January. The month of the detox. The cleanse. The flat tummy tea. The diet. The gym rush.
The thing is, in essence, I actually really like the whole new year, new goals concept. I love a fresh start, a plan and feeling motivated to go for my goals.
What I really hate though, is when the diet industry hijacks the entire thing. They profit off making people feel guilty about the perceived ‘over indulgence’ of the Christmas period.
First of all, a week or two of a little bit of indulgence is not actually going to make that much difference, and any differences you can see in your body are most probably water weight and a little bit of bloating and are naturally and easily reversed when you inevitably get back into your normal routine. Don’t panic folks.
And anyways, nothing should be making you feel guilty about how you look or what you eat.
Weight loss does not automatically equal better or healthier.
A cleanse? You have a built in way to do that already. It’s called your liver.
Those flat tummy tea things? Contain laxatives. Yea, not fun.
It just really gets on my nerves. The whole industry, well most of it. Far too often the aim is around aesthetics and numbers on the scales, when actually neither of those things really matter. These adverts with girls with tiny waists or whatever it may be, telling you that ‘you could look like me, if only you did x, y, z’, I call bullshit.
People are built differently, look different, hold weight in different places. A healthy body looks different for me than it does to you.
The same thing happens every year, and some people just feel so pressurised to join the bandwagon. They get pressured by adverts, sales pitches, people around them and society in general who thinks everyone should be on a health kick in January.
Wanting to be healthy, I get. Totally on board. And maybe if that has a side effect of weight loss, or toning up or whatever, then that’s what happens.
But I just, personally, feel like starting out with goals that are purely aesthetic or weight based, is just not a good plan. Not for me anyways. It’s also shown to be less successful in the long run. It’s not sustainable. What happens when you hit your target weight? It is a lot harder to keep going at something if you’ve already reached your goal.
This year, I’m trying really hard not to focus on looks or weight goals, which is really difficult for a recovering anorexic I have to be honest.
Maybe think twice about buying into celebrity endorsed detoxes, weight loss powders and inch loss tea. Can we please stop the nonsense?
There are so many people who get sucked into this messaging and I think it’s such an unhealthy mindset to get into.
Also, just saying, you can decide to get healthy or start training or have goals in literally any other month of the year. January does not hold the monopoly on goal setting.
So maybe less of the whole New Year, New You stuff…more realistic, sustainable goals that are more than just about how you look or what you weigh. I guarantee you that the number on the scales is not a vital piece of information about who you are.
New Year, Same Me, just some new hopes and goals for the next twelve months.
Lucia X
(First posted 2nd January 2019)