January is the big Monday. Ready to drop-off the diet bandwagon in… | by Donatella Porceddu | Dec, 2021

Ready to drop-off the diet bandwagon in 2022?

I’m here right after Christmas day with my last article of 2021.

How are you?

Perhaps, in the midst of so much Christmas happiness, you are feeling somewhat shaken.

These are very sensitive dates because we are with the family and it is normal for many old sensations and traumas to appear.

Normal to feel bad when you detect familiar roles and patterns or, it is even possible that you feel bad about things that you have had to swallow, tensions or arguments that may have occurred these days.

Maybe you have received comments about your body or that of other people. Or you have received judgment about what you eat.

And it is normal for you to feel sad or guilty for eating ‘excessively’.

Right now, you may be experiencing a tremendous urge to lose weight or change your body to protect yourself from fat-phobia and body-shaming which are so much ingrained in our culture.

I’m here remind you:

THE PROBLEM IS NOT YOU. IT’S NOT YOUR BODY. IT’S NORMAL WHAT YOU FEEL.

That fat fearing and thin-centric society reaches incredible heights at this time of the year, a moment when we are loaded with so many different feelings.

At Christmas everyone is happy and has an ideal family. Few people feel brave enough to tell the reality.

I confess that on few occasions, during the past week, I caught myself getting into some negative spiral of thinking: “I’m not home with my family. My mom is not there anymore to celebrate with us. It doesn’t really feel like Christmas.”

I really had to stop, breathe deeply to be able to take in the good by dropping the question:

“What’s NOT wrong right now?”, which I heard Geneen Roth mentioning during one of her recent workshops I joined.

And her words comforted me:

“When we compare past holidays to the present and turn to food for comfort, it is usually not because this holiday is so awful, but because we have warped the past into a time so flawless that it can never be achieved in this moment.”

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS JUST AROUND THE CORNER

In the midst of all these feelings, plus the shame and guilt from eating more than usual, the New Year arrives with its resolutions.

And what do we do?

Many times, we turn January into some Big Monday.

We believe, as with Mondays, that everything will change from 2022.

We set ourselves goas which are loaded with that frustration of guilt for having eaten.

We feel extra the pressure to have that ideal body that will bring us what we really want most … to feel that we are LOVED.

And do you know where those purposes will end?

In the same place as the diet attempts every Monday.

Recently I asked a client:

“If you were to drop off the ‘New year, New me’ diet bandwagon, what would your intention for the new year be?”

“If you were to put away the desire to shrink your body, how would you want to really feel in 2022?”.

With permission, I share her answer, which was:

“I want to eat to nourish, not to punish my body. And find some balance, so that I don’t have to race against something that feels like hunger even when it’s not.”

Beautiful, isn’t it?! Nourishment and Balance.

These intentions inspired me to offer my next workshop, happening in January, to help you envision what to want to achieve in 2022 and what might help you get there.

It’s called: Nourished & Balanced — A Vision Board Party