Well + Good x Helen Phelan: How I Navigate New Year’s Resolution Season As An Eating Disorder Survivor

Image courtesy of Well + Good

This piece originally appeared on Well + Good January 20th, 2020

Editor’s note: This piece might be triggering for people with a history of disordered eating.

I have grappled with disordered eating for as long as I can remember. I was bulimic through my parents’ divorce when I was a kid, numbing my confusing feelings by binging and then guiltily making myself get sick. I starved myself through my first real breakup when I was 16 so I would have something to focus on other than the heartbreak. I then became addicted to exercise after I graduated college and tried to pursue a career in dance. Even when I was in the first stage of my eating disorder recovery at age 25, I became fixated on “clean eating,” assuming that if only I ate healthy, “virtuous” superfoods, then all my issues with eating would automatically be fixed. (They weren’t.)

I have spent most of my adult life healing my relationship with my body. Many things have contributed to my recovery—namely cognitive behavioral therapy and somatic experiencing (a specific type of therapy designed for trauma recovery), intuitive eating (a mindful way of eating with an anti-diet focus), coupled with holistic bodywork like acupuncture, reiki, breathwork, massage, and meditation.

But despite all the progress I have made in my recovery, I still brace myself when the calendar flips to January 1, and the entire world becomes fixated on making New Year’s resolutions.

Don’t get me wrong: making resolutions is generally something I enjoy. It suits my personality to reflect and set goals. As a fitness instructor, health coach, and especially as an eating disorder survivor, I think it’s a truly beautiful thing for an empowered person to take charge of their health, which is so often the focus of New Year’s resolutions. But the dark side of the season, however, is that with the insidious universality of diet culture (the belief system that ascribes virtue to thinness and vilifies anything else as unhealthy, bad, or lazy)—those well-meaning resolutions can be used to prey upon our deepest wounds about our bodies and how we eat.

We’ve all been convinced that being good and healthy means being thin and hungry. This harmful rhetoric is ever-present in the wellness industry—and it’s not just limited to January.

So many people continue to equate weight loss with health, which is just simply false. The idea that you are morally superior or inferior because of your body’s appearance or your eating habits is harmful to us all. Just last week, Jillian Michaels publicly shamed Lizzo for her weight in the name of being “concerned,” when in reality it’s not her business to speculate about another person’s health or body. Jillian Michaels isn’t a bad person, but she’s operating from an old system of beliefs about weight, health, and worth.

Conclusion

This type of pervasive rhetoric—that physical and mental health has to “look” a certain way— then influences how people approach their health-related resolutions. To decide to exercise more because you want to run a marathon, improve mobility, or manage stress are all examples of healthy reasons to make a resolution around fitness. Similarly, wanting to eat better because you want to have more energy or better digestive health are healthy ways to approach a food-related goal. Sadly, I hardly ever see those cited in the ads for weight loss apps and products telling me to “Make 2020 the year I finally lose that last stubborn five lbs.”