New Year - Not a "New You" - a Return to YOU
- Sonia McIndoe
- Dec 31, 2025
- 7 min read
This New Year, don’t reinvent - reconnect
January used to feel like a personal reckoning for me.
Every year, I would sit down with a gorgeous new notebook, big intentions, and an even bigger sense that this time I had to get it right.
New rules.
New resolutions.
New promises about who I was going to be.
I genuinely believed reinvention was the answer.
And every single year… things went the same way.
A few weeks in, the wheels would wobble.
Then they’d fall right off.
And I’d be left standing in the wreckage thinking, Here we go again. I just can’t stick to anything.
I was convinced the problem was me.
But it wasn’t.
I wasn’t failing - I was playing a game that wasn’t mine
What I can see now - with compassion, not judgement -
is that I was setting myself up to crash.
The goal posts I was chasing weren’t mine. They were borrowed from diet culture, all or nothing mind set, hustle culture, and the loudest voices around me telling me what I should want, who I should be.
I was trying to win a game I didn’t even believe in -
with rules that didn’t fit my life, my identity, or my history.
No wonder it felt like a train wreck.
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What New Years Eve reinvention used to look like (and why it never worked)
For me, reinvention often showed up disguised as “good intentions”.
With eating, it sounded like:
• Right. No sugar. No snacks. No eating after dinner.
• I’ll be “good” all week to make up for Christmas.
• I’ve stuffed up - may as well go all in and start again on Monday.
With exercise, January was the same story on repeat.
A new gym or yoga membership.
A packed timetable.
Big promises about how many days a week I’d go.
I told myself:
• This time, I’ll be motivated enough.
• If I don’t go hard, it doesn’t count, and it’s not making the most of my money.
• I just need to push through.
One year I paid for the year upfront determined I was going to be consistent and by spending so much money that would motivate me … surely???
I didn’t even complete January - you can imagine what my ‘bitch brain’ as I kindly refer to my self critic as, had to say about that … she let me have it all year long!!
What I realised was that I wasn’t listening to my body.
I was ignoring exhaustion, old hang-ups , and the simple fact that my mind & body were overwhelmed.
And instead of adjusting, I would quit completely and then judged myself, and we judge ourselves harder than anyone else ever would.
Clocking up more and more evidence that “I can’t stick to anything”. More reasons for my ‘bitch’ voice to rain down on me harder than ever.
On the surface, it looked disciplined.
Underneath, it was disconnection.
I wasn’t choosing those rules because they supported me. I was choosing them because I didn’t trust myself. After all there was plenty of evidence to prove I was a lost cause. But the tighter the rules became, the more I forced myself - the louder the rebellion got and the harder I ricocheted in the other direction.
Reinvention kept me disconnected from myself
This happened over and over, year after year, reinvention pulled me further away from myself, not closer.
I’d override hunger.
Ignore exhaustion.
Push through with willpower.
And when my body eventually pushed back - because bodies always do - willpower never lasts.
I took that as proof that I was weak, useless & undisciplined.
What I didn’t understand then was this:
disconnection will always sabotage change. You can’t hate yourself into long-term wellbeing. Let me say that again … You can’t hate yourself into long-term wellbeing.
This is now the essence of how I work - our weightloss journey is actually a journey of learning to truly love ourselves. We do this via self coaching and self care not via self-criticism and bullying ourselves.
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What returning to YOU actually looks like
Reconnection looks very different.
With eating, it’s less about rules and more about awareness:
• Pausing to ask, Am I hungry or am I overwhelmed?
• Eating in a way that supports energy, not punishment.
• Choosing kindness after overeating instead of spiralling.
Not perfect.
But sustainable
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With movement, returning to YOU might look like:
• Choosing walking, stretching, or gentle strength instead of an intense gym plan.
• Going to yoga once or twice a week because it feels supportive - not because a January resolution says you should.
• Letting go of the idea that exercise has to hurt to be effective.
Movement becomes something you do with your body, not to it.
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The difference is subtle, and life-changing
Reinvention asks:
“How do I force myself to change?”
Reconnection asks:
“How do I support myself to grow?”
One leads to burnout.
The other leads to trust.
And trust is what actually carries you through the year.
Returning to YOU is what changed everything
The change came when I stopped asking
“How do I become better?”
And started asking:
“How do I come back to myself?”
