Feeling the diet-culture pressure this New Year? Read this.

"New Year, New Me, New Fitness Routine"

Sound familiar?

Most of us have gone through the cycle around the festive period of eating comfortably and enjoying ourselves, only to reach the 1^st of January with a weight of guilt sitting on our shoulders.

There are thousands, if not, millions of diets, routines, programmes and lifestyle changes – under different names: Keto, clean eating, 75 days hard, intermittent fasting, and Paleo, the list goes on.

Sudden changes in diet and routine don’t work; science has shown for a majority of people these are fads that come and go (Elfhag & Rössner, 2005). They are designed for you to lose weight in a short period of time - only to regain weight or fall back to your “old habits” because of how intense they are and how much sacrifice they require from your personal life, hobbies, and overall human battery.

It's exhausting and unsustainable to force yourself to stick to a new diet out of guilt and shame. We’ve all been there, it’s depressing and it only makes you feel better for a short time. A bit like the high of buying something because it’s on sale, to regret it a few days later.

What’s more, is that it is completely normal to gain weight as you age. If you’re not the same weight or size you were 4 years ago – its normal! It is easy to fixate on the scale and to become entranced by how the number changes day by day. It is important to remember that it is just a number, and it does not capture you, as a person nor how you feel in your body.

If you’re thinking of setting some new goals for 2025, consider if this is something you’re doing for yourself and your body or if it is as a result of someone else’s influence. It is important to set goals that aren’t overly strenuous, limiting or isolating - so you can comfortably live your life.

This looks like :

• Eating enough so that you’re full and have energy to focus on other things
• Being able to enjoy social events with friends, family and colleagues
• Feeling energised and awake!

This doesn’t look like:

• Eating as little as possible
• Exercising to your limit even when you don’t want to
• Feeling guilty about what you eat

Don’t get me wrong, there is a valid argument for eating healthier and incorporating more movement into our lives. As cliché as it sounds, it is incredibly helpful for your body and mental state. It is admirable to take any steps to eating more vegetables, fruits and seeds. It is even more impressive to move beyond that which is required of us on a day to day.

And I’m all for it!

However, this time of year is a piranha’s pack of diets and fitness regimes; ready to snap up our insecurities and subject us to a painful 6 weeks of self-starvation and fatigue.

Amidst the rush for renovating our diets and exercise routines, consider setting some alternative new year’s resolutions that are body-neutral:

• Ditch the scales; try to come back to how your body feels on a day-to-day basis. This can be how comfortable you feel in your daily activities, how free and at ease you feel.
• Practice neutral food and body talk - not to talk negatively OR positively about weight, food choices or other people. This helps train your brain to de-centre food and food choices as moralistic
  • This includes friends, family, celebrities, or influencers
  • A salad is not a “good” option and a burger is not a “bad” option – they’re just food choices that are more or less nutritionally dense. Having variety across your week is normal and healthy.
• Try to identify a few coping techniques that work for you when you’re upset or stressed.
  • Sometimes we use food to manage our feelings, but it can disrupt our sense of fullness and trust in our bodies. Instead, try using some new coping techniques, that you can fall back on during challenging times.
  • For example breathing techniques, journaling, or simple movements like going for a walk or stretching 

It is important to be aware and honest with yourself about why you’re setting certain goals and what you want to gain out of it. The diets, fitness routines and programmes prowling in our digital spaces, very often, do not have our brain or bodies’ best interests in mind. Even if they seem harmless, they can cause mental and physical damage.

All of our bodies look and function differently; at the end of the day, you are the only person who knows what works best for your body. It might just take some time, trial and error to learn what it is for you.

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