123. You Don’t Need a New Body—You Need Support

As the new year begins, Tiffany Wickes challenges the exhausting “new year, new body” narrative that so many women—especially moms—feel pressured to buy into every January. In this heartfelt and wide-ranging episode, she makes a powerful case for why your body isn’t the problem… a lack of support is.

Drawing from her own recent experience, Tiffany shares how shifting from self-criticism to compassion—and surrounding herself with the right physical, emotional, and practical support—changed everything. She breaks down harmful wellness messages that equate discipline with worth, thinness with confidence, and constant pushing with health, and replaces them with a more sustainable, life-giving approach.

This episode dives into:

• Why your body is adapting, not failing, in your current season of life
• How mental load, interrupted sleep, hormones, and caregiving impact health
• The difference between controlling your body and caring for it
• What real support looks like: nourishing food, rest, gentle movement, asking for help, and simplifying expectations
• How the way you talk about your body shapes your children’s relationship with food and self-worth
• Small, practical shifts you can make this month to reduce pressure and increase steadiness

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, behind, or tempted to “start over” yet again, this episode is a grounding reminder that health isn’t about pushing harder—it’s about being held better. You don’t need an overhaul. You need compassion, consistency, and support that actually fits your life.

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Transcript

Tiffany Wickes (00:01.058)

Happy new year. Welcome back family and friends. All right. It's January 5th. How are you guys doing with the new, new year, new me stuff? listen, I'm not really here to validate that type of mentality because I don't think you need a new body in this new year. What I think you need is support. So let's go ahead and talk about this. first off, I need to acknowledge that January

The new year, new body, the detoxes, the bounce back culture, like the level of exhaustion that moms feel before the year even begins from all the holidays, know, dating all the way back to October. You remember that like 10 years ago where we've got costumes and trick or treating and you know, we've got the mega flu and then we've got, you know, holidays and Thanksgiving and who's doing the turkey, who's burning the souffle and now we've got Christmas and...

Who didn't get what and who's stocking wasn't filled. And now that January comes around, everybody's trying to sell a program and everybody's like, Hey, this is the time. Like if you're feeling like your body is the problem, then I want to gently offer that it might not be your body. might just be a lack of support. Okay. So let me just share with you kind of a brief story about how I felt pressure to fix my body. after many seasons, right? And it.

This is most recent too, right? Where I started training. If you haven't heard, I am training for an ultra marathon, multiple ultras actually next year. And, you know, I come out of the gate swinging such as one does, and immediately I have a calf tear almost immediately. So that was really frustrating for me. And rather than doing what I normally do, which is to put myself on a tight deadline and say, this has to be fixed by this amount of time.

You know, started, you know, I started off with a voice of lack of compassion where I was getting frustrated with my body. Like, come on, why aren't you doing the thing? And my coach actually sat me down in his living room and was like, listen, I need you to speak more kindly to yourself. And, know, it was kind of an embarrassing, you know, proverbial slap in the face, but it was done very lovingly where he was like, look, your words have so much power. And consequently, I'm actually reading a very small book about,

Tiffany Wickes (02:24.768)

about James, like James, the book in the Bible, James, and how much power the tongue holds. So keep that in mind. We're going to revisit that. But he was very much like, hey, we just, you know, these are the things like practically that we're going to do to help heal your body, but it's going to be fixed or get well in the time that we allow it. But if you hate on it, it's going to take even longer. So I was like, okay.

so there it was, what I needed was support. know, the support that I got was okay, reach out to my, my chiropractor and holistic doctor. We did some dry needling. did some electro therapy, some hot and cold, you know, obviously massage and, know, all kinds of things. started taking, it was like a tri blend of peptides, which by the way, this is totally off topic, but the copper peptide, guys freaking banging.

my skin looks like I had been botoxed five times and I did not. I've never touched botox. I've never touched anything to improve my skin outside of just skincare and red light therapy. The copper peptide y'all, that's where it's at. Anyway, so it was a tri blend of BPC 157, TB 500 and then the copper peptide and it was amazing. It helped heal my calf so quickly. So I got massage therapy like

not the comfortable massage therapy. It's the like, Hey, let's rehab your muscles and you know, tissue that's unhealthy kind of massage therapy, you know, where you're like bruised and you feel like a truck straight ran your butt over and then put it in reverse. And then did you want over? That's what it was like, but it was very therapeutic. Let me tell you that it was therapeutic. So, so I did that and there was a lot of rolling out. There was a lot of stretching. I hired a different coach, which was,

He was actually on a podcast a few ago. You guys, John Welch, I hired him. I know that I was talking to him and I was like, I need to hire him. I did. And so many of my nagging issues have now been resolved by the way. So if you like, you just need to, you need to hit me up in the DMS. If you're like, Hey, I've got something like this dude definitely is way underrated and he has absolute magic in what he teaches. So, okay. I'm way off track here. All right.

