Top 5 Anti-Resolutions For 2025

Transcript:

TERESA: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. We are a Minnesota company that specializes in real food nutrition education and counseling. I'm Teresa Wagner, a Registered and Licensed Dietitian of 15 years. My cohost today is Leah Kleinschrodt, who is also a Registered and Licensed Dietitian of seven years.

We are currently in a brief lull between Christmas and New Year's. We hope you have been blessed this holiday season with good fortune, good company, and of course, we hope you've had good food.

LEAH: Good food, always, and always good to be here with you recording, Teresa. Yeah, well, hopefully it's a bit of a lull for people; hopefully people are able to kind of come up for a breath or like have a little bit more brain space to themselves in this kind of week between Christmas and New Year's.

Since Christmas and New Year's is in the middle of the week this year, hopefully many people have some extra days off either at the front end or the tail end of those weeks, and you just get to enjoy the season a little bit more. Perhaps some of you now have a little extra brain space to start looking ahead and to start brainstorming, planning, or dreaming about what you want 2025 to look like.

This could be professionally, personally, emotionally, this could be health wise, I mean, so many different avenues. Today in our show, we're going to tap into some of that energy of making traditional New Year's resolutions, but we're going to put a little different spin on it. We're going to propose five anti-resolutions to consider for 2025.

And actually I had never heard of the term anti-resolution before we were doing some preparing for this show. So I'm excited to, to dig in. But Teresa, tell me, are you the resolutions kind of person?

TERESA: No, not traditionally. And I also, I've not heard of anti-resolutions. I guess my only anti-resolution I would say is just choosing not to make a resolution at all. But I like this idea of anti-resolutions. So traditionally, no, I'm not a resolution person. But this year I do have one that I'm planning on giving a whirl.

It's been on my mind for a little while, but I just haven't taken the time to detail it out and it's going to require a little bit of time and focused energy and so in this time where we have a little bit of break between now and the new year, I am going to try to get that detailed out. But just to say for this anti-resolution idea, it is not a food, fitness or finance. Cause those are the big options.

LEAH: Yeah.

TERESA: None of those three. It's just, it's a little bit more around organization. So it's funny how I need to organize before I organize.

LEAH: Then like you're already started by the time you even start thinking about that resolution, right? Like you're ahead of the game already. That's smart of you to set it up like that. Yeah. I have done resolutions in the past also. But it's not something that I've done in a super long time. So I think you and I are probably kind of on the same wavelength in that sense, you know, in my mind, I don't like feeling limited or pressured to change things just because the calendar said so.

And maybe that's just a little bit of rebel in me. You know, if I identify something that I want to change, like I want to have the freedom to do it anytime I want, or like when it lines up or, you know, again, like there's just some choice involved there. And I think, for me at least, when I think about those traditional resolutions, I mean, you said food, fitness, finance, like, a lot of times these traditional resolutions are dramatic overhauls of what the current status quo is.

So, I mean, you think of, now I'm going to hit the gym six days a week after not going for the last six months. Some people are able to keep up with that momentum long term. But to me, like that overhaul just feels overwhelming.

TERESA: That's definitely a pattern we tend to see with New Year's resolutions, a big, you know, it's a go big or go home and that all or nothing mentality that we talk about. I'm one type of person on December 31st, and I'm going to be a completely new person on January 1. I'm going to work out, like you were saying, six to seven days a week.

I'm not going to have any sugar in my diet. Maybe I'm going to do a whole 30 and followed up by six months sugar free. I'm going to completely reset. I'm going to go from drinking. Maybe 40 ounces of water to, no, I'm going to be drinking a hundred ounces of water. Maybe I'm even going to throw in some extracurriculars, like I'm going to start volunteering at my church or food shelter or perhaps at my kid's school, and then trying to do them all at once. And these resolutions are dramatic, even individually. And they add things to our already full plate.

LEAH: Yes. Yes, to all of that, and, you know, kind of bringing it back nutrition centered as nutrition counselors, you and I, we work with clients day in and day out on a variety of food and health related goals. And I think you and I can both say that one of the easiest ways to kind of take the wind out of someone's sail or make the road more challenging is just giving them more than they can chew right out of the gate.

