Mom-of-4 reminds everyone amid New Year's resolutions that weight loss doesn't necessarily bring happiness

Losing weight is one of the most common New year's resolutions. Back in 2021, a survey found that nearly 42 percent of Americans aimed to lose weight as a top 2021 goal. Why is this a big deal to so many people? “Pressure to lose weight may be on the forefront of people’s minds this time of year in part because of advertising and special sales from the entire weight loss industry,” explained Kristen Farrell-Turner, Ph.D., a psychologist and educator at Pritikin Longevity Center according to Prevention. “This pressure also may stem in part from the reality that, for many people, the weeks from Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day generally involve increased caloric intake, unhealthy food, and alcohol. So people might see New Year’s resolutions as a way to undo the damage caused by the past few weeks.”

Now, more and more people are voicing out against focusing on changing themselves by force especially when it comes to unhealthy diets and quick fixes for weight loss. A mother-of-four Sarah Nicole Landry is a staunch believer in self-love and that happiness doesn't stem from weight loss. In a lengthy post on Instagram, she wrote in part,  "Jan 1 will change nothing, except another day to choose love, another day to show up. Nourish her. Move her. Clothe her. Another day to get to live in *this* body. However, she gifts me that day." She admitted that her own journey with weight loss did not make her happy as she thought it would. She wrote candidly, "The hardest part of weight loss for me wasn’t losing the weight. It was the soul-crushing reality that losing weight didn’t do what I expected: Make me happy. Make me content in my body. Make me confident. Allow me to feel more worthy of being in this world."

Landry wants to remind people that focusing on goals such as weight loss is a "distraction from the good parts of life." "My hope is that people feel a sense of relief, that they don't have to change their bodies to be confident," Landry told Good Morning America. "That they don't have to get on another [diet] program that will statistically fail for them."

The founder of the lifestyle brand The Birds Papaya is no stranger to fluctuating weights throughout her life. Two years ago, she lost about 100 pounds but the results of that experience surprised her. "When that confidence and happiness wasn't there for me at the end of losing 100 pounds, I realized that I really only have the choice to show up each and every day," Landry said. "I understand now that my confidence and my enjoyment in life comes from making these decisions every day to show up and acknowledging that my body is going to change sizes up and down a bunch of times over." With over 2 million followers, she hopes to inspire others to look at themselves with more love and kindness. "I understand that people are watching and they're seeing what I'm doing and they know I'm not comfortable in my body, but they're watching me step out on runways, go to swim shoots, doing all these things," Landry said. "Internally there's a whole big part of me that says, 'You could look better before going to do that,' but instead I'm saying, 'I only have this shot right now and there's a runway in front of me and so what if I step out onto it as I am in this exact moment.'"