Tiffany Wickes (04:39.16)

So there is my, there is my brief story about most recently how I was injured and then, coming back from, you know, a fracture, it wasn't a fracture. was a, like a pull, a tear of my calf muscle, probably because I jumped into training too quickly and I was not properly conditioned for it. And my muscles were just so, so, so, so tight. And I just didn't know until my body was like, Hey girl, we got a problem. Bang. So listen.

I want to break down some harmful wellness narratives right now without any shame whatsoever. So wellness culture targets women, especially moms in January. Okay. They portray this false idea that if you have more discipline, somehow you're going to have better health, or if you had a different body, then you could be more confident or have more energy. And while this is somewhat true in part, right.

If you are more disciplined and then you choose better food and you choose the workouts over the sitting, like your health will likely improve. But as I've said before, you guys can overdo this. We can, I can overdo it. Shit. have overdone it. And I have put myself into a worser space of health than I did a better space of health. So a different body, this is one is the one I want to squash right here. And right now is you can have confidence and energy with the body that you're in. Okay.

Can you increase your confidence if you're not in the body you want to be in for sure. But I think it is absolutely paramount that you show up in confidence and energy exactly where you're at. Now we may have a different level of confidence. We may have different energy, but it is imperative that you show up with confidence and energy exactly where you're at. Okay. So now listen, if you think like I will be happy when like the mental load of that is ridiculous. And you know, some parts of fitness right now are going to be very difficult for moms. Like,

just the mental load of doing it. Like how do I put together a workout plan? How do I feed myself? Like is this protein too much protein? Carbs, no carbs, too much fat, not enough fat, fish, no fish, vegan, know, red meat, no red meat, like all the things, all right? Moms are dealing with interrupted sleep. Hello, that's me. I still have kids coming in my bed every single night and I don't remember the last time I got a full night's sleep, start to finish. I always wake up at two to three a.m. to pee.

Tiffany Wickes (07:03.202)

Hormonal shifts. Some of you guys are dealing with hot flashing and not being able to get to sleep because your progesterone is tanked. And look, just taking care of other people. Like I've got half of my demographic that has small children and that's where all the interrupted sleep is coming from. And then you've got the other half of my demographic, which I'm kind of like smack dab in the middle of this, right? Because we've chosen to have so many kids.

I'm still in the like little kid zone, but I'm also in the perimenopause zone where hormones are shifting and some of you are past all that. And now your care caretaking for other people like elderly parents. So listen, your body isn't failing you. It's adapting to survive the season that you're in. Okay. So we need to work with it, not against it. So here's what support actually means in this stage of your life. Okay.

You've got to shift from trying to control your body to caring for your body. So here are just three simple categories that we can talk about. So first off, physical support. You need to eat enough food. Okay. We are not restricting. We are being disciplined in the food we choose. Second is you have to rest and sleep even in the imperfect sleep, which is where I'm at right now. That just means on the front end of my sleep, I have to go to bed earlier.

I would love to stay up till 1130, you know, watch a movie maybe with my husband or read my book. I've really been into reading books lately. Generally, I listen to them on Audible, but there's just something, I don't know, oddly therapeutic. If you're a book person, like hit me up in the DMs, tell me. But there's something very oddly therapeutic about holding a book in my hands and actually turning the pages. There's science on it, I'm telling you, it's a thing. But I finally told myself, you know what, I need to read something other than...

like personal growth and, you know, learning about physiology. Like I just need to read something that's fun. So I did and I loved it. So anyway, I'm back to kind of personal growth book, but next month, excuse me, I'm going to go back to a fun book. Anyway, they're all fun, but it's just in different ways. Okay. Back on topic. So rest and sleep as imperfect as it might be, do the best you can. And if you need some like, you know, Magnu...

