What Would Love Do?

Maybe it’s not more willpower that you need in the New Year.

Maybe it’s not more discipline or structure or cardio.

Maybe it’s not more planning or measuring or tracking. Or cutting out carbs or sugar or processed foods.

Maybe you don’t need that protocol to tell you which foods are green and which ones are red or how many ‘cheat’ days are allowed.

Maybe, just maybe, it's actually surrender that you need.

Surrendering the quest to endlessly improve or upgrade or anti-age that body that has led you headfirst into the body battlefield for so long.

Surrendering to the impossible, shape shifting expectation of what our bodies ‘should’ be. What they ‘should’ look like or how they ‘should’ behave. We have all gobbled up the messages about what our bodies are not, but how much oxygen do you give to all that our bodies are?

You know that quote, what you focus on expands? Have you ever considered this in relation to how you think and feel about your body? That laser focus on our ‘flaws’. No wonder almost everyone is dissatisfied with their bodies, we have been schooled about all that is wrong with us for decades. For some of us it’s been our entire life.

This time of year, the messages are coming at us thick and fast. All the ways to change, shrink, tone up, trim down, get healthy, be happy, you know the same old new year new you crap we are pummelled with as the new year approaches.

When you really see diet culture for what it is and start to explore the rabbit holes of weight stigma and weight science and conflict of interest and big pharma, you can’t unsee it. Even when sometimes you want to, it’s like a big old smack in the face. Even if you have been playing in the non-diet playground for a while you might notice even you are being tempted by the clever marketing. Notice what nerves it hits with you.

As I snuggled in for family movie night with my babies the other night I was thinking how grateful I am, not to be trapped in the diet cycle anymore. How grateful I am to be able to see these adds for what they are and discuss with my babes why they are so harmful. I was thinking how this time of year used to be filled with shame and guilt about my Xmas debauchery and how the new weight loss plan would start on January 2nd (I’d be way too hungover on the 1st). I was thinking about how proud I am not to be teaching my tweens how to stay slim and trim. Instead I hope I’m teaching them how to care for, listen to, and be in relationship with their incredible bodies. I hope I can help them understand why weight stigma is the real problem when we talk about higher weights.

We certainly can’t love ourselves out of weight stigma but we can name it and push back against it. We can learn about it, and the impact it has had on our health and wellbeing and the harms it continues to cause. We can change the narrative we have about food and bodies and health and weight. A narrative we have been spoon fed without question.

When I started my own food and body healing, about 10 years ago, I had someone ask me something that has stuck with me all these years later.

"If your body was never going to change weight shape or size, and this was the body you had to see out your days, what would you do differently? How might you show up for yourself?"

To be honest, it kinda stopped me in my tracks. My brain seemed to hiccup at the thought of NOT trying to change this body I had been at war with for so long. It seemed so simple yet so confusing. I hadn’t realised until that point that the pursuit of the fantasy body was the thing keeping me in this self-loathing loop.

Getting curious about that question opened up many doors of healing for me. Doors I didn’t know existed or were keeping me from a peaceful relationship with food and my body. I came face to face with all of the disordered behaviours that had become my normal. I came face to face with the truth that is was never about my health, it was always about my enough-ness. I finally got real about how unkind I had been to my body in the pursuit of thinness for all these years. It was awful.

You see, at the core of body kindness is surrender.

Surrender looks different for all of us but is really about letting go of control.

Not really knowing what will happen to your body when you decide to give up dieting but knowing that another diet or lifestyle change is just not going to ‘work’. Being scared that you might gain weight while exploring Intuitive Eating and deciding to take the leap anyway. Feeling unsure if you will ever make peace with food and your body and deciding to go all in anyway. Body kindness is about taking the next best step.

The kindest thing we can do for these bodies is unlearn the lifetime of conditioning that our greatest contribution to the world is our washboard abs. To me, body kindness is surrendering to the fantasy that the perfect body is available if you just (insert diet culture BS here). It’s a lie.

Let me be clear that this surrendering is by no means an easy way out. Actually, in many ways is far more difficult than swimming through diet culture with the masses, AND my darling, surrendering sets you free.

It’s not about giving up on yourself, it’s about choosing yourself.

As the year comes to an end and we are all bombarded with ‘it’s not a diet it’s a lifestyle’ advertisements, may I invite you to stay curious. Stay curious about what you are being sold. Stay curious about the promises that are being made. Stay curious about what these companies have to gain when you are endlessly a work in progress. Stay curious about the fact that if there were ways, to successfully shrink our bodies long term why do we endlessly hear so much about the growing o’esity epidemic? Shouldn’t we all be there by now?

Absolutely if you want to focus on nutrition or movement or sleep or more water in 2025, I’m here for it! One of my biggest bug bears of diet culture is that if I am eating veggies or going for a run or say no to the cake, I must be dieting. Hell. No! Diet culture doesn’t get nutrient dense food or health promoting behaviours like joyful movement or sleep.

I choose veggies because they help my body feel great. I choose chocolate because it’s delicious and I know first hand that restricting it only makes me want it more. Sometimes I say no to a slice of cake because my body says no thankyou. I choose weight lifting regularly because it makes me feel like a badass and I walk to get some sunshine, a coffee and a break from my beautiful family.

We can absolutely support our body and our health without focusing on weight loss or shrinking ourselves to fit in.

What if 2025 was about radical self care and body kindness rather than control? If we didn’t swim in this culture where we are expected to have it all, do it all and be it all, how might your year look? What is your body would ask for if she could talk? Oh and P.S she totally can.

If you get stuck making your next move I invite you to ponder this little nugget; what would love do here? Where would love lead you in intentions for the new year? Maybe, just maybe it’s the curiosity, rather than the finally figuring it all out, that will set you free.

If you would like some support with your health goals or intentions in 2025 but don’t want a side of diet culture BS, let’s dance my friend. Shoot me an email here and we can connect or check out my 1:1 or group coaching options for 2025 by clicking these links.