Why “New Year, New You” Is Hard to Hear in Eating Disorder Recovery
Every January, the same messages show up everywhere: lose weight, “get healthy,” start the diet you’ve been putting off. A December 2019 YouGov survey found that among U.S. adults who planned to make a New Year’s resolution for 2020, 50% selected exercising more, 43% eating more healthfully, and 37% losing weight. For most people, that’s just background noise. For someone in eating disorder recovery, or supporting a loved one through it, it can be one of the more difficult stretches of the year.
None of this means resolutions are off-limits in recovery. It means the diet-and-appearance version of a resolution isn’t a good fit for where you’re working to get to, and there are other ways to use the new year as a starting point that don’t ask you to work against your own recovery.
What to Leave Out of a Recovery-Focused Resolution
Self-imposed weight-loss, calorie, appearance, or compensatory exercise goals may conflict with recovery, particularly when they introduce rigidity or behaviors that aren’t part of your treatment plan. That’s different from individualized nutrition, weight, meal-structure, or movement goals developed and monitored by your eating-disorder treatment team, which can be a legitimate part of care. Depending on the person and diagnosis, a rigid resolution can also reinforce restriction, compensation, food avoidance, body checking, compulsive movement, or other behaviors that treatment is already addressing, since eating disorders show up differently from person to person. Even a goal that sounds neutral, like “eat cleaner” or “get stronger,” may be worth discussing with your team first if it starts to feel rigid, compensatory, appearance-driven, or inconsistent with your medical and nutritional needs.
None of this is about willpower. Diet-focused or body-change goals can be destabilizing for some people in recovery, especially when they reintroduce rigidity, restriction, compensation, or frequent body monitoring, and choosing not to set one isn’t a failure to participate in the new year the way everyone else does.
Resolutions That Support Recovery Instead
A resolution can still be a resolution without being about weight or appearance. A few directions to consider, with the understanding that what fits depends on where you are in treatment and what your team recommends:
Staying connected to a support system, communicating more openly with family or friends about how you’re doing, attending scheduled therapy or medical appointments consistently, working on a specific fear food with your dietitian, keeping a journal to track emotions rather than food or weight, or picking up a new skill or hobby that has nothing to do with your body.
A 2020 study published in PLOS ONE followed over 1,000 people making New Year’s resolutions for a full year and found that resolutions framed around achieving something positive (“approach-oriented” goals) succeeded significantly more often than resolutions framed around eliminating a behavior (“avoidance-oriented” goals) — 58.9% versus 47.1%. That difference is worth keeping in mind when you or your treatment team are wording a goal: “I will call a friend when I’m struggling” tends to hold up better over the year than “I will stop isolating.”
Specific, realistic, and time-bound goals also tend to hold up better than vague ones. “I will attend therapy every week this month” gives you something to actually check in on; “I will get better at coping” doesn’t.
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Building the Right Resolution With Your Treatment Team
The most useful version of this isn’t a list you pick from on your own at midnight, it’s a conversation with your dietitian, therapist, or treatment team about what’s actually realistic for where you are right now. A goal that’s a good fit for someone six months into recovery may not be a good fit for someone two weeks out of a higher level of care, and that’s normal. Your team can help you set something that’s actually calibrated to your current treatment plan instead of borrowed from a generic list.
When the New Year Brings Up Old Thoughts
If diet talk, gym-membership ads, or family comments about resolutions are bringing up old eating-disorder thoughts or urges, that’s common this time of year, and it’s a sign to reach out rather than a sign you’re regressing. Tell your support system what’s coming up, and loop in your treatment team sooner rather than later if it’s not easing up on its own.
If there is immediate danger, possible medical instability, or a life-threatening emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department. For suicidal thoughts or an emotional crisis, call or text 988.
Supporting Someone in Recovery When Everyone Else Is Talking Resolutions
January is a hard month to be the person standing next to someone in eating disorder recovery. Every ad, gym flyer, and casual work conversation seems to circle back to weight loss and starting fresh, and loved ones often don’t realize how much of that noise is landing on the person they’re trying to support.
One of the most useful things a support person can do is manage their own resolution talk around the person in recovery, not just avoid commenting on their eating. Mentioning a diet, a cleanse, or wanting to “lose the holiday weight” in front of someone in recovery can be triggering even when the comment isn’t directed at them at all, because it reinforces the idea that weight loss is the default goal everyone should share. The National Alliance for Eating Disorders’ guidance on family involvement in recovery notes that a recovery-supportive home environment is one where food and bodies aren’t constantly discussed or judged, for anyone in the household, not just the person in treatment.
It helps to expect that gyms, grocery stores, and social media will be saturated with weight-loss messaging for the first several weeks of January, and to talk with the person in recovery ahead of time about how they want to handle it. Some people want a heads-up before walking into a gym that’s clearly running a New Year promotion. Others would rather their support person just mute or unfollow accounts that are likely to post triggering content, or sit with them while they do it themselves. There isn’t a single right answer, which is exactly why asking directly, instead of guessing, matters.
Family gatherings and small talk in early January often include some version of “What’s your resolution?” It’s reasonable for a support person to redirect that question when it’s aimed at someone in recovery, or to have a low-key answer ready that doesn’t put the person on the spot — something as simple as “we’re just focused on a good year” is usually enough to move the conversation along without turning it into a moment.
What Tends to Help, and What Tends to Backfire
Checking in privately (“how are you feeling about all the New Year stuff this week?”) tends to help, because it gives the person an opening without cornering them in front of other people. Commenting on someone else’s appearance as a compliment (“you look great, whatever you’re doing is working”) tends to backfire even when well-intentioned, because it ties worth to appearance and can read as commentary on weight change either direction. The same goes for asking directly about a treatment plan or eating in front of other family members — those conversations go better in private, on the person’s terms.
NEDA’s broader guidance on supporting someone in recovery emphasizes that consistency matters more than any single perfect conversation. A support person who checks in regularly, respects when the person doesn’t want to talk about it, and doesn’t treat recovery as a project to manage is generally more helpful over time than someone who says exactly the right thing once and then goes quiet. That kind of steady, low-pressure presence is especially valuable during a month that’s culturally engineered to put diet culture front and center.
Related Reading
- How to Use FMLA for Eating Disorder Treatment at Eating Disorder Solutions (EDS)
- How to Deal with Recovery Weight Gain Emotionally: A Guide for Adults in Eating Disorder Recovery
- Starting College While in Eating Disorder Recovery
- Eating Disorder Recovery and Relationships: Navigating Intimacy
References
YouGov. Survey of U.S. adults on planned New Year’s resolutions for 2020, conducted December 18-19, 2019.
Oscarsson, M., Carlbring, P., Andersson, G., & Rozental, A. (2020). A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PLOS ONE, 15(12).
National Alliance for Eating Disorders. “The Role of Family in Eating Disorder Recovery.” allianceforeatingdisorders.com.
National Eating Disorders Association. “The Importance of Support During Eating Disorder Recovery.” nationaleatingdisorders.org.
Resources
National Alliance for Eating Disorders Helpline: 1-866-662-1235, Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Eastern. The helpline provides eating-disorder support and treatment referrals and is not a 24/7 crisis service.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988. Available 24/7 for suicidal crisis or emotional distress.