Tiffany Wickes (09:16.088)

Well, magnesium really, when you're in your later years, you really should be bathing your nervous system in magnesium. So magnesium glycinate, magnesium threonate, threonate is amazing for sleep. I'm not giving you any medical advice or nothing like that. That's not what this is. This is just, this is what has worked for me. And I do take 50 grams, excuse me, 50 milligrams of progesterone and that has helped a ton. Also some physical support would be gentle movement that feels supportive, but not punishing. Okay.

I did a workout today that was very challenging, but I did not crush my body. That is not the objective. That's not the goal. That's not the vibe. We are not here to kill our bodies. We're here to love our bodies and to gently push her into a new state of strain so that she can grow and change. Second category is emotional and mental support. You need to give yourself permission to slow down when you don't feel well.

or if you've had sick kids or if your spouse has been gone for an extended period of time and you're not used to that, like give yourself permission to just chill. Maybe we don't do a Tabata today. Maybe we just do upper body. Like the other day, my strain level on my whoop was like, girl, you have not recovered. My recovery was like 29%. It was total garbage. So I was like, well, I really want to work out harder because it's just my personality. But I was like, okay.

and granted, yes, I do have metrics that I track. You don't have to have a whoop in order to track how you feel, but I happen to be, the breed of workhorse that regardless of how I feel, I'll just keep pushing through. And that is probably both my best and my worst quality. So I was trying to take a cue from the biometrics that I'm measuring. And, you know what I said? All right. I'm just, I just went for a long walk with the dog. And then I came back and I did about four sets of 10 to 12 reps of a chest press.

And I was like, that's it. That's it. They're smaller muscles. They don't take as much nervous system activation as like your legs do. so I said, I'm going to stay away from doing legs and I'm just going to do some chest. And you know what? It was beautiful. It was perfect. So permission to slow down if you need it. All right. Next, please let go of the guilt around your required rest and nourishment. Okay. Nourishment is not just in the form of food.

Tiffany Wickes (11:36.364)

You've got liquid nourishment that you have to have. You have to have your water. You should be having electrolytes with that and minerals, and just nourishment of your soul. whether it be reading the book or going on a walk with the neighbor. If it's a girls night, like you have to nourish your whole sentient being. Okay. It's not just nourishment, like what you eat. Also remember how I said I was going to revisit this?

You need to start speaking more kindly about your body, especially around your kids, because children as young as eight and nine are now trying to go on diets and talking about how they're fat. And it is heartbreaking. But also, I mean, I have talked about this before and I totally pissed some people off and I'm cool with it. Please stop giving your little kids cell phones. They do not need the internet in their pocket.

There are lots of ways that you can get ahold of them, but the internet in their pocket at eight, nine years old, guys, are cruising social media sites and websites and they are using these ultra skinny women to inform them of what their bodies should look like. And then they watch you jumping on the scale every single day, watching you measure your food. And instead of saying, I am doing this so that I can get enough nourishment for my body so I can get stronger. Your measure is saying,

this is all I can have for dinner because I'm on a diet. Do you see the different verbiage we're using around the exact same act of measuring our food, your macros, which you should be. I mean, if you're in the beginning of your, your wellness journey and you have no idea how many grams, you know, what four grams of chicken looks like, then you're going to have to measure it. How else are you going to know? You can't just guess because you have nothing to guess off of, right? You just don't know what you don't know.

but you're going to have to reframe the way you talk about that, especially around your kids, because they are taking inventory of everything you say and do. And that informs them how they're going to show up in the world. All right. So third category is practical support. Okay. You need to ask for help. So if you, you know, if it's Sunday and the football game is on good Lord, the football game, the football game is on and your husband's plopped on the couch watching it.

Tiffany Wickes (13:50.518)

And you want to go get a workout in and you've got little babies crawling all over you. hello, red flag waving it, running across the dang football field. He's looking at that's a problem. need to say, Hey, babe, I need to get a workout in. need you to hang onto these little boogers while I do it. Okay. You need to ask for help. If you've got a neighborhood girl, that can come over and watch the kiddos. Like I have now, okay, let me tell you guys, I'm so proud of myself. I do have a babysitter. She's about 15.

