Any Pilates enthusiast will agree that this practice can tighten your tummy in just one session. Ab exercises that are inspired by the Pilates roll up will give your mid section a flatter look and you will stand taller, which creates the illusion of looking slimmer.

Try lying on your back, legs out straight. Take a deep breath in through your nose and breath out as you pull your belly button towards your spine. Repeat, but this time when you breathe out peel your head off the ground and then – one vertebra at a time, keeping your tummy pulled inward – lift all the way up and over, rounding your back out as you reach the top. This is known as the Pilates Roll Up and to watch how it’s done, check out this video. Done regularly, your stomach will look like amazing every day. Do this move 20x before you hit the beach (yes the very same day) for some fABulous results.

Looking for a tighter butt? Try these two moves the same day you put on your bathing suit. The first is a split lunge and the second is a plank glute kick-back that is way harder than it looks. You can do these both at home right before you head out for the day. For the lunge, all you need is a step. Place one leg on top of the step and balance on the ball of your opposite foot about 8 inches behind you. Lower into a lunge until your front thigh is parallel to the ground, raise up pressing through the glute of the leg on top of the step. Repeat for 10-15 reps, then switch legs.

For the second move, get in plank position with your forearms resting on the ground. Raise your right foot in a flexed position about 6 inches above the ground, pause for a second and lower. Repeat on your opposite leg to complete 1 rep. Repeat for 15 reps. Wipe the sweat off your brow.

Switching up your diet can also contribute to a quick fix: stop drinking soda, stop drinking beer, and drastically reduce your sodium intake if possible. This will reduce the amount of water retention you are holding on to, which means less bloating. I understand the beer thing might be easier said than done, so if you know you are going to drink, avoid the midnight pizza run (duh) and don’t have a bagel to fix the morning hangover. Go with a healthy well rounded portion controlled dinner and a yummy veggie egg white omelette instead.

If you’re still feeling large, thank the heavens that cute cover-ups exist. And next year, start getting into shape before the first day of summer with this bikini body workout.

[If you liked this workout, don't forget to subscribe to DietHealth on YouTube for free and check out my blog updated weekly over at Examiner.com! It's like having your very own personal trainer at no cost. Could there be anything better? Have a question? Ask me on Twitter.]

Let’s say that you fixate on ‘toning up’ your arms and that you start doing bicep curls with three or five pound weights and a high number of repetitions per set. But after two weeks, you don’t see any results, so you give up.

Do you want to know why that didn’t work?

Because there is no such thing as toning up. All of those bicep curls that you do with three pounds weights? That starts you down the path that you want to go on, but what you’ve got to do is put down the puny weights and pick up those heavier bad boys.

If you were working with three pounds, move up to five; if you were at five, move up to eight and so on. Do 12 reps, rest for a minute, repeat the set and after another one minute rest, complete the final set of twelve. You don’t want to do two or three sets of 12 – 15 reps with such ease that you didn’t actually work the muscle.

Yes, the heavier weights can be intimidating but that’s no reason to stay away from them. Perhaps you’re afraid of ‘bulking up’. Well, fear not, because women simply lack the testosterone to bulk up and look anything remotely like those scary ginormous body builders.

And if those muscle heads at the gym intimidate you or you don’t want to deal with a gym at all, buying sets of dumb bells at varying weights are all you need to work out at home or in your room.

I know people who have been discouraged because they insist that they’ve bulked up when the truth is that they’ve built muscle under the fat stores that they haven’t lost. In the first couple of weeks that you start a weight training program, the scale will show a slight weight gain, but the scale doesn’t accurately track your progress – the fit of your clothes and how you look in the mirror are the true indicators.

Despite what’s been pounded into our heads about working out from infomercials and just plain false information, there is no such thing as spot reducing, no miracle instant cure and ‘toning’ just isn’t going to happen.

Muscles either get bigger or get smaller. You get stronger or you get weaker. We mistakenly use the word ‘tone’ to mean ‘get lean.’ So if you want those stronger muscles to show, then the only way to do that is to lose body fat.

Let’s go back to the arms scenario. Genetically, we are all preprogrammed to store fat in certain places first and unfortunately the last place you gain fat is the last place that you lose it. To lose fat on your arms, you can’t just work your upper body. What hinders our progress is looking at our body in parts, because if that is how you see it, then that is how you will work it. We need to shift our perspective and work the whole body in order to make the changes that we want to see.

There are three components to making those muscles show:

1) Weight training

2) Cardiovascular exercise

3) Healthy diet

Weight training is the absolute best thing that you can do to make real changes to your body. It will not give you instant results but over time, it is the most effective because the more lean mass that you have, the higher your metabolism. A pound of muscle burns about 60 calories per day. A pound of fat burns about 5 calories per day. Five pounds of fat is the equivalent size of a grapefruit; five pounds of muscle take up the space of a tangerine.

Cardio is also key but keep in mind that you can do cardio to your heart’s content, but if you aren’t properly fueling your body, then you’re shortchanging yourself. Your basal metabolic rate is the number of calories that your body burns if you don’t move all day. Whatever that number is, you should NOT go below that.

To help you along further, websites like Calorieking.com and Fitday.com are great tools for figuring out how many calories are in the foods that you eat and calculating how many grams of fat, protein and carbohydrates that you’re eating per day.

Working out doesn’t mean that you can eat whatever you want; it means that you don’t want any kind of nutritional deficit by eating the foods that are devoid of the nutrients that your body needs.

This website looks daunting I know, but someone recommended it to me and it really gives some great tips. You don’t need to go in and be able to bench 100 pounds. Work at your own pace and you’ll be amazed at the changes you see and how strong you can become.

I like to break it down this way:

Day #1: Chest, shoulders, back

Day #2: Legs and abs

Day #3: Biceps and triceps

As an example for day one, I recommend trying the following moves:

For shoulders: the shoulder press or rear delt row with free weights.

For the chest: the bench press, using free weights or the machine

For the back: dumbell shrugs, the lat pull down machine, and the barbell bent over row.

What’s great about this website is it shows you how to lift properly. Correct form means better and injury free results.

Alternate the muscle groups that you work and do not underestimate the importance of resting; you actually build lean mass while you are at rest.

So get your weight lifting gloves and get to work! In four to six weeks, you will be thrilled with the results.