My wellness resolution

My New Years resolutions this year are fairly boring. They are mostly a straight up repeat of some of the things I resolved to do last year and either didn’t complete (thanks COVID) or did, enjoyed it and want to continue.

So instead of boring you about those I want to talk about the resolutions I will not be making.

I will not be starting a new diet, especially not a fad one.

I will not be putting myself through a punishing new expertise regime designed for fast results.

I will not, and reader I encourage you not to either, submit in any way to the pervasive idea our society holds on to, that every January we must all resolve to “fix” the “flaws” of our bodies.

Society has always imposed beauty standards of some sort but the more recent ideal that people should strive to be thinner than many of them could ever realistically hope to be is particularly worrying. In the US and here in the UK this 'thinner is better' mantra has been the prevailing attitude (especially for women) for around one hundred years and at it's most severe since the last 1980's.

These ideals often have little regard for the actual health of the person involved but the fact is that different people have different bodies and those different bodies have different needs. One of the strange upsides of having been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 12 is that I had to accept, at the same time as I was becoming exposed to these attitudes, that my body may end up looking differently to how it is expected to and that my options around changing that were far more limited, some diets could even end up killing me. So I was forced to take a more carefree attitude and instead watch as my friends and family members struggled with the way they looked, leading to mental ill health, disordered eating and a general lack of confidence that has honestly held them back in life. Nobody should be made to feel that their natural body shape or size is in any way “bad”.

All so someone can make a profit.

I'm not sure whose idea it was to first monetise weight loss, but I hope they are not resting easy right now! The weight loss industry was valued at $192.2 billion in 2019 and is projected to continue to grow astronomically. Even as campaigners try to promote being healthy over unattainable ideals the corporate giants behind some of the many products designed to help you “fix” the “problem” just find new gimmicks. As women move away from them, they target men more. Or, as people realise the skinny ideal is impossible for them, they claim “strong is the new skinny” and try to sell protein shakes and at home workout classes instead. Oh and don't get me started on social media influencers and their diet pills or skinny teas...

As the old saying goes too much is never enough for them.

My final bugbear is the concept that the things that are better for you being inherently “good” and the things that can be unhealthy being inherently “bad”. Diet tzars, fitness gurus and occasionally health experts alike can be guilty of this association, but demonising any food is a very slippery slope. Somebody who has been conditioned to be paranoid about their weight can easily slip from “takeaway burgers are bad” to “ALL meat, dairy and carbs are bad” which leaves a massive chunk missing from the balanced diet we all should be aiming for.

So stand with me and reject their rules, I realise it's easy to say having never been under their spell but please try and escape. Next time you look in the mirror focus on what your body can do rather than whether you look like you should be in a magazine. I know people who look “fat” but they could bench press my entire body weight and still have the stamina to go for a run. We all just need to work on accepting the differences not just in other people but ourselves too.

Happy New Year.