New Year, New You? Let’s not.

Here we are, the middle of January, where unrealistic and deficit-based New Year resolutions go to die, but not before they’ve made you feel like a quitter or failure. 

You don’t need that in your life! 

Resolutions or self-improvement plans that fall under the “New Year, New You” umbrella are nothing more than the toxic tentacles of the same diet culture that tells us that bigger bodies can’t also be healthy bodies or that our value as people is directly tied to the numbers on the scale or on our waist band. 

That’s why I have a different intention for my community, one that is steeped in self-love, true health and personal empowerment.

“I want you to make goals that make your body feel better for you, not goals that make your body look different for others.”

-Lindsay Love

Whether you have faltered on a resolution or never made one because you knew you wouldn’t keep it, here’s a commitment I want you to consider making, a commitment to yourself: Use the next few weeks to set healthy, achievable intentions that are NOT linked to weight. 

Some ideas may be sitting down and making all of your annual appointments and checkups for the year so that nothing falls off your radar or falls victim to everything else being more important than your own health. 

Another intention most of us could really use is drinking more water. Like most of you, I struggle to drink as much water as I should, especially when it’s cold, even though my skin and body love me when I do. 

Scheduling movement AND thinking of it not as a means of weight or inches loss but rather as a means of improving your endurance, flexibility or as a way to lower stress, lower cholesterol or increase your mental energy thanks to getting up and away from all the screens. 

In other words, I want you to make goals that make your body feel better for you, not goals that make your body look different for others. You deserve the best life your body can give you, and your body deserves to be loved and valued exactly the way it is. Intend to love and value yourself better and you’ll start to remember why you do.