2023: The Year for Sustainability
By Cariahnna Collazo-Cintron
As the clock strikes midnight on January 1st every year, people begin to type out their most predictable social media post: “New Year, New Me.” I can admit that I’ve fallen into the trap of the toxic New Year spell and vowed to lose all of the weight that I had gained since my “glory days.” But after countless years of weight cycling, lifestyle changes, and relapses I’ve come to the conclusion that if I am happy and healthy, my weight does not matter. This year, I set some lifestyle standards for myself that I have been trying to maintain and will continue to do so—but this year, it’s not about losing weight.
In 2023, I want to love myself at every stage. It can be hard at times to look in the mirror or sit down to reflect and notice things that may bother me, but simply because I am not my own ideal vision of perfection at a given moment should not mean that I do not love the person that I am. With gaining a lot of weight over the past few years and becoming significantly less active as a result of the pandemic (not to mention getting older), I have noticed that my body doesn’t feel or operate the same as it used to.
I have vowed to care for myself more this year, and that includes being active and trying to make healthier decisions.
But my qualms are not with a specific number on a scale—though if I’m being honest, high numbers can be scary for me. My qualms are with having less energy, feeling achy, and worrying about my overall long-term health. Like many others, I too have taken this New Year energy as a way to turn over a new leaf and have vowed to myself to be more active, but not for the sake of meeting societal beauty standards or satisfying outdated doctors that value BMI. Instead, I have vowed to care for myself more this year, and that includes being active and trying to make healthier decisions.
I’m well aware of the mania that can come with deciding to change everything about your life overnight. The calorie cutting, exhaustion, lack of enjoyment, and intense cravings that come with adopting a “weight loss diet” cold turkey are nothing short of torture for me. Making this decision, I knew that this year I wanted to try and make sustainable changes/improvements to my life. And that means not being strict. I’ve been through this enough to know that when I give myself rigid rules to follow, life becomes a chore, which isn’t good for my mental health, and if I want to maintain these improvements beyond just a few weeks, I know that it is vital that I incorporate them in a way that feels natural to me.
Realistically, the changes that would be the most ideal for my life would require a lot from me physically and emotionally—energy that I can’t give right now. Instead, I have told myself that I would simply like to increase my level of weekly activity and the amount of healthy food I consume. This means that if I only work out once a week, it’s still an improvement because I never used to. Or if I have a green smoothie for breakfast twice a week it’s still an improvement because I didn’t before.
These are very small wins of course, but I know myself enough to know that giving myself the grace to make these changes slowly will make me more likely to see them through without the pressure of feeling like I have to or that I’m failing if I don’t. This way, they become a part of my regular routine on their own in a way that feels intuitive to me, my body, and my emotional and physical needs.
By framing my lifestyle changes as self-care, I am allowing myself to see that these changes are for me, my well-being, my happiness, and no one else’s. Eventually, I would love to reach a place where I practice self-care every day, but for now, my baby steps have been extremely gratifying. With that, I pose the question: When was the last time you did something for yourself and only yourself? Unpack the reason behind that to truly be sure that it’s because YOU want to, and not because some external force is pressuring you. Q
Cariahnna Collazo-Cintron is a NuyoRican neurodivergent activist who aspires to become a social worker and pursue a career in non-profit management. She is a licensed Esthetician, mid-sized model, and self-proclaimed Maxxinista who loves to cook, dance, browse metaphysical shops with her fiancé Kennedy, or go for strolls with their two dogs, Khaleesi and Rhaego. "Join me as I peel back the layers of my life in search of the woman I am destined to become—forging my path and mending the cracks, one story at a time.”