I mean, got to love a good food pun and we can slide that one in there. So yeah, if we set the bar too high right from the get go, the client may just have difficulty even getting that first foot up on that first rung of the ladder, let alone being able to put one foot after the other up.

Anti-resolution #1: stop trying to do it all at once

TERESA: Right. It's just too much. So, that brings us to our first anti-resolution for this show, which is, stop trying to do it all at once.

LEAH: Summary. End of show. Right there.

TERESA: Long term sustainable change. With any new habit is usually best addressed with smaller methodical changes over a longer period of time. Since this is a nutrition podcast, let's go through an example around a common food habit or nutrition goal that one of our clients might have. So one common thing I hear is, “I am controlled by my sugar cravings and snacking at night.”

LEAH: Yes.

TERESA: “I know it's a factor in the weight I've gained over the last few years. I can be ‘good for a few nights’. But I always slide back into the ice cream or the cookies or the candy, the popcorn, the cereal before bed. You know, this is just who I am. I can't really do anything about it. It's just my nature.”

LEAH: That's a common thing I'll hear, I'll hear also, and, and I want to take that note where you kind of said, “good, you know, good or bad, bad foods”, you know, tell it, talking about foods being good or bad. So like, let's put a pin in that one for a second, cause we are going to circle back around into that.

But what I also want to point out just in that example that you gave Teresa, okay, this person, usually by the time they've come in to see us, like they've tried that cold turkey approach. They've tried to white knuckle it, relying on willpower and trying to go to the extreme of eliminating snacking altogether. And it hasn't worked for them. So we need a new approach.

Strategies to avoid sugar cravings & late night snacking

TERESA: Right. There's lots of different reasons for sugar cravings and late night snacking that can happen. And one of the biggest things that I see clients doing is that they are tending to under eat during the first part of the day. This leaves the door open to more hunger and more cravings at night. And that's just logical, right? I mean, if we haven't been feeling our body in the first part of the day, by the end of the day, our tank is at empty and we are looking to fill it up.

So the body is just calling for more food, so we have to start with asking this person to consider eating a really nice, balanced, whole food breakfast, as many days, as many days of the week as they're willing to do. It may even start with just trying it one to two days and building from there. So, you know, if the end of the day is causing problems for people, we need to look at what's happening earlier in the day. What habits are in place that set the stage for overeating at night or for those sugar cravings.

LEAH: Yep. Look upstream of the problem and start working there. And then usually the downstream issue kind of works itself out. That's a great example. And I think the nice thing is that usually if we can get a little bit of traction, a little bit of momentum going, people eventually can start comparing that difference between when they do have those balanced days of eating, and then they can compare that with their less balanced days of eating, and they can see the difference.

They see the difference, they feel the difference, they can kind of zoom out and say like, oh, make that connection themselves. Then they have a bit more of that internal motivation or just like that reason for them and that confidence to take the next step in the right direction.

Confidence is key in achieving a goal

TERESA: Right. Confidence is key. And that reminds me of a tool that we learned in training session that we did over the summer where we rate our confidence level in being able to achieve a certain goal or a certain action step.

LEAH: Yeah.

TERESA: If you have a resolution or a goal for yourself, you can check in with yourself and ask, on a scale of 1 to 10, how confident do I feel that I can accomplish this? If it's a 10, that's amazing. It sounds like you are very confident that this is going to happen. If it's maybe a seven, you can reflect and ask, why am I a seven and why, why is it a seven and not an eight or not a six?

TERESA: Is there something I could adjust to make my confidence an eight, a nine or get it up to 10?

LEAH: I do remember that. And I have used that with clients and you know, confidence. Yes. And there's some other questions that we can kind of explore around that, but I just, I love that. Cause it does kind of give people that concrete, like they choose the number initially, and then we can just do a little like mental mind shifting around like, yeah, like, why am I a seven and not a six and figure out like, what is it that makes them tick or like what to them makes it feel more doable than not.

So yeah, it's a great way to check in with yourself. Explore that resolution or the goal that you set for yourself, if that seems realistic, or if it just might be something too big than what you're ready for at that time. It doesn't mean that you won't be ready for it at some point. It just means like, it is meeting yourself where you're at at that point.