15 anyway, she's an absolute doll. adore her. She's so good with my little kids and she's another homeschool girl and her mom brings her over. She's not old enough to drive yet, but she's fantastic. She is the oldest of four whole kids. So she totally gets little kids. I have her scheduled every like once a week all through January for three hours. So with that three hours, what am I going to do with it? I could stare at a wall if that brought my soul nourishment. It doesn't. So I won't. However,

I have writing assignments to do for the magazine. have longer workouts now that I need to be doing in 2026 because I have ultra marathons that I'm going to be doing. So, I have training that needs to be done and like, my gosh, my kids would just like want to jump out of the stroller and into the river. If I put them in there and was like, okay, guys, we're going out for an hour and a half. They would be like, what? so I'm not going to do that to them. However, I will hire a babysitter and look.

If it's not within your budget, then maybe you and another mom friend can switch responsibilities or, know, like there's ways to do this guys. Or you got to wake up a little earlier before they get up. That does not work for me, by the way, because my kids will get up as soon as I get up. It's bizarre. I, without hiring somebody, like I am totally just, I am schismed out of my own life here. All right. So next, practical support is simplifying your meals.

your routines and your expectations in this season where you're starting to really focus in on your health, okay? Simplifying meals, there's multiple ways we can do that. So first off, you can meal plan on your own. If you want, chat GPT exists, you can use it. You can tell it all sorts of prompts to get it to create a meal plan for you. Or if you want the simplest version of that, that also tracks it and creates it and you don't have to ask for all these specifications would be in my program in our app.

Tiffany Wickes (16:09.871)

it has an entire meal plan there for you and you can swap out meals if you don't like what they offer. But let me tell you, I started the faster way as a client, after my sixth child. And it was an absolute lifesaver to look at that app and just be like, what am I eating this week? And then I created my meal plan off of the app. I cooked every single meal. It asked, ate every single snack that it put out there for two and a half years straight. I did not detour from it because.

I didn't have the mental load, like the extra mental load to come up with what my meals were. So I'm in a different season right now in my life where, if you've listened to the few episodes prior, I'm doing a different nutrition plan, trying to rein in my insulin resistance, which is also, it's just a perimenopause thing. It just is. It's, you know, my lifestyle and nutrition has nothing to do with it. my stress is, I think moderate for the most part, at least that's what my whoop tells me. but you know, point is.

I can't really utilize that so much and making like full meals, two full meals, because my family is still eating a whole foods meal plan and I'm eating the low fat plant based right now, which is still, you know, challenged because I have to get enough protein for weightlifting. So point is simplify your meals, either bulk cook these things, batch it out one day a week so that you have all of your protein, all your complex carbohydrates. You've chopped up your fruits and your vegetables. They're in jars. Looks cute stored in the fridge. Perfect.

That method has never really worked for me because we just have so many people that like cutting everything up, like the containers, there were just to be too many containers and my refrigerator just simply can't hold them all. However, when my children were younger and I had far fewer of them, I would do that. All of the vegetables would get cut up. All of the fruit would be plucked off of the vines and put into jars and I would batch cook a bunch of protein. And then I would just

Combine them. So say you cooked steak, chicken, and fish is not good to batch cook by the way. So I don't recommend it. So say you have some chicken, you have some pork and you have some steak. Okay. Those are just three proteins. And then, mean, animal based proteins. Obviously there are plant based proteins, but you've got to eat a higher volume of them to get, you know, the same amount of quantifiable protein and then bioavailability. You know, that's something to think about. However, for me, I just don't worry about it. take

Tiffany Wickes (18:33.823)

a scoop of aminos in my water in the morning. And then I know that I at least have all of the amino acids necessary to create full proteins. So I don't even worry about it. Okay. Back on topic batch cooking. You guys, I can go off on 20 million different rabbit trails when it comes to talking about nutrition. So that is one way to do it is cook all that protein girl, cook it all out. Now get your complex carbohydrates. So potatoes, rice.

quinoa, beans, you can prep all that out. And then for vegetables, you can have salad or you can just get bags of frozen vegetables. Costco has tons of like organic frozen vegetables like flash frozen and then you just throw it in your air fryer or your boiling pot or whatever and just thaw it out and boom, like so simple. Don't make this more complicated than it needs to be. All right, let's go ahead and for that third thing in this third category is you're gonna have to choose what doesn't get done.

Okay. I don't recall which friend said this to me, but a friend told me many years ago, you can pick three things from the day. Okay. That's it. No more than that. And I was like, I can do it all. No, I actually can't. So on any given day, I'm like, okay, it's a Monday. What top three things am I going to get done? Now I would love to work, homeschool, work out, clean the house, cook everything from scratch. Okay. That's five.

