Rethink, Reframe, Reboot

It should have been a year for smashing goals. Fitness goals, healthy-eating goals, getting-to-summer- and-being-bikini-ready goals. But then 2020 happened. After being subjected to one too many ‘Avoid lockdown weight gain with this simple diet’ headlines, these aspirations slowly became irritating and unpleasant reminders that my New Year’s resolutions were creeping further out of reach. While my inner critic was becoming increasingly intrusive, those close to me offered perspective. I’d taken on a new role amid a very difficult market. I’d made a major health breakthrough: after years of crippling, undiagnosed pain, at the age of 36, I was finally diagnosed with stage III endometriosis — if you’re one of the one in 10 Kiwi women who suffer from this crippling disease, you’ll know just how life-changing a diagnosis is. Dwelling on appearance could be considered trivial even at the best of times – let alone during a global pandemic – yet I still found myself self-flagellating as bikini season loomed.

“There is no doubt that lockdown has lasting impacts on many aspects of our lives. We can’t ignore that some of these are very significant,” says Sarah McMahon, psychologist and director of BodyMatters Australasia. Instead of being over the moon with what I had achieved, I felt annoyed and disappointed with myself. Why hadn’t I worked out religiously over lockdown? Why hadn’t I mastered yoga as I promised myself I would? The more I reflected on these thoughts, the worse I felt, as I realised that while body image is still a taboo topic among many friends, I wasn’t the only one feeling disheartened by the reflection in the mirror.

“Rather than being able to congratulate ourselves on surviving a global pandemic, we are confused about where we have been left,” says McMahon. “There is this idea we should have come out of lockdown looking thinner, stronger, healthier than ever.” Juxtapose that with the fact that baking sourdough was #lockdowngoals and basic commodities were sometimes scarce, and it’s easy to understand how the year has had a detrimental effect on those grappling with body-image issues and eating disorders.

“There is a major discrepancy between the ideal and the reality,” McMahon explains, adding that the impact on this for each of us will differ. “For some of us, now it is simply about resurrecting some sort of healthy routine. For others of us, we will have to live with yet another reminder about the pressure to achieve the impossible — and the sense of shame and hopelessness that arises from being unable to. And for the rest of us, it is reconciling our new reality about how fragile our world actually is with our new normal.”

RETHINK

“This year has prevented many of us from achieving many of our goals — not just wellness,” says McMahon. But she’s quick to add that now is not the time to be hard on ourselves. “It is helpful to focus on what we have achieved and be more self-compassionate around the things we feel we haven’t achieved,” she says. “For starters, we have survived a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.”

Nutritionist Danijella Unkovich says right now, self-compassion and kindness are essential. “Alongside a healthy dose of realism,” she adds. “This year has been unprecedented and required significant adjustment as we learn to live in a Covid-19 world. The lockdowns have resulted in disruptions to everyday life, including to how we shop, cook, eat, and move our bodies.”

Berating our bodies is a yearly occurrence that begins once the surf, sea, and ‘bikini season’ beckon; however, this year, many of us have turned up the dial on critiquing our figures. Whether you blame excessive time spent scrolling Instagram — and inevitably comparing ourselves to #fitspo influencers — or the constant bombardment with headlines screaming ‘How to lose those lockdown kilos’, 2020 hasn’t been kind to our mental well-being where body image is concerned.

As Unkovich puts it: a combination of upended routines, home confinement with remote work (or no work), a kitchen (possibly) overstocked with panic buys, looking at our reflection frequently on Zoom, and doom scrolling on social media (a comparison playground of sweaty selfies, quarantine ‘glow-ups’, and baking #foodporn), can be a perfect storm for body preoccupation.

Both McMahon and Unkovich believe that a little appreciation for what our bodies have helped us achieve this year is important. “Our remarkable bodies have kept us safe and kept us alive through this,” says McMahon. “There is value in remembering that we survived! That we have demonstrated huge capacity to do this — being flexible, resourceful, resilient, and adaptable when it comes to our bodies and eating is concerned.” Unkovich suggests shifting the focus to honour and celebrate our bodies for providing strength and resilience during difficult times.

REFRAME

Even with the wise words of McMahon and Unkovich in mind, come 31 December each year, many of us will still scrutinise our bodies whilst setting New Year’s resolutions. “The new year signals a new beginning, and it is natural to hope the future is going to be better than the past,” says McMahon. She believes that, in theory, it’s easy to ‘control’ how we eat and look. “When we consider the moral association with both of these things, controlling how we look is tantamount to being a good person and having a good year,” she elaborates.