TERESA: Yeah. I think sometimes what it does is it points out, it's not so much the goal itself, it's the things that lead up to it to get it done. You know, I'm a six because I really want to be able to make breakfast in the morning, but I'm a six because I have an infant right now and I'm getting up a lot and so therefore I'm trying to maximize my sleep.

Once you have that conversation you can start bringing down those barriers. Okay, so how do we make a really good breakfast the night before, or wherever we come to, to get that from a six to a ten.

LEAH: Yeah, some of the, external factors we have control of, some we don't. And that's where the strategizing or just even bouncing ideas off of another person or brainstorming with someone is so helpful. And here's the other thing, even if your confidence is a 10, which is great, I mean, that's where we all want to feel right, like, we want to feel like I can do this, I can go out and achieve this thing, it, even if you're a 10, it doesn't mean that you're going to nail it perfectly every single time.

Even if you found a good stride for two to three weeks or even three to four months, it doesn't mean that there may not be hiccups down the road. Hopefully most of us have seen some of these images or pictures of the graph of what we think the path of success should look like, right?

And what we think is like, there should be this very straight line starting down here and going up like a very straight line between point A and point B, like point A being where you're at, point B being where you want to be. But then you actually compare it. Usually there's another side by side graph there and you compare it.

And then the actual realistic path of success is more like, it looks like a tornado, just like picking up steam basically, where it's like, there's all kinds of twists and turns to it. And sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down and this way and that way.

Anti-resolution #2: don’t punish yourself for setbacks 

So another anti-resolution that we want to propose is to, is not punishing yourself for those setbacks.

TERESA: Right. And this is the conversation I have over and over again with clients because inevitably we are going to have setbacks. So we want to focus on consistency over perfection. When we can expect and normalize off days or even off weeks, it helps keep our focus on the long game. So our overall health goals.

This is a really good time of year to even have this conversation because we're right at the cusp of the beginning of a year. And you can break down the year with clients and say, you know, the things that are going to throw you off, birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, graduations. How many of those types of events do you think you'll have in this coming year?

And you know, if you have a pretty busy social calendar, it might be around 10, let's just go with 10. And then if we start talking about the holidays, we have the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Easter, a couple of days for Christmas maybe, or whatever winter holiday you celebrate, Super Bowl, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve.

With all of those, and with the ones that I haven't even included, I'm sure I missed some, that's another maybe 11 to 15. So we're up to about 25 days of the year. So then you take into account that there might be vacation in there. We add in another 7 to 14 days that might not go perfectly.

LEAH: Yeah.

TERESA: But even at that, if we have those first 25 days, we have 25 days that could be off. We have 340 days where we can be consistent. If you take another 20 off for vacation and other miscellaneous things, we're still at 320 days.

LEAH: Yes.

TERESA: Where if we're being consistent, we can make some real progress. It's just being consistent on our regular, just a regular day, right? Regular Monday. Regular Thursday.

LEAH: Exactly. Yeah. The seesaw is still very much tips in favor of those consistent, just kind of like your normal, regular days.

TERESA: And for the vast majority of us, and maybe I'm jealous of the people this isn't the case for, the vast majority of us, we have far more regular days. And one of my favorite quotes that I learned during my teacher training here is you're only one meal or snack away from being on track again.

And that's such a powerful mind shift. So even on those days that throw us completely off, that next meal or snack, we can start getting right back on track. We don't have to wait. for the first of the year. We can do it today.

LEAH: When I meet with clients who have taken that Nutrition for Weight Loss Foundation series or any number of our classes, like that quote tends to stick with people. That is one of their biggest takeaways often. You don't have to wait until tomorrow or Monday or New Year's Day to resume that balanced eating routine.

You can get re-centered and rebalanced with your blood sugar in three more hours when it's time to eat again. So when you have Christmas or Thanksgiving or the birthday dinner that goes a little or, or even a lot overboard, like you grabbed fast food because you got stuck at work three hours longer than you thought you were going to.

You went on the girls weekend or vacation and decided to YOLO it. I don't know if we’ve ever said YOLO on the podcast before.

TERESA: I'm not sure I've actually ever really said YOLO.

