50 Of The Funniest Weight Loss And Diet Memes Because The Struggle Is Real

First things first, pandas, I just want to address that you’re all beautiful and wonderful just the way you are. At the start of a new year, we’re all bombarded with ads for gyms, fit-fluencers on Instagram raving about how their programs will change your life, and people promoting diet culture left and right. “You’ll never be healthy if you keep eating carbs” or “I swear, these sugar-free, gluten free, raw, paleo brownies taste JUST as good as the ones your mother bakes!” 

The extreme diet culture rhetoric that seems impossible to avoid this time of year is simply harmful, so if it’s healthier for you to throw away your scale completely and continue eating the diet that you know works for you, please, by all means, keep doing you. So what if you ate more pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes than you normally would during the past month? I bet they tasted wonderful, and almost everyone else on the planet also indulged during the holiday season! Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for enjoying a great meal with your loved ones during the most wonderful time of the year.

But if you’ve been inspired by the dawn of a new year and you think your body could benefit from a few more vegetables and several trips to the gym each week, we support you too! Just remember that adopting a healthy lifestyle is a marathon, not a sprint. Having a slice or two of pizza is perfectly healthy every now and then, and you don’t need to throw away all the junk food in your apartment overnight. 

Start with small, manageable changes, and don’t beat yourself up when you fall out of your fitness routine for a few days or eat a bit more cake than you would have liked to. The most important thing is your mental health, and it’s certainly not beneficial for your mental health to be starving yourself or obsessing over the foods that you’re “not allowed” to eat. Enjoy that birthday cake! (Just try not to eat the whole thing in one sitting. It’ll still taste good tomorrow.)

To gain some more motivation to develop healthier habits, we reached out to an expert on the topic, Michigan-based mom Katie Foster, who has bravely documented her journey with health and fitness on her blog, Runs for Cookies. First, we wanted to hear a bit about how Katie got where she is today, after losing 125 pounds.

“The best way to put it would be a roller coaster,” she told Bored Panda. “I have times where things go very smoothly and everything goes great; then there are times where I feel like I just fell off the track and my whole plan just falls apart. Staying disciplined is SO hard--something I have to think about every single day--and it's exhausting! In the end, though, it's been entirely worth it.”