journal of the American College of Nutrition. 28(2):159-68.