LEAH: No, me neither, but it just seemed appropriate in this, in this time, so. I mean, like these are outliers in the grand scheme of things. Yes, you might have a three day battle with some sugar cravings and some fatigue and maybe some bloating to muddle through. Maybe this is where you have the bottle of Crave Control or some extra Bifido that can come in handy for kind of helping combat some of those cravings.

But you have not undone all the hard work that you did in the weeks and months and even years prior to these events. So yeah, I love your analogy, Teresa, of like, yeah, I kind of wish like maybe my life was a little bit more like exciting and there were more exceptions and yet it's like, but that's not where the reality is for most of us.

Most of us live in the average regular days. So we do have to take a quick break. But when we come back, we will talk about some of the other anti-resolutions that we have prepared. So we'll be right back.

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TERESA: Welcome back. You are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Before we went to break, we were talking about anti-resolutions for 2025 and just previously we were talking about not beating ourselves up over setbacks and, and just moving on. And so when we were thinking about this setbacks, another way to shift our mindset about those perceived setbacks is to take the time and ask yourself, well, what did I learn from this experience?

LEAH: Yeah.

TERESA: Or is there something I could have done differently? This can take some of that negative energy of that blame and shame that we have and then shift it into a more growth-oriented mindset. It allows us to say, okay, things didn't go as I had hoped, but there's one or two things that I can do next time to improve my outcome or that experience.

LEAH: Yeah. So good. I love that. And I like to think about it like you learn a new job. You think about the job that you're currently in. I'm willing to bet most people didn't learn how to do their entire job flawlessly the very first day they were there. How many weeks or months and, or sometimes even years, how long did it take you to learn all the ins and outs of your job, to know how to troubleshoot those little things that just pop up every once in a while, but you got to troubleshoot those unusual or unexpected things, and yet when it comes to our diet, when it comes to what we eat, we expect perfection and smooth sailing all the time.

TERESA: It's, it's so so funny to me, or interesting to me, because truly eating well is a skill. And just like you were saying, any skill requires development. And so we just learn from our mistakes. We learn from those decisions. And thinking about food too, you make probably, my guess is hundreds of decisions about foods: what we're going to eat, when we're going to eat, how we're going to eat, you know, and on and on and on about food daily. And to think that we'll make all of those choices perfectly every day is really setting a very high bar.

LEAH: Yes.

Anti-resolution #3: avoid the temptation to fall for fads or extremes

TERESA: So with that I'm going to segue this topic into our next anti-resolution. Avoid the temptation to fall for fads or extremes. This is a very common pendulum swing we get stuck into after we've been off track for a period of time. Maybe we have that unbalanced week or month of eating, so the knee jerk reaction is to do something equally as extreme in the opposite direction. So after your 10 day Caribbean cruise, you come back for a, you know, a five day juice cleanse to reset.

LEAH: Yes. Yep.

TERESA: After a holiday season of nearly daily treats and alcohol, it's going keto, carnivore, vegan, or doing Whole30 for the next few months. So really, really extreme, rather than just cleaning it up.

LEAH: Yeah. And I don't want to beat up on those styles of eating. They do have their own merits. It just, in my mind, the issue more lies in the intention that's brought with those decisions. When we make those more extreme decisions, it's usually just coming from that place of desperate energy to regain control of our lives, our schedule, our food, our bodies.

What if instead we took a beat and took inventory of the foundational habits that are important for us? I remember like one point I was talking to clients a lot more about like health anchors. So, you know, think about, like, you have some health anchors, if you will, that keep us grounded and then can have a ripple effect on our other habits.

So for me, for example, every night after the kids go to bed, I go outside for a 10 to 20 minute walk. This is my time. I mean, I really got into this habit when we had a dog. We don't have that dog anymore, but that habit is instilled. And for me, I just really find, especially with Teresa, you know this, with the chaos of kids and all the things like you're doing your thing during the day.

For me, one of those grounding habits is like, okay, now this is my 10 to 20 minutes that I get. You know, my mind has a chance to just kind of wander and process through things. I'm exposed to the darkness at night, especially this time of year. So it helps my sleep. And just being outside in nature for me is just very soothing for my soul.

So it kind of checks a lot of boxes. And so I really, unless there's something really extreme going on or like the weather is really extreme. Like I'm, I'm getting that outdoor walk in each night. So that's one of my like big foundational anchors.

