A New Year's resolution you can keep

By Halley Molstad, CD, RD, Gundersen Nutrition Therapy

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"Hating your body will not make you thin. Being thin will not make you stop hating your body."

So many people out there are putting off loving their bodies until they lose weight, they tone their arm flab, they fit into a size 2, etc. The list goes on and on.

We are chasing an ideal of beauty that does not exist in reality. The portrayal of beauty in magazines and commercials is so unrealistic that even models don't look like the models in the pictures. They are retouched to make their eyes bigger, their legs longer and anything else you can imagine. Look up some paintings from the renaissance. These paintings are considered to be some of the most beautiful masterpieces ever created, but the models for these paintings would never make the cut for today's popular magazines.

Every year people make New Year's resolutions that focus on the things they don't like about their bodies. This can lead to resolutions to follow extreme diet and exercise plans which are destined to fail. When you are making your New Year's resolutions, don't be critical of your body for not looking the way you want it to look. Keep it positive and add this one to your list:

"I will not say negative things about my body. I will do my best to keep it healthy and I will love it for all the amazing things it does to keep me alive every day."