The diet industry is gearing up to convince you that 2023 is your year to lose weight, eat “healthy,” drastically “transform” your body and somehow maintain that lifestyle for the rest of your life. These companies that focus on convincing you that losing weight could be — and should be — your greatest accomplishment, would love for you to adopt the “new year, new me” slogan by literally carving out a physically new body.
But beware the waste of time. When you set a New Year’s resolution to diet, you should know what else you’re committing to.
You’re also setting a resolution to decline the homemade cookies from the neighbors, dessert nights with friends, work party pizzas, baked goods from new family recipe experiments and holiday celebrations throughout the new year that are centered around food.
You’re resolving to swap out the joy and culture of food with the stress of monitoring everything you put in your mouth.
As someone who has tried this, let me tell you firsthand that the return on this resolution is not enticing. What you get back is this: constant stress about eating outside your home, mounting guilt over consuming “unhealthy” foods, shaming thoughts toward what others are eating and a completely unachievable long-term goal. Maybe you manage to lose a few pounds early on or cut out that food group you felt was unhealthy, but the added stress flowing through your body should be much more concerning to you.
So we can all let out a big sigh of relief because this is your sign to skip the diet fads of 2023. In fact, dieting this year is much more likely to give you the opposite outcome from what you hope.
Aside from the beautiful reality that your body is doing just fine and you don’t need to look like anyone except for yourself, it’s important to understand that these weight loss resolutions are designed to fail for the majority of people. Let me explain why.
“How to lose weight” is in the top 10 most searched requests on Google, according to Mondovo digital marketing. But the harsh reality is that most dieters will end up gaining back the weight they lost — and then some, according to data presented by Healthline. This is not a failure of the dieter, but a failure of the larger system that convinces us our bodies are a problem.
Just like your height or hair color, your body weight and structure is genetic. As explained by the National Geographic, every body has a different weight it wants to stay close to, called its set-point weight. When you diet, your body responds to keep you at your set-point weight, interpreting the lack of food as a threat: an area of your brain called the hypothalamus will “increase your appetite. It will slow down your metabolism, so you don’t lose weight quickly. It will even make you feel more lethargic, or sluggish, and less likely to exercise.” Your body will often adjust your set-point weight higher as a buffer from future dieting threats.
Dieting produces very opposite results from what it promises. Instead of losing weight, most people gain weight over the long term, and it doesn’t encourage us to exercise in healthy ways either.
Instead of choosing the dieting resolution this year, try a different approach to healthy living: the Health at Every Size lifestyle. According to the National Geographic, this approach to health is founded on research that shows health is not determined by the size of someone’s body. Someone in a larger body is not inherently less healthy than someone in a smaller body. Instead, health is measured by internal signals such as blood pressure, stress levels and cholesterol.
“Saying everybody needs to be the same weight is like saying all people should be the same height,” says Lindo Bacon, author of the book “Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight,” told National Geographic.
So instead of planning out a meticulous regimen of food restriction, calorie counting, weight tracking and joyless exercise — that will probably have you quitting by February — build your health goals on the Health At Every Size model with a focus on stress management, self-esteem building and joyful movement.
Your body is not a problem, and neither are the foods you love. Enjoy this new year without demanding a “new you” from a beautiful body that works tirelessly for your benefit.