I know most people don’t set new year’s resolutions anymore, preferring “intentions” or a “word of the year,” or simply seeing January 1 as just another day. Especially with the pandemic, if your only goal for the new year is just to survive, you are doing more than enough.
Personally, I still appreciate the change in the calendar year as a cue to pause, reflect, and think about what I’d like to experience in the year ahead.
What’s wrong with resolutions to “lose weight” or “get healthy”?
The most common arguments against these types of resolutions are that they’re too vague, or that weight loss/dieting doesn’t work. But more importantly, they uphold stigmatizing beliefs about weight and health. I could go on, but journalist Alia E. Dastagir summarizes it all in the article Why you should rethink weight loss as a New Year’s Resolution
If not weight loss, then what?
There is so much more to new year’s resolutions than health and weight—relationships, career, finances, or learning a new skill are all areas that you can set goals around. Even if you would like to work on improving your health in the new year, there are so many ways to address that desire beyond diet and exercise.
Lindley Ashline of Body Liberation Photos has put together a lovely roundup with quotes, ideas, and other resources for resolution/intention/goal setting. While this wasn’t my original intention when I started writing this blog post, I have a few more resources to add:
- The resource that I typically use is the end-of-the-year worksheets from Ink & Volt. This year’s worksheets look a bit different from previous years, so I will probably give them a try again. They also have a list of new year’s resolution ideas that aside from a mention of “lose weight” as a common new year’s resolution in the first sentence are not very diety, but many of the suggestions require a certain amount of ability/privilege.
- I was recently pointed to YearCompass, which is a free download (you can choose printable or digital). The questions there also look interesting, so I am planning to give this a shot as well.
More inspiration…
If you’re looking for some inspiration, here are some Instagram posts that I enjoyed:
