Transforming the Shadows of Failed New Year’s Resolutions

When I started planning my weight loss, all-or-nothing thinking emerged as one of the biggest reasons around my history of failed New Year’s resolutions.

For me, a New Year’s resolution was always worded in an all-or-nothing mindset and behavior. Over the years, my resolutions usually included variations of the following themes. 

• I will lose weight.

• I will eat healthy foods.

• I will avoid unhealthy foods.

• I will exercise.

But, my resolutions never took failure into account. 

I learned this about myself when I was doing research around perfectionism for my work as an educator.

Perfectionism is all-or-nothing thinking, and it is more pervasive than I thought — even as a seasoned educator who thought she knew perfectionism.

The more I learned, the more I started seeing the limitations of all-or-nothing thinking all over my life, especially in relation to weight.

For years, I boomeranged back and forth between thinking I had to eat perfectly to lose weight, or I was not going to do it at all. This alone led to many “I’ll start tomorrows.”

My New Year’s start without a resolution led to a new approach.

On New Year’s Day in 2020, I started yet another weight loss journey. But, I did not begin with a New Year’s resolution because I was doing things differently this time. 

Instead, I wanted an action word to serve as my theme around weight loss and health for the year,.

This action word needed to be a big enough umbrella to allow for successes and for my inevitable failures.

TRANSFORM became my word for the year.