And then, of course, there’s the facade we wear when we’re the fittest and healthiest versions of ourselves — “It signals to us – and the world – that we have it all together,” says McMahon. Unkovich says it also doesn’t help that the weight-loss industry turns the volume up to the maximum as soon as there’s even a whisper of the festive season inching closer. “There is always an influx of articles and conversations around the latest dietary trends and hottest exercise regimes,” she says. “And it always leaves us questioning ourselves, habits, and bodies.”

“Additionally, the festive season is prime time for the ‘last supper’ mentality to come into play,” explains Unkovich. Spending time anticipating what we will and won’t eat come Christmas Day and over the summer holidays can quickly lead to unhealthy habits and obsessing over food. Unkovich says that because we’ve already decided to stick to a diet once 2021 begins, many of us might adopt a fearful anticipation of impending food restriction. “The holidays bring delicious food, and more social gatherings and booze than we might be accustomed to. It is not unusual to loosen the dietary reins and adopt a hall-pass mentality; thinking [that] come 1 January I’ll start my new diet, so best to indulge now.”

REBOOT

With so much pressure on us already to conform to society’s ever-narrowing beauty ideals and standards, it raises the question: is it healthy for our minds and bodies to focus New Year’s resolutions on striving for a certain body shape or look? McMahon points to an article she read a few years back about the unsurprisingly high failure rate of those who went on diets for New Year’s resolutions — 40 per cent of people had ‘failed’ within three days, and by day 10, 92 per cent had given up on said diet completely.

“There is no value in setting ourselves up for failure,” she says. Instead, McMahon suggests reframing and rethinking goals that involve your body. “I always suggest rather than having New Year’s goals that revolve around numbers, it is better to focus on improving your health more broadly,” she explains. “This means focusing on how you feel, expanding our idea of health as dynamic, engaging, and satisfying. Improving, enhancing, and adding value to our life rather than restricting and taking away from it in the way that dieting does.”

Unkovich also believes that a focus on overall health and well-being is a better path to success and is also much kinder on our mental well-being: “When it comes to setting goals that involve our bodies, often so much emphasis is on what we will look like rather than how we feel or our overall health. With a focus on health, changes in body composition can still happen as a byproduct — but here we’re looking at the bigger picture and teaching ourselves to tune into different markers of well-being.”

But it’s not just the ‘end goal’ that needs to change for many of us: it’s also the very loaded concept of a ‘goal’, as both McMahon and Unkovich explain. “Goals can be wonderfully specific and directive, but also suggestive of a planned endpoint or outcome,” says Unkovich. “Mentality-wise, if we’re not doing something aligned with our goal, we may also feel like we’re failing, which can cause us to throw in the towel.”

It’s far more helpful, says McMahon, to focus on establishing something sustainable — that is process-driven — rather than a goal or resolution, which is outcome driven. “This means putting the scaffolding in place for us to lead lives filled with health-giving behaviour, which we can do this year and in years to come, rather than reaching the destination of our ‘goal’ and then reverting to our age-old habits.” Before even embarking on healthy lifestyle changes, it pays to step back and reassess what matters to you. “Go back to your values and think about what is really important to you in living a fulfilled life; these should be the things you set goals around,” McMahon suggests. “Think about one small thing you can do regularly that will help you get closer to your goal. Once you have achieved that, add in the next step.” It’s also incredibly important to realise that good things take time. As Unkovich puts it so succinctly: “Remember, it can take weeks to months for new habits to form, and maybe longer for this to become automatic. Trust the process, and just keep swimming.”

At the end of the day, however, while it’s easy to fret and over-analyse the minutiae of our figures when swimsuit season rolls around, in doing so, we often stand in the way of our happiness and enjoyment of life. McMahon’s wise words are: right now is the best time to start living your life as you would after ‘the after photo’. “What would you be doing differently if you were at your goal weight? Would it mean more socialising, dating more, playing with your kids in the sea? Wearing that bikini at the beach? Think about the things you have put on hold until after weight loss … and start doing them now, anyway,” she says. “It may sound counterintuitive; however, pushing through that frontier will actually improve your body image.”

This feature appeared in Fashion Quarterly.