It’s Time to Give Your New Year’s Wishes a Makeover
We’re welcoming the beginning of 2016, ending the countdown to the new year and kicking off another: the time it will take for the typical New Year’s resolution to fail. That’s not pessimism; it’s statistically supported realism! According to multiple studies, nearly half of Americans make New Year’s resolutions and only a paltry 8 percent of them ever achieve what they aspire to.
But perhaps the flaw lies not with those of us who are willing to commit to self-improvement, but with the very resolutions we pick — the vast majority of which are centered on weight loss. And despite lapsing on these vows year after year, we continue to make the same ones over and over. Yes, hope springs eternal — even in the dead of winter!
Related: How a ‘Fat’ Mirror Helped Me Accept My Body — Finally
That’s where Yahoo Health comes in. We want to help you succeed in reaching your New Year’s dreams. With that in mind, today we launched our #BodyPeaceResolution campaign, a month-long initiative aimed at motivating you to pursue wellness goals that are not vanity-driven but that strive for more meaningful outcomes. We’re talking physical strength, mental fitness, nutritional nirvana, self-acceptance — true and total body peace.
As part of these efforts, Yahoo Health conducted an original survey to gauge your feelings on self-acceptance — and the results prove just how devoid of body peace we currently are. One startling finding: Females are getting self-conscious about their bodies at younger and younger ages, driving home the need to re-architect the messages we (sometimes unknowingly) send when it comes to health and beauty.
Men, it seems, have it a little easier. Take, for example, the glorification of the “dad bod,” a trending term in late 2015 used to describe (in a mostly positive light) the slightly doughy physique guys of a certain age often possess.
That said, dudes are not immune to body dissatisfaction, and we want to bolster their lagging self-appreciation too. Social media, we found, is giving rise to a new, hard-to-achieve ideal male body type called “spornosexual,” the kind of lean, chiseled build sported by athletes and — you guessed it — porn stars. Just as social media has a tendency to generate fomo, the optics it employs through its highly filtered feed can also create a lot of body anxiety — for women and men.
Related: I Eat Slim-Shamers for Breakfast
The big hope for our January crusade: This month of body-peace-resolution content will inspire a body-peace revolution. Want to join us? Start by posting your own body-positive moments on social media using the hashtag #bodypeaceresolution. Be sure to tag @yahoohealth too. Cheers to a happy and healthy 2016!
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