Do I Need to Lose Weight Before Summer? Why Perfectionism Could Be Sabotaging Your Goals 

The Summer Body Pressure (and why it’s not the answer) 

As summer approaches, we should be looking forward to longer days, barbecues, ice creams, and days by the sea. But for many women, this season brings pressure:

Should I try to lose weight before my holiday?

You’re not alone if you’ve asked yourself this question.

Each year, countless women find themselves googling “how to lose weight before summer” or panicking over how they’ll look in shorts, sundresses, or swimwear. Many start restrictive diets, only to end up feeling like a failure when the results don’t match their expectations.

Ice cream on the beach becomes a guilt trip. Meals out turn into calorie math.

Let’s be clear: you don’t need to go on a “summer body ready” diet — that’s not how we do things here. But if you’re stuck in a cycle of all-or-nothing attempts to “fix” your body every summer, it’s worth asking:

Could perfectionism be what’s really holding you back? Let’s find out…

What Perfectionism Looks Like Around Food & Body 

Perfectionism often goes under the radar. You might not identify as a perfectionist, but many of the women I work with experience exactly this — especially around food and body image.

They’re not “lazy” or “unmotivated.” They’re too motivated, too rigid, too hard on themselves.

Perfectionism can sound like:

• “If I can’t do it perfectly, there’s no point.”
• “I’ve messed up already, I might as well eat whatever I want.”
• “If I don’t lose X pounds by my holiday, I’ve failed.”

How does perfectionism link to the way we eat? At its core, perfectionism ties your self-worth to achievement. You create rules to meet unrealistic standards. When you inevitably break those rules (because they’re impossible to follow 100% of the time), you feel like you’ve failed — and that failure spirals into self-criticism.

Do any of these perfectionist patterns feel familiar? 

• Fear of failure: “If I can’t do it perfectly, I shouldn’t try at all.”
• All-or-nothing thinking: Clean eating or binging. HIIT or nothing. Good vs bad foods.
• Control behaviours: Constant weighing, mirror-checking, zooming in on body “flaws.”
• Negative self-talk: “You messed it up. You’re greedy. You’ll never look good.”

These thoughts might lead you to follow an overly strict meal plan, weigh yourself daily (or more), and then feel defeated when the scale doesn’t move — or worse, goes up due to natural fluctuations like water retention or bloating.

Perfectionists often set much more rigid rules, which can become unhelpful as they are impossible to follow and therefore lead to you ‘breaking the rules’ and then having a sense of failure, which leads you feeling not good enough and stuck.

This might look like setting yourself a rigid diet plan that must be followed exactly- you are weighing yourself everyday (or more than once) and if the scales don’t go down, you feel you have failed and therefore feel you have failed, leading to self-criticism. This can then cause you to turn to food in a ‘screw it’ moment or as a comfort or distraction from these difficult thoughts and feelings, you now feel even more out of control and as a perfectionist this makes you anxious and stuck.

“Screw it” moment → emotional eating → shame → back to dieting or restriction → stuck again.

Want a real-life example? See what Sarah had to say here

Why Perfectionism is Keeping You Trapped (Not Motivated) 

Here’s the paradox: Perfectionism is sold to us as the path to success. But it’s often the thing that’s keeping us stuck.

Because when your expectations are impossible, failure becomes inevitable. And failure, for a perfectionist, isn’t just a learning moment — it feels like a personal flaw.

It is not realistic that you will never make a mistake, eat 100% healthy, make every work out session and therefore you are setting yourself up for failure by demanding perfection.

The “Feeling Fat” Trap

When you are a perfectionist focussing on a ‘perfect summer body’, you can become hypervigilant to any changes that your body naturally goes through as part of normal bodily functions. 

Let’s talk about one of the most common — and confusing — triggers: “feeling fat.”

You eat a meal, feel slightly bloated (completely normal), and suddenly you’re convinced your body has changed. You check your reflection, pinch your skin, weigh yourself, and engage in brutal inner dialogue:

“You’ve ruined everything. You’re disgusting. You’ll never look good on the beach.”

Sound familiar?
Here’s the truth: “Feeling fat” is rarely about fatness — it’s often about feeling not good enough. For perfectionists, even natural fluctuations in the body (like digestion, hormone shifts, hydration) become threats to self-worth.

And when you tie that self-worth to being “beach-body ready”, even a bit of bloat can feel catastrophic.

You haven’t actually put on any body fat- you just had a natural bit of bloating in response to your meal, but because of the rigid, inflexible rules and expectations you have set for yourself, you are in a world of panic.

A More Compassionate Way Forward

So, if you are a perfectionist engaging in strict diets or behaviours that are driven by motivation of needing to meet unrealistic body ideals, hopefully this has helped you to understand why this is moving you further away from feeling in control of your food choices and is not the right approach for you.

So what’s the alternative? It starts with a shift: compassion over criticism.

Once you create a supportive environment for yourself, then you can start to feel more confident to try things as if you make a mistake or things don’t go to plan you will be there to pick yourself up and work out what you can learn from this, rather than berating yourself and making yourself feel useless.

Try these mindset shifts: 

• From “I must eat perfectly” → “I want to nourish my body in ways that support energy and mood.”
• From “I have to lose weight before my holiday” → “I want to feel confident and comfortable in my skin, year-round.”
• From “One mistake ruins everything” → “Every moment is a chance to make a supportive choice.”

Instead of aiming for a “perfect” diet, focus on what’s “good enough.” 

• A slightly imbalanced meal can be improved with an extra veg or a glass of water.
• A missed workout doesn’t mean the whole week is ruined — maybe you go for a walk instead.

This is where progress lives — not in extremes, but in consistency. 

Ask Yourself: Are You Holding Yourself to a Higher Standard Than Others? 

It’s worth reflecting:

• Would you expect a friend to never eat cake, never miss a workout, never feel bloated?
• Would you speak to your loved ones the way you speak to yourself?

If the answer is no — why are you holding yourself to harsher standards?

Start noticing this gap. Then gradually you can begin to close it.

What Really Matters on Holiday?

Finally, think about what really matters to you about going on holiday. 

Let’s zoom out. Why are you even taking this holiday? 

Is it to: 

• De-stress?
• Make memories?
• Try delicious new food?
• Connect with people you care about?

None of these moments depend on having a flat stomach.
You deserve to be in your memories, not standing on the side-lines because you didn’t like how you looked.

Final Thought: What If You Didn’t Need to Change? 

What if confidence didn’t come from changing your body — but from changing your mindset?

How would it feel:

• To go on holiday as you are, and actually enjoy it?
• To look back in 20 years and remember the experiences, not the stress of dieting?

The truth is, your body doesn’t need to be fixed — your relationship with it just needs some healing. Going on holiday doesn’t need to be tied up with how your body looks. If you want to make changes to how you eat or what you weigh, then looking for a healthier and more meaningful motivation for this is more likely to mean you work towards lasting change, rather than a ‘quick fix’ to look a certain way in a swimming costume for two weeks.

And that starts with stepping off the perfectionist treadmill and choosing a kinder, more empowering path.

Having a long term approach, where you are changing the way you eat to live your best life, not to be “summer body ready”, means you can feel good all year, every year- now is the time to break that cycle.

Want support? 

Ready to break free from perfectionism around food and body image?

✅ Book a free discovery call — let’s talk about what lasting change can look like for you.

Let this summer be the one where you show up as your full self — no rules, no shame, just freedom.