PHOTOGRAPH BY SUPERSTOCK / EVERETT

Sunshine, swimsuits, and bare legs—oh my! The warm months are finally upon us. And that means one thing: you gotta get your bod in tip-top shape. Follow these six steps and prepare to flaunt your body confidently in front of your friends and family and maybe even the police, once they inevitably find out you’ve been hiding a body in your basement.

Keep Cool

Sure, storing your body in a trash bag is fine during the winter, when temperatures run cool, but that won’t fly during heat waves. It’s time to step up your routine! Invest in a stand-alone freezer. It’ll run you about two hundred bucks, but can you really put a price on saving your literally hot bod from decay? Plus, recent studies have shown that extremely cold temperatures can accelerate weight loss. If your body could talk, it would say thank you. But it can’t. Not anymore.

Exfoliate, Exfoliate, Exfoliate

Winter build-up is the worst. Dust, cobwebs, rat droppings—there’s no telling what’s been clogging up your body’s pores. Follow this easy recipe to get that skin glowing again. Mix two egg yolks with four tablespoons baking soda and two tablespoons rat poison. Spread all over your body and let sit for five minutes. Gently pat off with a washcloth. Repeat two more times. According to some eastern cultures, performing a ritual three times can bring you closer to God. This probably will not be the case for you, though.

Coconut Oil and Then More Coconut Oil

If you remember one rule this summer, let it be this: always be moisturizing. Actually, if you truly can remember only one rule, make it “Thou shalt not kill (from now on).” But moisturizing is really important, too!

Take a Moment to Appreciate What You Have

So your body’s not perfect—its eyes are bulging, and one of its legs has turned a weird shade of purple. But here’s the thing: no one’s body is perfect. Instead of focussing on your body’s flaws, why not celebrate all that it does for you? Like how it stays super quiet when you’re watching “This Is Us.” Or how its presence wracks you with guilt, which is a natural appetite suppressant.

It’s All About Mental Endurance

Sure, there will be days when it’s hard to get out of bed, when you’ll just lie there and think, Oh my God, what have I done? This is where compartmentalization—a super-awesome mental-health technique in which you consciously tuck your desperation and insanity away, into a special locked-off area of your brain—comes in handy. Remember, it’s your head, and you get to decide what’s real and what's not. Who says that census-taker ever even existed in the first place? It’s mind over body—literally!