2024 Mindset Challenge

Here we are again, a new year! 

Are you feeling the self-improvement pressure?  

With all the sayings and slogans around us every turn of the year, like; “new year, new you”, “make 2024 your year”, “out with the old, in with the new”, I understand if you are feeling pressured into needing to make improvements in your life. One of the biggest resolutions that is marketed to us as a society is the new year’s weight loss, it’s the same every year. Diet and wellness culture, a multi-billion-dollar industry, rings in loud and proud every new year to encourage more exercising, more food restrictions, and more disconnect from your body as you pursue a thinner, smaller body. 

As someone with personal and professional experience in the world of weight loss and health at every size, no matter how much awareness I have, I am always triggered by this time of the year. If you’re feeling triggered, questioning if you should also be trying to alter your body, restrict yourself with a new diet, or burn yourself out with over exercising, you are not alone! Before you jump into a new list of food rules to follow, or a new workout regime, take a breath. 

Have compassion for yourself as you sit with this cultural mindset. In the western world we have grown up with the false conditioning that being smaller, lighter, and weighing less is equivalent to being healthier and morally better as a person. Many of us could share the common stories of diets our parents had been on as we were children, imprinting the same mentality on us – we must always be on a diet, working towards a smaller body, and restricting our food intake.  

Get ready for it, take a nice big inhale, exhale that bullshit ‘cause I am about to challenge that mindset. 

Every one of us was born inherently worthy of food, movement, pleasure, and all of the emotions and experiences life has for you. Your body is not a problem to be fixed where your weight is a solution. Food is meant to be enjoyed, nourishing, and is the fuel your body needs to thrive! This mindset shift doesn’t happen overnight, moving away from the comfort of restrictive dieting rules is not easily done cold turkey. But moving into a space of trusting and nourishing your mind and body instead of depleting, restricting, and over exercising, is the most culturally rebellious and freeing act. Focusing on a healthy relationship with food and movement can shift this mindset and help to refocus on what is nourishing for the mind and body.  

One of the patterns that I have seen with a lot when women are restricting their food intake, and overexercising is the burnout that occurs with their hormones. Due to the stress that the body feels when it is not being fueled with adequate amounts of energy (calories), the body’s hormones will begin to become imbalanced. This can be seen in a decrease in menstrual cycle consistency, increase in severity of peri-menopause symptoms, thyroid dysregulation, difficulty sleeping, drastic changes in bowel movements, a lack of sex drive, just to name a few. As females, we have long been told we need to under eat, only leading to us having a vast array of symptoms that interferes with our daily lives and perpetuates a fear of food. 

Here are some tips for moving forward in 2024 without a diet mindset: 

• Pause when making food choices; will it make you feel satisfied? Is there an expectation of the food changing your body if you eat it? Are there feelings of guilt or shame attached to them? Where do these food judgements come from? 

• Move in ways that you enjoy. Exercise is the body’s way of expressing itself, allow room for different movements and trying new activities. 

• Reduce food fears; all calories are used as energy in your body. Work to neutralize and trust your body’s food choices. Choosing a salad or pizza for dinner should elicit the same feelings of fullness and satisfaction. 

• Honor your hunger; your body has an amazing and intricate system that can tell you when you are getting low on fuel and can be trusted with it’s food choices.  

• Seek support; join like-minded groups that will help support you in moving away from diet culture into trusting and nourishing your body as it is. If professional support is needed to move past disordered eating or eating disorders, please seek the help you need. 

• Social media purge; remove social media accounts that make you feel less than, or that you need to diet again. You are worthy as you are, and do not need that negative influence in your life! 

If we all changed the mindset of thin equating to healthier, this would break the multi-billion-dollar diet culture industry. Instead of giving in to whatever the fad diet will be this year, pause and give yourself some compassion. It makes sense, in the world we live in, why the quick fixes and diets seem so appealing, but they’ve proven time and time again to be unsustainable. Maybe your self-compassion will give you space to shift into a more nourishing and accepting mindset where we can lived from a place of pleasure and satisfaction in our bodies. Our bodies are made for experiencing life, not to be forced into a size it is not meant to be.