TERESA: Yeah, I love that as an anchor. I'm thinking about that. Can I fit that into my life? And I love the idea of health or nutrition anchors. You know, things that you do that are just sort of automatic to you. And I love that your automatic is going for that walk.

A few of the things that are automatics in my life that I feel like help keep me anchored: I have a very solid bed at time routine. And I follow it very strictly because I'm a finicky sleeper. And so it's very important for me to have, it's not an automatic bedtime, but it's a approximate bedtime that I follow. I always read. I always drink a certain tea. I always, like it's very much a very regimented and it just gets you in that mindset. Like your walk is getting you in that mindset, that exposure to dark, the lights are low.

So that's at the end of the day. At the beginning of the day, I always start with a glass of water. And it's just, it is one thing I do every day. Some days it's easier to do than others, but it really is just that, that's just, I feel like if I start with hydration, at least I've kind of started the day off on the right foot.

LEAH: Yes. Yeah. I kind of like that book ending your days there. So like something grounds you in the morning, something grounds you in the evening.

TERESA: And then one thing that grounds me for the week, and this has been really, really helpful for me, is I have this mentality of never miss a Monday, and this is more of a fitness goal, but it is really getting some sort of exercise on Monday, because if I feel like if I get it started on Monday, it sets the tone for a week, so I have this never miss a Monday mentality. And I try to follow that up by a really solid breakfast. So we're hitting two birds with that start to that Monday.

LEAH: I mean, Monday, you are rocking Mondays. Love it.

TERESA: So those are the things that I try to do to really anchor in. And those aren't extremes, right? If you think about drinking a glass of water, having a bedtime routine, that's tough for some people. But those are manageable things that we can do.

LEAH: Yeah. And these are the things that are not going to be on a billboard or like in a magazine or that's like not going to, you're not going to make a TV commercial out of it, right? But it's the simple, it is the simple. Like it is the foundations, the simple things.

TERESA: And you know, it's just starting with these small manageable steps. For one person that might mean getting back to drinking 80 ounces of water per day. For someone else it might be doing their three mile walking loop five days a week.

For another person, it might be making it a point to get a vegetable on their plate at their meals. These don't have to be fancy. They don't have to be extreme. It just has to be important to you.

LEAH: Yeah. And once you know what those one or two or five anchors are for you, you can always come back to those as your reentry point after some of that time away; after a vacation, after the holiday season, after maybe a run of a bunch of birthdays in a row, whatever the case may be, you'll be less likely to fall victim to some of those very loud, jarring, quick fix messages that especially tend to abound in January.

Anti-resolution #4: avoid labeling foods as “good & bad”

So let's pivot to an anti-resolution like little seed that we had planted earlier in the show. And we said we were going to come back to it. So another anti-resolution that we're going to throw out there is avoid labeling foods as “good and bad”. And this one can be so tricky just because this kind of language is so automatic for many of us.

And Teresa, I've heard you talk about this topic before and how you try to approach things a little bit differently with clients and with students when you're teaching. And you probably even do this with your own children and your family. So I know I'm putting you a little bit on the spot, but could you just share what goes through your mind or like those thoughts around good foods, bad foods, or what you try instead?

TERESA: What I like to think about with food is food is neither good nor bad, right? Food is just, it's just food. Food is just food.

LEAH: Mm hmm.

TERESA: And if it's labeled good or bad, we can easily jump to the person eating it is good or bad, for eating those particular types of food.

LEAH: Mm hmm.

TERESA: So, my thought is, like, what you're eating is not a measure of your moral character. It is not, does not make you good or bad. We are not being bad when we eat fast food or baked goods. We're not being good when we eat a salad. I know plenty of good people who eat not the best diet, but it doesn't have an effect on whether they're good or not.

They're great people. We probably all know the person that eats a very good diet, and maybe we don't want to spend that much time with that person based on their character.

TERESA: Yeah. So we know that, that those things aren't, they're not going to make or break you as a moral character anyway, so I think that in labeling foods good or bad… However, it does get tricky because sometimes we talk about, you know, good fats, bad fats, that type of thing, and you just sort of flippantly say it, but really what we're talking about is that certain foods have, have different nutrients associated with them.

