My New Year’s Resolution is to Stay The Same

Graphic by Ruth Ellen Berry.

Each New Year I tell myself I am going to lose the weight.

The weight, inexact and indispensable, haunts me after the holidays. I search for new diets and exercises—new ways to make water taste like Coke and to chisel my abs. Like the 17% of Americans vowing to lose weight in 2023, I’m always hungriest to achieve my idealized body this time of year, prioritizing it over traveling, learning something new or seeing friends and family more. The weight is a pitiful reminder that I haven’t met my resolution since I was 13.

For Christmas in 2015, my cousins from Connecticut sent me and my sisters Lululemon apparel—a staple of middle school it-girl style in my small Michigan hometown. I yanked them out of the packaging so fast and nearly tripped while putting them on, but when I stepped in front of my bedroom mirror, I clenched my fingernails into my palms.

 It was all wrong. The waistband dug into my hips, pushing softened skin over the seam. The fabric stretched over my thighs, tight where it was supposed to be loose, round where it was supposed to be flat. I decided then, distraught by my barely teen-aged body, that I needed to lose the weight.

My fears forced me into toxic dieting, and my burgeoning love for fashion—a world obsessed with body image—only intensified it. Before school, I often skipped breakfast, and at lunch, I scrolled through best-dressed lists on Snapchat and picked around the turkey sandwich my mom packed me. I downloaded a calorie-tracking app and logged everything I ate, feeling a sense of pride when the numbers displayed a negative sign out front. When I didn’t exercise, I felt guilty, and when I did, I worked out until I felt faint. Looking like the models I saw on my Instagram feed wasn’t a want—it was a necessity.

Still, my attempts to lose the weight were foiled by my disordered binge-eating. I stuffed myself with sweets at any stress: chocolate chip cookies when I felt anxious, peanut M&Ms when I was overworked. I constantly raced between trying to lose the weight and hating myself because I wasn’t.

Before junior prom, my friends and I giggled on the way to some food trucks downtown, feeling grown-up as we teetered down the sidewalk in high heels. With string lights overhead, we felt smugly satisfied that we chose to dine somewhere so casual, like we were the protagonists in a Greta Gerwig film. Except when we should’ve gone to order, no one rose from the table. 

We sat in awkward silence, and I chewed on my clumsily painted lips. Eventually, out of the knowledge that we needed to eat something before dancing in a dark room dense with sweaty teenagers, my twin sister and I ordered a small side of fries to share. Shame gnawed at my stomach, and I felt guilty for savoring the few fries I had.

This past Christmas, my cousins flew to Michigan to celebrate the holidays at my grandmother’s cottage on the lake. Though all of us are in college except for Elise, the fifteen-year-old, we scrambled to the kitchen table on Christmas morning like we were kids. On the table, our grandmother’s sticky buns waited: a gloopy mess of melted brown sugar and sweet rolls reserved only for special occasions. We devoured them, even scraping up the caramel mess that stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Then Elise went to reach for another bun, and her father told her she’d had enough.

“Dad,” she said. “It’s Christmas morning.”

As she protested, I felt too aware of my body: how much softer it was than my cousin’s, how many calories were in those sticky buns, how, if he hadn’t said anything, I would’ve eaten another. On a day of toasting to good memories, I was swallowed by all the ways my body made me miserable.

When New Year’s Eve arrived, I sat with my twin sister in our living room, watching her scroll through pictures she’d taken throughout the year. She was making a compilation post on Instagram of the year’s highlights, and I relived them all. 

In January we bonded over pizza, laughing at the upstairs neighbor who was playing One Direction way too loud. In July we ate cheeseburgers at Lollapalooza, plotting how we were going to run from one side of Grant Park to the other in three minutes. We snacked on popcorn and cherry ICEES at the movies and cried over chocolate cake on our couch. We got up early on the weekends to grab our favorite bagels because it meant we could sing in the car all the way there and back.

In every single picture I was smiling, and I didn’t lose the weight.

As the seconds wound down to midnight, I could’ve made the same resolution for the eighth year in a row. I could’ve sworn to change again, this time for good, but I didn’t see the need when I was the happiest I had ever been. I wanted to keep smiling.

I hope this resolution sticks.