12/31/2025
It was New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2016. I was reflecting heavily on what resolution I would make for the year ahead. I dreaded the thought. For me, resolutions had migrated from useless to soul-crushing. Each year for the twenty years prior, my resolution involved some form of a weight loss goal, but with a different set of action steps, as I had never figured out how to achieve the goal with any degree of success. It seemed insane to set the same goal again for the 21st year in a row. For what purpose? Other than to rail my head against the wall by mid-March, throwing all manner of blame and darts at myself for failing to accomplish any amount of weight loss? I couldn’t take another year of self-induced moral decline. Something about this year had to change. Something about this year had to be different.
Nine years ago today, I decided to make a new promise to myself. One that didn’t involve weight loss. One that didn’t include getting into a smaller pant size, wearing ‘cute’ tops, or fitting into two-piece bathing suits. One that deliberately ignored diet culture rules and principles about the way I was supposed to look for everyone else. One that focused only on me, how I wanted to show up for myself, and which redefined what self-care meant and looked like, for me.
The French have a manifesto they live by, and which shows up, in some form, in every facet of their lives: in career, in travel, in parenthood, in relationships. It is ‘joie de vivre,’ translated as the ‘art or joy of living,’ and the key idea behind it is to optimize enjoyment and fulfillment through everything they do. The Italians have a similar manifesto, ‘la dolce vita.’ Indeed, these cultures of people are remarkable at living the good life. And so I reflected heavily on this idea, that perhaps weight loss wasn’t the end goal, but that establishing and nurturing great health was the foundation of living the most fulfilling life I could create for myself.
This was the most novel new year’s resolution I had ever come up with. What if 2017 wasn’t about weight loss, but about health gain? What would that look like? I was instantly hooked over the expanse of opportunity this presented. Where there was so much scarcity in a weight loss goal, rife with reduction, elimination, and FOMO, there was so much abundance in a health gain goal - it was full of new opportunity to explore and experience new foods, different forms of movement, and new people. It was an exhilarating idea, and just begging for exploration. And so I set to work on this new health gain goal: defining it, designing it, pilot-testing it, tweaking it, re-launching it, and showing up for it day, after day, after day. 2017 was indeed a goal experiment. Parts of my health gain goal landed beautifully (“I invented the most game-changing recipe for no-sugar-added banana muffins!). Other parts were a dumpster fire (“For two weeks, that damn spin class made me walk like I had a pole up my backside. Never again.”) Nevertheless, every day brought new discovery about my purpose, what I valued, what building a fulfilling life looked like - just for me - and my relationship with myself. Every day brought new learning about the things I loved and didn’t love, and what worked effectively at creating my health gain, and didn’t. Every day brought evolution toward the person I wanted to become, and away from the person I needed to let go of. So much so, that after nine years, I am still setting health gain goals each year. So much so, that after nine years, I have, not once, had a weight loss goal to chase.
As 2026 approaches, I ask you to consider framing and pursuing a health gain goal. I ask you to ditch the weight loss goal. (Yes, the irony is not lost on me that the holistic weight loss coach is telling people not to have weight loss goals.) You see, weight loss is not a goal, it is an outcome - a byproduct - of having achieved something bigger, more vital, intensely more meaningful, and deep with purpose and fulfillment. I ask you to consider what longevity means to you, what aging like a bad ass looks and feels like, and how blissful it would be, to be able to show up for any activity on any part of the planet, in precisely the way you want to, with full mobility, cognition, energy, and capacity, because you and your body were of the condition to do so. I ask you to envision your ‘joie de vivre,’ to focus your efforts on designing your most fulfilling life, and to trust that if you show up, consistently, for the action steps of your goals, that you will 100% get the weight outcomes you want.
In the end, there is a very fine line between health and life. In so many contexts, they are one and the same. Spend your energy designing and curating your best life, now and for the future. Identify and show up for the practices that enable you to achieve your health gain goals. Show up for those practices consistently, for so long that they become automated, turning into habits. And then let that system run. It will carry you. Protect you. Guide you. Nurture you. And that ‘joie de vivre’ will forever be yours for the taking.
