An Alternative to the Hot Girl Summer Plan

Is this more realistic?

There’s a trend on TikTok where people post about their work towards a Hot Girl Summer.

No one has formally defined it, but I assume it means working on your appearance so that when the clothes come off in summer, you will look absolutely spectacular.

Being the image-obsessed person that I am, I was totally on board with this plan.

I can work out.

I can revise my skincare regime.

I can deep condition my hair once a week.

I can commit to giving myself regular manicures.

Normally, all of that would excite me. Worrying about my exterior is my jam. And yet, here we are in June and I have zero motivation.

After a year of being quarantined, not seeing friends, ending a meaningful romantic relationship, chugging through a tremendously long divorce while living with my spouse, homeschooling my kids, dealing with my boss’ death, and recovering from two surgeries where I was put completely under…I’m done.

I need a different kind of makeover. I have to quote one of my all-time favorite movies:

My Hot Girl Summer plan is now a Healthy Girl Summer plan.

This is what I’m thinking so far. I figure it wouldn’t be a mentally healthy plan if I didn’t allow myself to modify it along the way so these may change.

• Seriously, get some sleep for fuck’s sake. Goal: achieving an 80% sleep score on my Fitbit at least once (with new goals added once I hit that first one).
• Scheduling reading time. I don’t know why I feel guilty when I’m reading and ignoring my family. I act as if I’m secretly smoking crack when someone walks in on me while my Kindle is hidden behind my back.
• Scheduling actual work time. Because work and home are all one, and I have flexibility with my hours, I’m going to schedule my work time instead of “I’ll get to it whenever.” However, I’m going to be realistic; I’m not putting down a full 8 hours a day.
• Figure out how to get outdoors. I’d like to take my kids but they’re total homebodies and especially since the pandemic, they’re not used to going out anymore. I used to take them on playdates, birthday parties, local events every single weekend before life went to hell in a handbasket. For now, I’ll commit to one excursion per week outside of a boring “walk around the neighborhood”. That also means getting the courage to drive with my bicycle on the bike rack I got for my car.
• The past few weeks, I’ve stuck with my goal to eat some kind of healthy meal at least once per day. And by “healthy” I mean, there’s an actual vegetable that isn’t a potato sliced thinly and deep-fried. I’ve spent most of my adult life maintaining a thin body by eating complete garbage. Now, my body is aging and I need to stop acting like I’m a 16-year-old eating at a food court every day. Time to level up my fuel quality so that I age like a gazelle and not a mangy hyena.
• Speaking of consumption, I have to commit to daily vitamins and minerals. I’m anemic 99% of the time. It’s a no-brainer; the doctor told me to take iron and add a shit ton of B12 to help the absorption. I made a little vitamin pill holder so it’s a matter of setting alarms throughout the day to remind myself to take them, along with my other supplements.
• In addition to the “eat a damn vegetable” strategy, I’ve been much better about drinking water. Now I need to make it mandatory. I’ll do that by telling my kids if I don’t drink two of my large water bottles that day, I owe them $100. Best believe they’ll on me constantly to see if I’m falling behind.
• Collagen is disgusting. I bought the marine version because studies have shown that while consuming collagen hasn’t proven to make a difference, the marine ones are most likely to do their magic. I loathe anything seafood and fish so why I thought buying two bags of that stuff is beyond me. Even when I put a microscopic amount in a smoothie, I can taste it. While I’m not going to commit to adding marine collagen to my diet permanently, I’m vowing to finish the 2 bags by the end of August.

I think that’s it for now. I feel like that list is already pretty long but as I mentioned earlier, I’m open to modifying it along the way.

Will all of that even make a difference as to how I feel? I’m in a divorce process that is moving at a snail’s pace with little hope of finding a place to live this year. It’s consuming my mind and my anxiety is chewing my body apart. I’m hoping that by focusing on my health, and not hot girl status, I’ll offset the damage caused by the stress of things around me.

And so, Healthy Girl Summer begins.