And these nutrient facts are facts based on science. So, once again, this is neutral. This is not good or bad, it's just facts. So they can guide us on what foods are healthy because they provide essential nutrients for the body, and what foods we should consider having less often, based on the nutrients, or the lack of nutrients that they provide.

And so really just thinking more of foods that are going to help with that you eat, are they going to help you get closer to your goals, or are they going to get you away from your goal? I hear that all the time. Well, I was being so bad this weekend.

LEAH: I know. It hurts my dietitian heart a little bit when I hear some of that, but yes, I 100 percent agree with you. Well, and to your point too, like when we can kind of zoom out a little bit and just, and I think some of the language I've used before too is like, what foods are going to be more helpful for your goals and what foods might be less helpful for the goals that you have for yourself?

This is another way that we can customize it for everybody, for different people, right? And there definitely there's going to be some food groups and foods that are going to fall into a certain bucket more often than not. But we can also just say for this person, this individual person, their goals, like here's some foods that are going to be a little bit more helpful.

Here's some foods that might not be as helpful, but those foods might look different between each person, depending on a whole host of factors. So I love what you were just saying there too, of like, we can dial it down to some of those facts and build off from there. And then kind of think about the individual person who is in front of us.

TERESA: Yeah. Yes. I love it. People spend a lot of time beating themselves up for the foods that they've chosen to eat.

LEAH: So yes, it's, again, easier said than done, but just as that would be, again, just another thing that people can think about as they, march into the new year and just even thinking about how you talk about food and your body and your choices and your habits, like the way we talk to ourselves about these kinds of things the language that we use can be very powerful also.

TERESA: Yeah.

Anti-resolution #5: avoid the comparison trap

LEAH: And so as we round out today's show, I want to offer up one more anti-resolution for our listeners to consider. Oh, and this is a big one. And I feel like this has been coming up a lot. And that anti-resolution is to avoid the comparison trap. So much easier said than done in today's modern world of social media and just that hyper connectiveness that we all have right now.

But it's true. Like comparison is the thief of joy. And I want to share a recent story that I had with a client, and again, it just highlights the need for us to check ourselves on this sometimes. This particular client has struggled with her weight for almost all of her life, and she did end up having bariatric surgery several years ago. And like many of my clients, they go on Facebook and they join communities because there's a community for everything nowadays, right?

There's a group of community to join for ideas and support and just to kind of be surrounded with people who have had shared similar experiences or are in the same boat. But when she came into my office the other week, she made a comment that, you know, I just feel like everyone in these groups are doing weight loss better than me.

Oh, so we had to delve into that belief a little bit and, and just to make a long story, at least a little bit shorter, I reminded her that likely the people who post the most, they do the curated photos, the pictures, and they, they are the loudest voices on social media, like these are the people who likely have had the most “success” in that sense, and in this particular case, success is measured by the amount of weight they've lost or how good they look.

So, the people that you don't hear from in those groups are the people who, maybe they only lost 10 pounds after their surgery, or they had a ton of complications related to the surgery, or these are the people who have regained, A lot of their weight, or maybe they are heavier even before surgery now, so it's like the representation that shows up on social media may be skewed in one particular direction or another.

TERESA: Yes, this is so true. These days on social media, your social media experience is so curated and driven by your algorithms. So, you only have to click once on something, or look at a certain post, or picture once, or shoot, even say anything near your phone.

LEAH: Yes.

TERESA: And you're just going to get inundated with similar content that drives your brain and your mood in a certain direction. You know, for better or for worse, because there's a lot of positives that come off of some of those too. I mean, for example, if you're only looking at like those cat videos or funny memes all the time, maybe it brings you a lot of joy.

LEAH: Yeah.

TERESA: It's not such a big deal. But if it's an algorithm full of health influencers and runway models, it may be not so great for our own mental well being. And I've got to say, when I'm talking with clients about social media in the nutrition space, they are there to sell you something. And if it's even just the clicks, likes, and comments, they are there to sell. And so they have to do something new and flashy.

