SAY YES TO YOURSELF IN 2024
Hello there, happy Tuesday and Happy New Year! I hope this week finds you deleting any and every diet ad that crosses your path, and focusing on what you already love about you. I'm drinking a bracing cup of Irish Breakfast tea this morning and thinking about how I want to lean into the good stuff in 2024.
It's been a few weeks, my friends! I hope that you have been treating yourself and your body with love, respect and kindness in my absence. Because it's that post holiday time of year where not only can we feel a bit of the winter blues, but we are also annoyingly and predictably being bombarded by diet ads and promises of how much happier we'd be if we were thinner, younger, whiter, richer.
Well to that I say...no thank you! No thank you to shaming ourselves. No thank you to starving ourselves. No thank you to hating our bodies. And a big no thank you to wishing that we were somebody else. NO THANKS, JERKS! Diet culture is the mean girl in high school that you so desperately wanted to hang out with and then hated every minute of it because she was such an ass hole.
Here's a resolution! Let's ditch ass holes this year and lean into happiness, peace, play, self love, adventure, deep rest, romance novels, good friends, great sex, delicious food, travel, nature, a new skill, fun clothes, creativity, learning, and joyful movement.
I used to start every year from a place of deprivation. I would promise myself that if I denied myself enough, I would get to a place where I could have everything I just listed above. But here's the really annoying and exciting thing. Those feelings and experiences were always mine to take. I just believed a society that was telling me I couldn't have them unless my body was "perfect". What nonsense!
Once I jumped off the diet culture conveyor belt, I could actually stop and look around at a world that had been waiting for me all along. Of course, there are still people who have all sorts of opinions about the body I live in, but the one that matters most is my own. And I think I'm pretty great. I deserve to have all the joyful experiences and less of the shame. And so do you.
Let's say yes to everything we want this year. Yes to freedom in our bodies and expansion in our lives. What a wonderful way to start a year.
As always, I'd love to hear about it! It's nine days into the new year. What resolution is already making you feel like shit and how can you drop it? What have you always longed to do and how are you flying in that direction in 2024? What are you leaning into in the best possible way? Let me know in the comments below.
As you move through this week, remember to treat yourself and your body with love, respect and kindness.
Much love,
Helen xo