Pushkin

The first few weeks of January are peak New Year's resolution time,

and a lot of those resolutions involve changing how our bodies look.

According to one global consumer survey, nearly half of people who made New Year's resolutions last year

wanted to change what they ate and how much they exercised,

with more than four intents specifically saying that they wanted to lose weight.

And this time of year, there are lots and lots of outside voices that are ready to tell us exactly how we should fix our bodies.

If you look at a magazine or your social media feed this month,

you'll probably get bombarded with healthy eating ads,

claiming to have a scientific solution to the perfect beach body,

or stories of people who successfully toned their butts with the latest fad diets.

Every January, we're surrounded by concepts like keto and pegan,

an intermittent fasting, and belly blasting.

And even if we know rationally that belly's probably aren't supposed to be blasted,

it's really easy to get swept up by all those deafening body-shaming voices

and to think that we're going about something as fundamental as feeding ourselves in all the wrong ways.

But if you think about it, all this body-shame is kind of weird,

because we don't let outside voices tell us what to do when it comes to navigating our other bodily needs,

like when to go to the bathroom, or whether or not it's a good idea to put on a sweater for feeling cold.

When it comes to these physical requirements,

we don't feel the need to look to social media suggestions or magazine ads.

We just listen to our bodies in order to figure out what they need to feel good.

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