Josie Santi’s 'Glow Girl Summer' Is The Rebrand Hot Girl Summer Needs

Josie Santi, host of "The Everygirl Podcast," is redefining hot girl summer with her empowering new eBook, "Glow Girl Summer: The Guide to Actually Feeling Good in Your Body, Your Life, and Your Summer." 

Frustrated with diet culture and the relentless push for a perfect summer body, Santi is leading a movement rooted in self-acceptance and happiness. Her holistic wellness guide empowers women to celebrate their bodies just as they are, focusing on energy, confidence, and living guilt-free. "Glow Girl Summer" is an invitation to let go of perfectionism and embrace self-love, because the ultimate glow-up starts from within.

About three years ago, Santi had the idea to launch a podcast to help “change the wellness industry as we know it because there is so much about the wellness industry that is very toxic” and rooted in the mentality that you are not good enough and need to make major changes. Santi felt that was “all wrong.” 

“We have to change it so I feel like I knew that a podcast being able to listen every single week to a 60-minute conversation would do so much more to change women’s minds and women’s lives, so that’s exactly how the podcast came to be,” she told The Blast exclusively. “And we’ve been doing it ever since and have added on more episodes every week.”

Since that first podcast episode, it’s changed and evolved “drastically.” 

“What's funny is we started the podcast, obviously wanting it to be focused on self-improvement because it's an extension of the 'Every Girl' brand, which, you know, since 2012, we have been creating content for women to help them feel better in their lives, reach their goals in every area from relationships to career to wellness,” she explained.

“So we started this podcast as an extension of that goal. And over the past three years since it's launched, it has really evolved into something that I would say a lot. bigger than self-improvement.”

While the main demographic for Santi’s listeners is women 21-35, she said there’s an interesting mix of younger Gen Z and millennials. 

“I’ve learned that both Gen Z and millennial women really want the same thing. They want to be happy and they want freedom and authenticity,” she said. “So it’s been a really fun understanding of both these groups of women being able to serve them in different ways but to accomplish the same goal."

The podcast often has guests that her audience wants to hear from. It’s hard for her to choose favorites because they all hold a special place.

“I fall in love with every single guest,” she said. “Some of my favorite conversations that have stood out to me - Kendra Scott was an interview I did even within our first year and it is one that I always remember because it really changed the way that I view entrepreneurship and women in business because she talked a lot about how as women, we have been taught that we have to really suppress a lot of our dominant superpowers. We’re taught to be less compassionate and kind of more bold and strong in order to not be bulldozed in a conference room. The reason she got so successful is because she leaned into her innate human female strength.

Another guest that stands out for Santi is Julia Hart from “My Unorthodox Life.” Her inspiring story sticks with Santi. 

The idea to write an eBook happened because Santi noticed year after year that some people get obsessive about their bodies right before summer.  

“There's this awareness of their bodies obviously like we don't, even have that full extent for the rest of the year because we have this awareness of going to be in a bathing suit everyone's going to be judging us so there's that body pressure and the pressure to be super healthy,” she said. 

“We see a lot more challenges going viral and there’s more wellness tips and secrets about looking unrecognizable by summer. There’s also this pressure that we think that summer has to be amazon and we’re supposed to be squeezing every moment out of it, so summer is a really high-pressure time for so many reasons.” 

Santi really wanted to put all she’s learned into a resource to help other women feel like they’re living their fullest summer and maybe even their favorite summer. She hopes her eBook can help women look back and think that it was their best summer ever.

“So that was what I wanted to offer with this book - to give people as much content as I possibly could and as many tools in a tangible resource in order to live their best, fullest, most wonderful summer poolside because they feel their best in their bodies,” she said. “The purpose of it is so that you show up to your life as presently as possible. And I really hope that this eBook helps women get there.” 

The eBook covers things such as structuring your weekends, manifesting, her summer bowl formula, and much more. 

“What I really want women to get out of it is this is one life that you get to live and we cannot feel guilty about rest, we can stop worrying about being perfect, we can stop being obsessed with the way that we look,” she continued. “And instead, we can actually live our best life out of love for our bodies instead of hating them.” 

See more about the eBook and order yours here.

Defining wellness can be something different for many people. For Santi, wellness is the “ability to listen and trust your own body” which is the opposite of what mainstream wellness culture has taught us. 

“We have been taught to look everywhere outside of ourselves and we also have been so conditioned to distrust our body and everything from articles that talk about how to suppress cravings. I know a lot of people feel, and I felt, for so many years like my body was my enemy and the symptoms that I was dealing with were like my body’s way of sabotaging me,” Santi told The Blast.

“We have always been taught to look everywhere outside of ourselves and we also have been so conditioned to all these beliefs bombarding us about why we shouldn’t trust our bodies when in reality, true well-being means that we are connected to our bodies so much that we listen to them when they speak to us.” 

Santi trains people on how to listen to their bodies and how to trust them as the experts, which includes everything from understanding that our symptoms are really our check engine lights. The symptoms we experience are our body’s way of asking for some attention and trying to tell you something to help you be healthier. 

“Wellness is asking ourselves, what do you need right now? What does my body need? So it's not about doing the perfect workout plan. It's everyday checking with our bodies of what kind of movement we're going to be doing,” she continued. “It's not about doing the perfect workout plan. It's, would rest feel better so to me wellness is actually this very intimate and unique connection to your body and that is a very different definition than I think anyone really that I've met otherwise in wellness defines it as.” 

Santi shared a few of her favorite self care tips to help someone begin changing their lifestyle.

"I would say, especially around this time of year, a tip that I like to give everybody because everyone is going through this feeling where their lack of self-worth and lack of body confidence impacts so much," she began. "Say, 'so what.'"

She continued by explaining that it's important for her to give everyone a tip that has helped her change her relationship with her body and that's simple to say, "so what." Reframing your mindset to believe that it doesn't matter if you have a patch of cellulite, because probably no one other than you will notice or care.

"Remind yourself that it's just life. It's meant to be enjoyed. It's not that serious," she said. "I would also say doing things out of enjoyment rather than restriction. So when it comes to food or exercise, really lean into how amazing things make you feel will forever be the most sustainable way to keep any habit." 

If Santi had the chance to chat with her younger self, she would tell "young Josie so many things."

"I think the biggest thing that I would tell her is that really confidence is a skill. It's not a circumstance," she said. "I think that we spend so much of our life thinking, I don't feel good enough. I don't feel worthy. I don't feel ready to do the thing I want to do or go on the dating app or move to the new city, whatever it is."

That mindset of "I'm not ready" or "I'm not there," or "I'll be happy when this other thing happens," is not it. Santi said she would teach "young Josie" that "confidence is a skill, not a circumstance that happens to you because of external factors."

New podcast episodes come out every Tuesday and Thursday. Visit her website for more information.