The Death of New Year's Resolutions and What To Replace It With

I had this impulse to start this episode off by saying happy new year, but I paused and got curious about what it means to transition into a new year. A little search on history.com showed that the earliest recorded new year's celebrations started 4,000 years ago with the Babylonians who marked the new year in late March when there was equal amount of sunlight and darkness. A new year date would change based on how the calendar changed over time and then Julius Caesar, when updating the calendar to sync with the sun, stated that January 1st would mark the beginning of a new year to honor the Roman god of beginnings Janus, which is where January got its name. 

Why I'm sharing all of this is to show how arbitrary the date of January 1st is. Someone just chose the date and it has taken on all sorts of meanings over the years. The new year became synonymous with self reflection and goal setting. NPR states that in history, New Year's did not mean much until the 20th century. In my early 20's, I stopped putting so much pressure on this day. I hated going to New Year's Eve parties. I don't like to drink. And I felt over the years that resolutions or collaging my goals for the year just felt like too much pressure to put on every day of the next year. 

For many years, especially after discovering the field of somatics, I started to switch to a feeling word for the year and how I wanted to feel in my body and I would guide others to do the same. Throw out the resolutions and the goals and connect with how you would like to feel and what would support you in feeling that way. 

Now, perhaps because of the world we live in now, how unbelievably traumatic the past couple of years have been, I'm moving away from that suggestion this year. If it still resonates with you, great! Go forth and create your word or feeling word for the year and have that be a guiding light for yourself in creating a life that you feel the way you want to feel in it. But, if you'd like to come with me down a new path, I'm attempting to enter this year in a more somatically focused way. 

What does it mean to live somatically?

This isn't a year long goal. It isn't a feeling word that comes and goes from year to year. It is the ongoing embodied practice of showing up for your humanness. And you can't create a goal out of that. Maybe an intention that you're going to do the best you can to embody your life experiences and that is going to look different from day to day, month to month, sometimes second to second. Sometimes my nervous system does take over and I'm completely and utterly triggered and trying to unconsciously protect myself through my words and reactions. You cannot shame yourself for these moments. You didn't choose to get triggered. You weren't actively thinking, "Ya know what would be really fun. To remember my past trauma right now." 

​When you move outside your window of tolerance, you are not you anymore.

I always want you to remember that in the aftermath of a binge, when you start coming back to yourself, and that inner judger is so loud, that you were not in the driver's seat anymore. Your amygdala was in the driver's seat, your sympathetic nervous system was calling the shots, your inner child was making decisions for you. You’re not addicted or attached to a certain food, or exercise, or body appearance. The first time you binged on a food, the first time you pushed your body beyond its capacity, the first time you shaped your body in a particular way, you got something out of that. You experienced a moment of security, relaxation, empowerment, peace, and nervous system regulation. You’re chasing the feeling of safety, not a food or body image. Your body is trying to recreate the same felt sense experience through a past memory that it may never be able to replicate.

And no New Year's Resolution is going to alter your past, regulate your nervous system, or make it safer to be here as you are. Living somatically is embodying the experience of craving, or food desire, or longing to fix how you feel by skipping meals or overfilling your body. It isn't wrong or bad that you have these impulses. These food urges are your body's language of saying I don't feel safe. 

So what does this actually look like in real time?

Like all of this sounds really nice, right? Being in connection with your body, not abandoning it, staying with yourself in hard experiences. 

I will provide a personal example that happened recently just to also show that this work is life long and an ongoing practice. I got really triggered by a conversation I was having with my husband last week. I didn't even realize what was coming up or the past memories that were coloring my experience of the moment. I couldn't make sense of what was going on and so I told him I need a second to regulate myself. I was wearing a large oversized sweatshirt with a hoodie this day and I actually put the hood up and like a turtle, went into my shell. I put my head down on the table and made a little cocoon for myself in my hoodie. While I know that can sound odd, I could hear a small voice inside of me that said, "turn the volume down." What this looked like was decreasing all sensory input. With my hood up, I closed my eyes and came into connection with my body rather than continuing to take in any external environmental input. 

I started to describe what was happening. "I've left my body, my chest is tight, my heart rate is fast, I'm having a difficult time landing." Already, this starts to bring me back into my body. When you use language to describe your emotions and sensations, you actually shift from your amygdala to your prefrontal cortex, where you will be able to think more rationally and experience less fear. Next, I started to speak to my inner child. I told her how important she is, how I hear her experience, how what she's feeling is valid and real. Now a softening started to come into my body. I didn't feel like I was in danger anymore. You've got to think of your nervous system like a stick shift car. It is not like a light switch that turns on and off. It goes through different stages to arrive at the parasympathetic nervous system. 

Once I noticed I was back, I could return to the conversation with my husband from a much different place inside of myself. Now, I've practiced this a lot and it doesn't always look like needing to cocoon in a hoodie, but the more I practice this, the more I can identify when I'm dysregulated even when I'm not operating from the part of my brain that thinks logically. And this is the practice again and again and again and again. 

This practice is what leads to any resolution you could ever set for yourself.

When you are able to ebb and flow in and out of dysregulation it can deepen relationships by the way you're able to show up, it can keep you more in your prefrontal cortex where you can think through your decisions and step into your creativity, you get stuck in dysregulation for shorter periods to feel like you can go after what you want for yourself, and the more you see yourself come out of dysregulation, the more confidence you will build that you can handle discomfort and food doesn't have to step in to help you move through a lack of safety. 

So let New Year's Resolutions die, take the pressure off of 2026 that you have to be someone different, accomplish anything specific, or successfully finish something. Every day can be a day to experience what it is like to be alive in your body, in your life, and what satiates you physically and emotionally. 

I’m excited to explore somatic, trauma, and nutrition more with you over this next year and one exciting piece of news is that the Satiated Podcast has been chosen as one of the Top 40 Women In Food Podcasts by FeedSpot. So thank you for being here, for continuing to be here, for leaving such amazing reviews on how much you love the podcast, and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of your day. Bye!