This post was originally published in January of 2012 and is, unfortunately, still 100% relevant.

By Seila Rizvic

Even before the holiday season ends you begin to hear it. People lamenting their holiday “indulgences” and vowing to “start fresh” in the New Year. To some extent it’s understandable. Sure, you might gain weight over the holidays; sitting around with your family eating your favourite foods and drinking your weight in eggnog is not a diet plan that I have ever seen advertised, but it also isn’t a reason to feel bad about your body in the days and weeks following. Advertisers would have you think something different however, and the weeks surrounding Christmas and New Years Day are primetime for weight loss companies encouraging you to “lose those holiday pounds”.

New Year’s resolutions based on weight loss goals are silly for several reasons, not the least of which is assigning such an arbitrary date to begin a pattern of potentially unhealthy eating practices. The “New Year, New You!” rhetoric of diet ads during this time of year really speaks to a larger problem.

For one thing, it implies that having a new body will change who you are as a person, more specifically, a happier and more attractive person. This, of course, is ridiculous because people can be attractive at any size and your happiness has nothing to do with your weight. Just to spell that out for everyone one more time very clearly: changing physically does not change who you are as a person. Losing weight doesn’t make you more likeable, interesting or funny. This however, is not the message you will hear in the mainstream media. This week, the ABC news website brought us a gem of journalistic writing with an article titled “New Year, New You: The Diet Secrets of Sexy Stars” and MSNBC offers a similarly titled and similarly tragic article with “New Year, New You: January Jumpstart.”

Visiting weight loss program sites directly gives us even more examples of this conflation of changing who you are and what you look like.  Atkins offers a “New Year, New You: Five Tips for Weight loss Success” and Weight Watchers encourages you to write a “New You Resolution.” If neither of these seem to work, head over to Jenny Craig where they offer a “‘Resolution Refresh’ for Abandoned Weight Loss New Year’s Resolutions.”

Either the diet industry really has the answer to all of your body woes and is only doing a public service by saving you from your holiday chub OR there is nothing wrong with the way you look and the diet industry is only trying to exploit you and your emotions towards your body for profit. I’m certainly more inclined to believe it’s the latter statement, but you can decide for yourselves. But you better decided quickly because “bikini season” (or as some call it, “summer”) is fast approaching — and with it a new set of weight loss expectations and weight loss treatments.