That’s when everything softened. I slowed down, I became conscious and gently I became the women I wanted to be deep down, all along.
A return to values - not borrowed expectations
When I stopped chasing someone else’s version of success, ‘shoulding’ on myself and reconnected with what actually mattered to me, my decisions changed.
Not because I was stricter.
But because I was aligned.
Choices became easier when they matched my values not my fears.
Knowing my values is key, living them is life changing. Every year I redo my values and I create a vision board around them and I keep that where I can see it.
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A return to my body - not control
We are bariatrics for life. We need workable strategies that are ours and that fit our lifestyle for life.
Instead of trying to dominate my body, I learned to listen to it.
To notice signals.
To respect limits.
To work with my body, not against it.
Listening to our body is called Introspection, and it has been one of the most life changing skills I’ve ever learnt. It is essential for true self care. I didn’t even know what it meant before I had weight loss surgery. I certainly didn’t know how to do it. Now it’s as natural as breathing. I get such a buzz out of teaching it to my peeps.
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A return to calm - not chaos
For years, I lived in survival mode and expected myself to thrive. I was the epitome of ‘the rushing women’.
But real change didn’t happen until I prioritised slowing down. From calm and genuine safety, I was able to be consistent and steady.
I had to rewire my thinking that calm isn’t laziness - it’s the essential foundation.
Calm is where growth happens.
I had to learn how to get there, and how to get back there every time I got dysregulated.
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A return to awareness - not self-attack
I also had to unlearn the habit of watching myself just to catch mistakes.
Self-awareness became about understanding patterns, not punishing them.
About noticing why something happened, not shaming myself for it.
That’s where compassion changed everything.
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Kindness over rules. Grace over diet culture.
Rules kept breaking me.
Kindness helped me rebuild.
Grace allowed learning.
Diet culture demanded perfection.
And perfection always led me straight back to a train wreck.
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January doesn’t need another version of you
You don’t need another resolution that makes you feel behind by mid-month.
You don’t need more “should” layered on top of exhaustion.
What you need - what I needed - was permission to stop reinventing and start reconnecting.
To return to:
• your values
• your body
• your calm zone
• your true self
• your capacity for compassion
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This January isn’t a makeover. It’s a homecoming.
You are not broken.
You are not failing.
You were just playing by rules that were never designed for you.
January isn’t asking you to become someone else.
It’s inviting you to return to YOU.
Join me for a free webinar!
So, I’ll leave you with a warm invitation to my 8 Fundamentals FREE webinar where I share my daily to-do list and how I actually manage my bariatric journey day by day.
It’s in an ‘hour of power’ where I squeeze a lot of valuable information for you into the 60 minutes on Zoom - totally for free.
Ready for more? Let's do the groundwork together in small group coaching via Zoom, so you can join from anywhere in New Zealand.
About Sonia McIndoe
Hi! I'm Sonia, a NZ Bariatric Life Coach, who has had weight loss surgery and maintained a 70kg weight loss for over a decade. I walk the walk and have dealt with my own regain by continuing to use and hone my own fundamentals and strategies, which I share with you. Like you, I struggled with my weight...
I actually struggled with my weight my entire life. At 5 years of age my ballet teacher told me “I danced like a baby elephant”. I yo-yo dieted my way to a body I loathed and had given up on. Food was my friend - but it was a love/hate relationship. In many ways it saved me, but it was also slowly killing me.
I wasn’t convinced even Weight Loss Surgery would work for me … why would it when nothing else had!
More than 10 years post Weight Loss Surgery later and still several dress sizes smaller, I am the happiest I have ever been.
You can have the success you dream of too. I am so passionate about sharing how, that I work full time as a Bariatric Coach.
I credit my Weight Loss Surgery with my 70kg weight loss, but keeping it off, I credit to doing the mind work. It’s this mind work that I teach in my Mind Empowerment coaching programmes.
The Mind Empowerment Programme
Sonia McIndoe's coaching programme is called Mind Empowerment and starts with a free one hour webinar, "The 8 Fundamentals for Bariatric Success".
The next stage is "Mind Empowerment" group coaching by Zoom, followed by Stay on Track.
One on one individual coaching is also available. Sonia coaches live via Zoom, so you can be anywhere in New Zealand and access help from her as your weight loss coach.
Find out more at www.mindempowerment.co.nz