During the summer of 2010, a very drunk Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, then 22, face-planted on a New Jersey beach. She was later arrested as cameras rolled for her popular MTV show, “Jersey Shore.”
But in the five years since the height of her reality-TV fame, mother-of-two Polizzi has dropped 50 pounds, going from self-proclaimed meatball to hot mama. (She’s lost her nickname, too. These days, she goes by Nicole.)
With her new book, “Strong Is the New Sexy,” out this week, the now-27-year-old Polizzi is attempting a seismic image shift from party girl to lifestyle guru.
“Five years ago, most of the people who saw me on TV thought I’d wind up in rehab or prison,” Polizzi writes in the book’s introduction. “Well, I’ve proved all those people wrong.”
After giving birth to her son, Lorenzo, in August 2012, the 4-foot-9 star lost an astonishing 42 pounds in six months, crediting a fitness program that emphasized weight training and a strict diet that minimized her caloric intake to just 1,300 a day.
And while she admits she’s not an expert, she hopes her story inspires others. Even if it means subscribing to the tenets of the popular “Jersey Shore” motto of “Gym, Tan, Laundry” — skin cancer be damned.
“I’m a fit mom,” she tells The Post. “Always at the gym, tanning whenever I can, and doing twice as much laundry with my kids.”
And so, when she gave birth to her second child, Giovanna, in September 2014, committed fitness buff Polizzi was back to her pre-pregnancy jeans only 12 days later.
An added incentive, she says, was her wedding to her longtime partner and baby-daddy, Jionni LaValle, just two months later.
“Setting goals is great,” she notes, “but even if I didn’t have my wedding, I still would’ve busted my ass to get in shape again.”
Here’s how she did it.
Fitness
According to Polizzi, a strong, fit body comes with confidence, eating right and working out at full tilt at least 15 minutes a day at the gym.
The book outlines a week’s worth of workouts highlighting Polizzi’s favorite moves, including squats (four sets of 15 reps) for a better booty and weight-lifting 3- to 5-pound dumbbells for upper-body strength. (She focuses on a different area of her body each day.)
Anthony Michael, Polizzi’s trainer, suggests that workouts that run too heavy on cardio can actually decrease muscle mass. So Polizzi boosts each day’s workout with a short “cardio add-on,” such as sprints.
But while Polizzi insists working out keeps her moods in check as much as it keeps her fit, she feels strongly about taking off one day every week from her rigorous workouts.
“You worked hard all week,” she writes, “and deserve to chill in whatever way you want.”
Food
In the book, Polizzi opens up about her battle with anorexia as a high school cheerleader and then overdoing it with food and booze in her early 20s.
“Although I was consuming thousands of calories a day during the party years, I was actually starving myself of healthy food. The more crap I ate, the stupider I got,” she writes. “When I stopped drinking and started eating greens, whole grains and lean meats, it was like my brain woke up from a five-year coma. My life turned around, and things clicked into place in my relationship and my career.”
Now, she pays attention to portions but also believes in what she calls “planned cheats.”
“Sunday dinner is usually my cheat day at my mother-in-law’s,” she tells The Post. She allows herself to eat a moderate portion of whatever Jionni’s mother is serving, especially her cheesy lasagna, the recipe for which is in the book.
“You still want to enjoy life,” Polizzi says. “Just don’t make it a habit and ruin your [otherwise] healthy diet.”
And she makes sure she treats the kids to weekly ice cream.
As Polizzi puts it: “Having a little sugar is as human an urge as breathing, s–tting and f–king.”
Some things never change.