The Same You in 2025

The gym commercials blare on my TV, a rude interruption during the suspense and drama of my evening show. I watch the happy, smiling, thin women workout on my screen. They look great, I won’t lie. The commercial cuts to text on the screen, how much money I can save by joining now.

Don’t I want to look like those women?

The upbeat music is meant to grab my attention. To motivate me to hand over my credit card for the promise of a better me. I do not feel motivated. This version of me is tired.

This version of me already nourishes my body to the best of my ability at this current moment in time.

This version of me exercises fairly regularly because much to my dismay it does actually benefit my mental health as the experts claim.

This version of me is also privileged enough to have to ability to comfortably do those things.

This version of me also has hip dips, and a belly, and a neck that gets the better of me on bad days.

I turn on my favorite podcast as I tie my sneakers and pull on my puffer jacket. The jazzy intro plays, and then the commercials cut in. A woman with a bubbly voice tells me all about a new program that I have to kickstart 2025 with. “It’s not diet” she chirps, “it’s wellness.”

Starving me is not well me. You can’t fight back if you’re underfed.

I listen to the ad anyway.

I think back to the holidays. To the words that floated around the dining table. Words like indulge and treat and bad that land harder than they lifted off. Words like guilty and sinful that awaken the worries of a the small child I once was – religious deconstruction settling deeper in my chest.

I look at the mashed potatoes on my plate. My second helping so small – my entire meal combined still smaller than the pile sitting on my brothers plate. There are no words passing by him. All he sees are mashed potatoes.

I think of the cream and the butter. True gifts to the world if I’m being completely honest. And hear echoes of a line my mother repeated ever so often in my youth.

A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips

She sits before me, in present day, with no potatoes on her plate.

Oh what the heck, she exclaims as she takes a tiny helping, diet starts in January!

The noise and the weight and the guilt and the shame envelop me in a noisy, airless bubble.

I just want the noise to stop.

I want mashed potatoes to simply be, mashed potatoes.

I reiterate this to a friend as we sit, drinking coffee in our local cafe. She nods in understanding. And in kind, tells me a similar story about visiting her family back home for the holidays.

You know what helped me get through it? She leans in, as if she’s about to spill a salacious secret.

I shook my head no in anticipation.

I got on a GLP1! She exclaims proudly. It totally eliminates the food noise. And sometimes I’m even too nauseated to stomach more than a few bites. I congratulate her. She seems so happy. I am happy for her, but I don’t want to be too nauseated to eat food, I tell myself.

I google GLP1 when I get home to see how to get one.

Then I see the price and close my tab.

There are good days, and bad days when deconstructing from diet culture. And this time of year is often the hardest. I would be lying if I said it doesn’t get to me, because it absolutely does.

So if you’re like me, this is a gentle reminder that you don’t have to completely reinvent your life at the precipice of a new year. Goals are good, absolutely. I have them. The cracking open of a brand new bullet journal every year is, for me, one of the joys in life. But goals are meant to lift you up, not diminish the progress you have made thus far as an imperfect, yet still worthy, person.

The woman I was last year tried her hardest and I am proud of her for it. She wasn’t perfect, and I won’t be this year either. But she was always there for me. She fought her battles and walked through it all so that I could run. I won’t beat her down. And neither should you.