New Year, New You? Why Resolutions Fizzle Out + What to Do Instead

The new year seems like the perfect moment to make a new start. It’s the turning of a page, a blank slate, there is an air of hope, optimism, and excitement. It’s in your human nature to want to live better and achieve more. You have an innate desire to seek and it makes sense: dopamine, your pleasure and reward center, plays a large role in planning and coordinating. This is why you get so excited about your new health routine and motivation is high early on. 

So, why does your motivation fizzle out so fast? Most likely, your big plans are not based on your body blueprint. When you try to force anything, resistance to that thing amplifies. You might get it done once, such as cleaning a messy kitchen. You muscle through it while muttering obscenities under your breath. But muscling through over and over without the right tools for support is quickly exhausting, both mentally and physically. Your body and brain doesn’t want to change, you are wired for survival. And if the new year, new you plan goes against your natural biology, you are doomed from the start. Lasting change comes from working with your blueprint and not against it. 

How can you more effectively reach the goals that you desire? I coach my clients by mapping your body blueprint and creating tools for support that help you reach your goals more efficiently. You create a methodical, step-by-step plan that not only feels simple and more fun, but it’s based on you. Your needs, your desires, your data, your relationship with food, your relationship with yourself. Change and healing happens when you’re supported mind, body, and soul. 

What does working with your blueprint look like? 

• It looks like working with your conditioning - The New Years tradition originated with the Babylonians. Then, Julius Caesar declared January 1 the start of the new year. January comes from Janus, the god of two faces, one that looks to the past and the other that looks to the future. Trickling through religions where the focus was on building good moral character, down to where we are today, which is…less tradition and largely commercialized. 
  
  The fact is your ability, or inability, to keep your habits going past January has nothing to do with your moral character. You are not a loser that’s never going to get what you want. In my coaching program, you work to break down the ways you have been conditioned around food, your body, yourself, and your choices. What have you been conditioned to believe and what doesn’t serve your goals? When you break away from the conditioning, you are finally able to see yourself and build yourself up from a raw and true place, rather than from what society, or even your family, has chosen for you.

• It looks like working with your biological winter - just like you have a circadian rhythm that syncs with the sun, and a cycle that syncs with the moon, you have an internal rhythm set to the seasons. According to research, your body goes through a pivotal shift twice: late spring-early summer and late fall-early winter. In your biological winter, your immune system ramps up, blood pressure increases due to colder temps, and blood sugar rises. Obviously these adaptations served us well in the past, but today, you don’t have to adapt to winter at all: you have refrigeration and access to food, you have artificial light, you have warmth. Instead of turning inward and supporting your biological winter, modern living allows you to eat more, sleep less, and hustle, hustle, hustle for those new years resolutions.
  
  When you operate on data and your body blueprint, you can make better choices that support your goals. Choices that make a direct impact on your weight and mood. You might incorporate tools such as sleeping more if you’re stressed instead of forcing 5 am workouts. You might take advantage of the cold and get some cold exposure by bundling up for a walk to help combat increased glucose if you’re insulin resistant or feeling sluggish from the holiday feasts.
  
  A far more effective plan incorporates tools that support and amplify the good stuff going on in your body rather than fighting the challenging and difficult parts of yourself. 

• It looks like working with your habits - I don’t want to sound opposed to New Years goals. I make them and my family has a ritual to set intentions for the year. It is a great time to reassess and reexamine what you want for your future and to create goals.
  
  But goals are not habits, and it’s the habits that get you where you want to go. It’s by understanding your blueprint and breaking free from conditioning. It’s by rewiring your brain to make habit change easier. It’s by having a plan full of tools that support your brain and body.  If you are ready to regain your power, eliminate chaos, and elevate your health and happiness then get on the email list for the next round of the 21-Day Jumpstart. This is my introductory coaching program for women designed by you for you. 

“New Year, New You” won’t get you there, but a rewired brain just might.