The one goal you shouldn't set in 2024

If you are someone who, as it comes to the end of the year, is urging to set a new goal around your diet and exercise for 2024 and you notice this is something that you do, every year and vow that this year will be your year, this year will be different, please read on.

I want to tell you something and I really want you to hear me. Deeply. I want to offer you a different perspective. I want to offer you a solution, a sustainable one, a healing one, one that’s for life, not just for Christmas.
 
The humdrum of the ‘new year, new me’ culture can be palpable in the Christmas air, but what about if you’re absolutely fine, exactly as you are? If you strongly refute the possibility of that statement, again, please read on.
 
This has nothing to do with what’s ‘wrong’ with your diet and exercise and it has EVERYTHING to do, with your relationship with YOURSELF.  
 
If we have feelings or thoughts that tell us things would be better if we were a certain weight, a certain size or looked a certain way, it’s safe to say, it really has nothing to do with any of those things, they are simply a guise that help to provide a sense of control for something deeper. The same goes for other things too, for example, if we think life would be better if we could simply stop overthinking, or if we could stop procrastinating, or if we could stop people pleasing, or stop letting perfectionism rule us. The behaviours are all simply symptoms, that provide us, as hard as it may be to believe, a sense of comfort, control and safety, even though it can feel like the complete opposite.
 
Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to change and work on your diet and exercise, but I really want you to take a moment and consider where the desire to set this as your goal is coming from.
 
Is it coming from an energy of wanting it, because you don’t feel good enough? Because you want to look a certain way because how you look now isn’t pleasing to you? Or is it coming from a genuine space of wanting more, more energy, more health, more fitness?
 
Let’s talk about how a diet typically works…I know this one well, I feel like I’ve done this cycle more than enough times for us all…
 
We restrict our food intake, cut out particular foods, or work at sticking to some new diet plan (that’s quite frankly, joyless!), the thoughts of ‘yes, I’ve got this!’ – the sense of pride that comes along with it, feel good. At least in the beginning…
 
Give it some time, a morning, a couple of days, a few weeks or months, and, of course, like always, we are eating something we ‘shouldn’t’, something ‘off plan’, something that we promised ourselves we wouldn’t.
 
And then what…back to beating ourselves up, back to not understanding why we couldn’t just stick to it? Back to ‘starting again on Monday’, back to calling ourselves weak and berating ourselves.
 
If this cycle sounds familiar to you – you are not alone. It’s one that is SO incredibly normalised by our society, diet companies and mainstream media.
 
It’s boring, isn’t it? It’s a boring journey to keep doing over and over again? It’s relentless and disheartening. And actually, when you look at it, for what it is, it’s a process so many of us go through and allow it to continually steal our headspace, our time, our energy and our joy. Sure, it has its thrills and moments (often a shred of external validation), but ultimately, are we seriously choosing to do this, again?!
 
So, if this isn’t about what’s ‘wrong’ with your food and exercise, what is it about?
 
Your relationship with YOURSELF… what underpins how we relate to everything in the world, be it our relationship with food, our relationship with movement, our relationship with our partners, our relationships with our friends, our relationships with our work, is our relationship with ourselves.
 
2024 is the time to seriously lean into courage and question the way things have been for you and envision new possibilities for yourself.
 
What about a goal around more joy, love, abundance, and freedom? Taking some time to reflect on what really lights you up, because lord only knows it’s not going to be counting calories, checking ‘syns’ in the supermarket or calculating your ‘points’ allowance. They’re not words that scream joy, love, abundance and freedom to me.
 
It’s time to say no to diet culture, no to another year of yo-yo dieting and YES to investing in you, in your truth, in learning a new way, in getting to the root cause which keeps you feeling stuck in this pattern.
 
When we get lovingly curious about ourselves, there is so much to learn. Through dynamic hypnotherapy and therapeutic coaching, you can discover your truth, understand what really makes you tick and what more alignment means in your life.
 
If you are tired of running the same old behaviours, I invite you to book a free discovery call so we can find new perspectives, a life where self-compassion leads, where you treat yourself with the same love and kindness you do to your friends, where you become the observer of self, where you tune in to your true feelings, discover more about how you work, learn ways to hold yourself and navigate your emotions and carve out a new path for yourself.