They have to be like, did you know, or roll out some facts so that you click and comment or like or dislike. They don't care if the comments are positive or negative, the more comments there are, the better. If there's a lot of confusion, what I try to encourage my clients to do is really consider turning off some of those, unfollow a lot of those influencers and stick to the cat videos or the funny memes. And just get your nutrition information from qualified sources.

LEAH: Yes. And of course we can still run into comparison trap outside of social media. So depending on your job, you may be constantly being measured up to your coworkers or your competitors. I think about a competitive sales position.

You may even have a lot of inner dialogue with yourself when you meet other parents in your kids class or other parents from kids on the sports team. I'll hear this from clients a lot too. You get caught in the comparison spiral between a previous version of yourself and the current you.

So in our line of work, we'll hear things like, well, before I got married, I was, X pounds and now I'm Y pounds or before I hit perimenopause, I never had to think twice about my weight and now I look at a cookie and gain three pounds. So there can be some of these internal comparisons also.

TERESA: Yeah, I think there's a big mismatch between the experience with comparison. It is the thought that we should be in a different place than we currently are. And should is a big word there. We should have more money. We should be a certain way all decades of our lives. We should have a certain career trajectory.

We should be going on two exotic vacations a year. So how do we start to break those comparison tendencies? Maybe a break from social media is in order, like we were talking about before.

LEAH: And I've done that before, and honestly, probably do for it again. I take the apps off my phone for a week or two, or maybe even a little bit longer and live my life as normal. Honestly, I find it makes a profound difference just in my mental state and my presence going through life.

And there's a quote in a Bluey book, so like parents out there, you know who Bluey is. And I read this book with my kids a lot and it says, just run your own race. And I would say it in an Australian accent, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it justice. But I think this is a great reminder just for this very topic of comparison. In the book, the mom was comparing Bluey as a baby to another baby in their baby class about who could get to crawling first, who could get to walking first, who could get in all the things. And just like all babies reach their milestones at different times, like, yes, there's those windows there that you kind of want to look at, but everybody does it in their own time.

So we as adults also move through life in our own lane. We run our own race. Like we kind of do it on our own time. It doesn't mean that any one person is doing it better than anyone else. It just looks different and it may have a little bit different of a timeline.

TERESA: Yes. Those kids books can be some of the best teachers. Another tool I like to use is gratitude. I feel like it's the antidote to comparison. Just taking a pause every now and again to remind myself every now and again to remind myself of the things I do have is enough to get me out of that negative mental spiral.

For some people, this looks like writing these things down in a journal. For others, this might look like creating a specific playlist with songs that get you into that reflective state, or perhaps it's doing a gratitude meditation. If you find yourself in a negative conversation with yourself about your body, focus on the things that it can do.

I love a little tradition we do at Nutritional Weight & Wellness every November, everyone is invited to anonymously share something or many things that they are grateful for throughout the month. And all of the responses are gathered and shared every day throughout the month of November. It's such a lovely email to receive every morning during that month.

LEAH: Mm hmm. And this year, I forgot about it coming into November, and then it came out. It got me so excited and pumped for those emails. I was like, oh, yes, I love that time of year. In our house, so I've got to give credit to my husband here. He started a dinnertime ritual where my two kids and my husband and I, we all take turns telling each other what our favorite part of the day was. It doubles as a great icebreaker question that gets everybody a little bit chattier at the dinner table.

You never know what's going to come out of the kid's mouth. And so it's like, I'm so happy that he started that. Don't tell him that. But I love it and that's, you know, it's not necessarily specifically gratitude, but it does help us reflect on like the good parts of the day, the good parts of our lives, which again, I can just kind of break through some of the mundane or just some, or some of those negative spirals that we can get into.

TERESA: I love that as a tradition.

LEAH: Yeah.

TERESA: Well, I hope we've given you some different food for thought around this New Year's holiday and this time of year of resolutions. Are there any anti-resolutions that we've missed? Are there any practices that you've embraced at the turn of the new year that you have found particularly impactful? Share them with us. You can connect with us via phone at 651-699-3438 or via our website at weightandwellness.com.

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LEAH: Our goal at Nutritional Weight & Wellness is to provide each and every person with practical, real life solutions for everyday health through eating real food. It's a simple yet powerful message. Eating real food is life changing. Thank you all for listening and have a safe and happy new year.