How to set new year’s resolutions around health without fucking yourself over with diet shit

I’m hosting a free bonus workshop via FaceBook LIVE on Thursday the 5th of January at 2 pm Dutch time.

My intention for this is to support you through intentional goal-setting for the new year without fucking yourself over with diet shit!

If you haven’t already, join the private group here where the live will be taking place.

A workbook will be provided for you to fill in during the workshop. We will need around 1 hour but block out 1.5 for Q&A etc.

The recording will be kept in the group for a few weeks so you can watch the replay if you can’t make it live.

“New year, new me”

It’s that time of year again when we hear things like

“New Year, new me”

“I’ll start in the new year”

“This year is going to be the year that I… (fill in the blank)

As much as it lights me up to see others excited about the changes they’re going to make, I also remember how it feels when I used to make such promises to myself… and then fail miserably and feel even worse about myself.

In fact, the ONLY resolution I stuck to back in my dieting days was the one I set for myself which was “to drink more water”… which I still do to this day.

Knowing what I know now, it doesn’t surprise me that I stuck to this one as I was simply ADDING something in, not taking anything away. More about this in a bit.

Weight loss goals

I’m going to speak specifically now about setting goals around weight loss, fitness and “health” but regardless of your goals, I assume it will resonate and support you.

Goal setting and planning relieve anxiety as it feels comforting knowing that you’re going to “do something about” what’s going on for you now. And why do you want to “do something about” what’s going on for you now?

Because if you’re anything like I used to be, you’ll currently be HATING what your reality is now. You’ll most likely have either binged or binged and purged the entire holiday season or you may have promised yourself that you’d eat more and stop exercising as much yet you’re still stuck in the hell hole of restriction. You’ll most likely be hating your body, the way you eat, how you think, your lack of caring for your health and how unfit you are.

But it doesn’t have to be this way! If you feel anything but peace or neutrality about your current situation then you are resisting it. You are not accepting what is. And that brings suffering.

“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”

Whenever you resist what is, you are CHOOSING to suffer. Accepting something doesn’t mean you approve of it, it just means that you are accepting reality. When we accept reality, we feel peace. It is what it is.

No change ever comes from shame

How many times have you set new year’s resolutions and then not managed to follow through with them by the time next January comes around?

I’ve literally lost count.

That’s because I used to set my goals based on fear. I wanted to lose weight because I thought I needed to in order to be happy. I needed to be smaller in order to be sexy and desired. Fear.

I wanted to get super fit because I wanted to be the “best” in the gym. Why? Because I felt like I needed to prove that I was good enough. That I was more than good enough. If I were good enough, nobody could emotionally hurt me. Fear.

That turned out not to be true because I was simply hurting myself. I may have been good enough for most but I still wasn’t good enough for me. I never could have been. Fear.

Soulwork

  • Take some time to write down your past goals and write down WHY you wanted to achieve them. then write down LOVE or FEAR next to each depending on where the goal was born from. Focus on the ones that were born out of fear.

How many goals that were born from fear have you achieved and sustained?

Thought so.

We THINK that we can shame ourselves into being “better” but that actually never works long term. If we want to set goals that we can actually achieve and sustain they must be born from genuine love. Any goal that is born from fear isn’t your goal anyway… it’s what your environment has conditioned your ego into believing that you should do. Think about that for a minute.

“Any goal that is born from fear isn’t your goal anyway.”

How to set goals that are meant for YOU

I was feeling into how I personally set goals and actually I realised that I don’t set goals at all…

I have desires that are born from love. I then set an intention for each desire and tune into how I would like to feel and whether or not the action steps needed, bring me energy or drain my energy. From then I TAKE ACTION.

Many people assume that intentions are the same as goals, but this is not true. While similar, intent does not have a specific end result; it is more just a guideline of what you should do to become who you want to be.

As I reflected on this I saw that it was actually an acronym! LIFE Each letter stands for each pillar of how I set “goals” for myself.

Love – is this desire born out of love?

Intention – What is my intention for this desire? What meaning do I want to give? Is this in alignment with my values?

Feeling – How do I want to feel when this desire has come to fruition?

Energy – Do the action steps needed, give me energy or drain my energy?

Let’s run through two together with a tangible example and then I’d like you to do the same for each of your desires. That way you’ll be able to see if the goals you have are actually meant for you or whether you can let go of them and choose more aligned ones.

“My goal/desire is to stop eating chocolate”

Love – is this desire born out of love?

No, it’s born out of fear because I want to stop eating chocolate so that I will lose weight and look better. I want to look better because I want to feel confident and I don’t think I look good enough as I am now to be confident. The driver is fear.

Intention – What is my intention for this desire? What meaning do I want to give? Is this in alignment with my values?

My intention is to stop eating chocolate because if I lose weight it means I will be happier and more confident because I will look better. Now I can see that this shows that I am linking my weight to my worth and happiness and this is not in alignment with who I want to be. I want to be happy and feel worthy regardless of my weight.

Feeling – How do I want to feel when this desire has come to fruition?

I want to feel good enough.

Energy – Do the action steps needed, give me energy or drain my energy?

