On today’s episode we are going to be talking about how to avoid the New Year, New You diet talk and not get sucked into the messages about losing the “quarantine weight for 2021” and all that BS.

People already have a lot of feels around 2020. It’s be a rough year. And yes, many people have already shared that it’s been even harder with food and body image because of quarantine, stay at home orders, etc - being totally out of your normal routine. When you aren’t used to being home all day it definitely can bring up a lot of food and body stuff. And even if you haven’t been home all day because you’ve been able to work as an essential business / reopening of businesses - food and body image are still a challenge of course! 

We want to shed some light on this topic because you better believe that diet culture and all people who have a business rooted in diet culture will be coming after everyone now that the new year is right around the corner. They will start to bring up pain points such as “the quarantine 15” as a tactic to drag people into their latest diet program. 

You know the drill (eye roll) - we’ve all been through many holiday seasons and new years and the marketing from diet culture starts to get absurd. And we’re over it. 

So how can you avoid the predictable messages that diet culture is going to start spewing at us. 

 

We can’t stress this one enough - we say it often so you’ve most likely already done this but if you haven’t - time to clean up that social media / time to tighten it up and get rid of accounts that send you a message that doesn't align with you. Even if it’s friends who are sharing their own diet plans for the new year - unfollow and be done with it. If you scroll through your social media and you feel worse than when you started scrolling - let this be a sign to you that you have some clean up to do. Also, make sure you give yourself some time away from social media - we all can get caught scrolling through the bottomless pit where you swear you tell yourself you’re just going to look for a few minutes before bed and two hours later you're still wide eyed and mesmerized by the screen - we know we’re guilty of that! No matter how feel good/ positive you make your IG - being on it too much can have a negative effect too. Listen to your body. Ha, you knew we were going to say that! :)

Predict the future! We know you may feel the slightest bit of temptation to diet - it looks so shiny - like it will solve all your problems if you just lose a little weight and you tell yourself after your quick little diet you promise you’ll go back to IE - We understand the desire - and you aren’t wrong for it - but seriously - we’ve always known until now that there’s no way to predict the future unless you’re talking about going on another diet - you can ABSOLUTELY predict what will happen if you go on another diet - even if it feels harmless and it won’t be too long - you even promise yourself that you’ll try not to restrict too much - you know whatever makes it sound like it will be different this time - but the thing is - no matter what - it won’t be different. A diet is a diet is a diet - and as we preach all the time - diets don’t work. SO - do a little prediction - write out what will happen if you did decide to go on a diet. Write out how you prepare for the diet that starts Monday - does it involve having a last supper? Most likely. Does it involve grocery shopping and stocking up on all the “clean” food that are “allowed” on this diet - most likely. And there won’t be any of your favorite desserts of snacks in that shopping cart - that’s for sure. You know the deal. It will last x amount of days before you feel miserable about it and you inevitably binge and you tell yourself you’ll start again on monday but before then you’ll just eat whatever. Does this sound familiar? It does to us! We did it too! So do your own future prediction and see if it’s worth it to go on another diet. This isn’t to