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With the new year approaching, endless articles and posts about New Year’s resolutions fill our media streams, each one offering ways to make the next year better. Urgent headlines ask how we can improve ourselves—to do better, to be better. Weight loss is at the top of many people’s list of resolutions—seeking out the diet plan that will finally work for us or that exercise regimen that will keep us going to the gym. We all want the next year to be our “after” picture when we compare ourselves to where we are now—our “before” picture.
But can we question, or disrupt, the assumptions driving this end-of-year frenzy? What would it be like if we could change the narrative, turn it on its head, and embrace our “before” picture? Could we give ourselves the gift of time and energy that we would usually pour into our plans for a “new” us? How different would that feel, rather than always focusing on what we hate about our bodies?
How much time do we spend thinking about how to change our bodies—especially weight and shape? How many hours a day are lost to worrying about what we eat, how much we eat, and what we should and shouldn’t eat? We count calories, and we make plans to go for runs to “work off” the extra treats we ate over the holidays. We feel terrible about ourselves when we can’t follow the plans we create—and we call ourselves all kinds of horrible names when we think we have eaten too much or when we can’t follow our exercise plan. We constantly criticize our bodies and think about the “better” body we want to get to.
This is exhausting. It drains energy and focus from so many other things in our lives. It tanks our mood and our ability to enjoy activities.
And it's a social currency—this self-loathing. We are expected to be critical of our bodies. Everyone does it. People are suspicious of us if we don’t join in on the self-criticism conversation. Talking about calories and carbs and diets bonds us together.
Enough. This is untenable—and it hurts us. This problem is ubiquitous in society, but the toxicity of these expectations uniquely targets women as a group. Starting from very young ages, girls and women learn that bodies must be judged and manipulated and changed to be acceptable to the world—to be seen as successful and lovable. This takes up huge swaths of our emotional bandwidth—draining us and setting us up for depression, eating disorders, and a wide range of other mental and physical health problems.
Accepting our “before” picture as worthy of kindness and respect is a radical act. Loving ourselves—or at least not hating ourselves—is a radical act. Embracing our physical selves for what they do and not only on how they look is a radical act.
Starting from acceptance is key to growth of all kinds. Kindness and nurturing are essential for children to grow and thrive, and these needs continue through adulthood. Our growth and satisfaction depend on speaking to ourselves with love and kindness, not self-bullying.
Learning to change how we talk about our bodies—giving ourselves this gift—takes time and practice. The first step is noticing the frequency and severity of our negative comments about our bodies—the things we say out loud and the things we just think to ourselves. Beginning to observe our mental processes of criticizing ourselves will help us map out where we are starting and where we want to get to.
It’s worth a try. We have nothing to lose but some self-hatred—which is not a bad thing to unload at any time of the year.