The action steps would need to be giving up chocolate and stopping buying and eating it.

That sounds horrible and although it will give me a sense of achievement IF I can stick to it, it’ll be hard and it will feel super restrictive. I will also most likely just end up bingeing on it anyway after trying to restrict it. This is all energy-draining.

“My goal/desire is to feel good in my body”

Love – is this desire born out of love?

Yes. I want to feel good in my body because life is about living and experiencing. When I feel good in my body I will vibrant, energetic and confident to do all the things I’ve wanted to do that I have been putting off until I lose weight. I want to give myself the gift of feeling good within.

Intention – What is my intention for this desire? What meaning do I want to give? Is this in alignment with my purpose?

My intention is to feel good in my body because when I do, this will mean that I can enjoy life to the fullest. This is in alignment with my values because I value freedom, authenticity and peace.

Feeling – How do I want to feel when this desire has come to fruition?

I want to feel free, peaceful and confident to be my authentic self in my authentic body.

Energy – Do the action steps needed, give me energy or drain my energy?

Victoria talks about adding things in and not taking things out and so the action steps would be to practice intuitive eating, listening to my body, allowing all foods and adding in more nutrient-dense foods where possible.

When I do this I will feel more energised as I’ll be nourishing my body physically and I’ll be letting go of limiting beliefs that weigh me down and cause me to binge such as “I need to stop eating chocolate in order to feel good in my body”. That belief is just keeping me stuck. These action steps will give me energy.

“Heath” goals

I’ve quoted the word health because when people say health, most of the time they mean weight loss. Food freedom doesn’t mean “eating whatever you want but feeling shit in your body” it means “eating whatever you want and feeling fantastic in your body!” There’s a discovery process for sure but the main goal is to have BOTH AND not EITHER OR.

Yep, you get to have your cake and eat it too! (otherwise seriously what’s the point in having cake in the first place if you’re not going to eat it?!)

Any goal/desire you have that is based on health can be achieved IF:

  1. The desire is born out of love and not fear
  2. You’ve separated health from weight and diet mentality

Health goals are a hell of a lot easier to achieve when they’re divorced from weight and diet mentality. You can make health-related resolutions if your weight isn’t in the equation or used as a measurement of success. 

When you attach weight to your health goals, you have a 95% chance of failure.

When you don’t attach weight to your health goals you have a much greater chance of achieving them.

For example, let’s say that you want to improve your strength and fitness, eat more fruit and vegetables and get 8 hours of sleep a night. You’ve gone through the initial goal-setting process that I’ve shared and these goals are born out of love, they are in alignment with your values, they feel good to you and the action steps you’ve set give you energy.

Now let’s talk about measuring the success of your health goals. If your metric of success has anything to do with weight or diet mentality (good or bad foods) then you’re screwed. All you’ll be doing is falling back into the shit show that I’m sure you already know very well.

Instead, set out measurements of success in other ways such as:

  • feeling vibrant
  • having more energy
  • sleeping well and waking up feeling rested
  • lifting until failure when you perform each last set in the gym (NOT counting reps or weights – this is the effort we’re talking about, not numbers)
  • being able to run a certain without getting out of breath (ease and enjoyment instead of how fast)
  • having better digestion
  • ETC

You may or may not lose weight as you’re progressing toward your health goals but the practice is to let that go. Your body is going to be whatever it’s going to be. You can eat more vegetables, sleep well and get fit and strong and your body may or may not change becasue of this.

Strong foundation

You need a foundation of body acceptance before you can start making healful choices without triggering yourself back into diet mentality. This is why I have a shit ton of body image work in my programme. You can’t live in true food freedom without a foundation of body acceptance.

If you don’t have body acceptance, you’ll be emotionally and mentally restrictioniing when you make food choices as you’ll secretly be hoping that a certain choice will lead to weight loss or your body changing. And when you choose from that place, your screwed.

So how about I set one resolution for you for 2023? And that is to make peace with and accept yourself and your body. When you can do that, you will have a strong foundation in which to base any health related goal on and you can progress to body love and body positivity.

Acceptance is key.

If you’d like help accepting your body and yourself so you can end the war with food and your body, here are 3 ways you can work with me. If not now, when? Don’t be stuck in the same situation next year as you are now this year. You can’t expect a different result if you’re doing different thing yet with the same motivation and energy. Just becasue you’ve found a diet wrapped in a lifestyle ribbon, its still a diet. ANYthing that has the GOAL of weight loss is a diet. End of. Diets don’t work.

Be courageous try something different. It will be the best thing you ever do and I don’t say that lightly.

Happy new year my love!

Share

Latest podcasts

Nourish yourself with weekly food freedom & body love yumminess

Served directly to your inbox

More podcasts you'll love

Answering a listeners question today: “How do you get rid of eating disorder thoughts? Can you talk about how to live a normal day? Because
Join me and Julia for this Q&A episode covering all things eating disorder-related. Connect with Julia Website
You know how it goes… your phone sends you a memory notification with a pop-up of a photo of you from when you were thinner.

Nourish yourself with weekly
food freedom & body love yumminess

Served directly to your inbox

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *