Passport – check. Sunglasses – check. A physique you’ll want to put on Instagram – ah.

They say a summer body is built in winter. But hitting the sand seemed a long time away back when mince pies were on the table. Now you’re a month away from wheels up, and those extra helpings of brandy butter are still hanging around your waist.

However, all’s not lost. Follow these rules, and after four weeks of sweat, discipline and calloused hands, you’ll have burnt off your man boobs to be left with a summer body that proves you know precisely which way the beach is.

How To Build A Summer Body (If You’ve Left It Too Late)

Don’t Starve Yourself

A crash diet won’t tighten your wobbling gut. “If you restrict calories too much, your body goes into shock mode,” says Leo Savage, a personal trainer who firms up fat at London’s Third Space gym. “That means anything you eat, it clings onto.”

Cut to 1,000 calories a day, and that summer body you’re after thinks you’re starving, so stores food rather than burning it as fuel. Which means that gut’s going nowhere.

Instead, aim for around 2,000 calories a day, with every meal based around lean protein – think chicken breast or salmon fillets, rather than protein powders – and vegetables. If it goes in the microwave, it doesn’t go in you. “You should have 40 per cent of your energy from protein, 30 per cent from carbs and 30 per cent from fat,” says Savage. You’ll still be at a fat-burning calorie deficit, but there’ll be enough going in to keep your engines stoked.

Eat To The Clock

What your summer body does with what you put into it is dictated by hormones. Insulin, which spikes when you eat carbs, is particularly bad at turning food into fat – especially if you have a particularly sugary diet. Besides cutting out processed food and booze – it’s just four weeks, remember – you need to time when you eat what to optimize how your body handles what you put in.