I'm sorry, six and cart people around where they need to go. That's six things. That's not all getting done in one day. Okay. So we have to choose every single day. What is not going to get done today? Okay. Maybe today I'm not clean in the house. Whoop. That takes one away. what else am I not doing? Well, I look at my schedule. Okay. Nobody has an extracurricular today. Okay. Whoop. I don't have to take anyone. Now I'm down to four things. All right. If I push it, I might be able to do that so I can look in the refrigerator and say, did I batch prep meals? I sure did.

That now takes away another one. And if you don't homeschool your kids, that automatically removes that from your, you see what I'm saying? Like you've got a list, like what are, what is everything that I would like to get done today? Now you need to choose only three are going to get done. And maybe if you're a total baller, and an absolute gangster, you can get a fourth one done. y'all listen, health isn't about pushing harder. It's about being held better. Okay. Hold it together better.

Tiffany Wickes (20:56.193)

Don't keep hard charging because you do need time to just unwind with your kiddos. All right. So speaking of those little rugrats modeling health for your kids. All right. I need you to connect that kids don't learn health from what we eat. They learn it from how we're treating ourselves. Okay. You can throw broccoli on their plate and say, you need to eat this. So you don't, you know, become the fat turd in the corner that can't get up and play volleyball or.

You can say, here's this broccoli. has a lot of minerals in it. And surprisingly, it actually has a fair amount of protein in it. and we eat this stuff because we love our bodies so much that we want to have the energy to get up and play volleyball. Okay. All right. So here's what children absorb when they hear body criticisms, food, guilt, and constant starting over stuff. Like they absorb all of that. When they hear you say that you're fat, you're ugly.

or like, oh, I'm going to be really bad and eat this cookie. Like cookies are bad. Like when I have never met a bad cookie. Okay. And if you're like, oh my God, I blew it. I ate these 18 chips. I blew it. I guess I'll start over tomorrow and then just gorge on whatever you find. No, no. What they're seeing now is okay. So there's some dysfunction here. All right. Support centered healthcare is going to teach your children self-respect.

It's going to teach them limits. It's going to teach them to listen to their bodies and it's going to teach them compassion over control, which is really what we want from them is to learn to be loving to their bodies. And we work out because we love ourselves. We eat well because we love ourselves. The most powerful wellness lesson we teach our kids is how we talk to ourselves. Okay. All right.

So here are some supportive shifts, okay? If you leave with nothing else off of my 20 million rabbit trails, here is something you can add, all right? Add something nourishing to your day. So water, protein, fresh air, maybe it's a treat, maybe it's a phone call, maybe it's connection with somebody, but add something nourishing to your body or to your routine, your day, every day.

Tiffany Wickes (23:18.505)

I also want you to remove one pressure. One thing that's holding you back, right? Could be the scale. Maybe it's tracking macros. If you've been doing it for a long time and you just need to like put the scale away for a week and just eat intuitively, then go for it. maybe it is getting on Instagram and comparing your body with other people. Okay. That is my biggest issue right now is I will get on Instagram and I will look at a lot of other fitness coaches.

And I will watch their content. will watch their training routines. They will be in better shape than me. I will watch other ultra runners doing races. And then I will be comparing my chapter one to their chapter 50. And it is absolutely toxic, but I'm just being super transparent with you guys. Like that is the thing I'm struggling with right now is not comparing my journey to theirs. And then just being where I'm at and being proud of my body for what it has done, which

has done amazing and incredible things. All right. Choose one word for the entire month. Okay. So all of January, is it support? Is it rest? Is it steadiness? Is it showing up? Is it grace? Pick one word that's going to define your January. Okay. So listen, just start where you're at. Okay. You don't need an overhaul. You don't need 15,000 steps to be better.

You don't need to be happy when you get there. Like you don't need a new body. You need support. You need compassion. You need less pressure. Okay. So think about it to check in with yourself, check in with your spouse. Like what kind of support would actually help you right now? Okay. Talk to your husband or your wife. If you're a man listening, talk to your friends.

Tell them what your goals are in 2026. Like what is it that you want to accomplish and then start setting those smart goals? Like make it measurable, make it time limited, make it something that's actually attainable, not like plan small kind of attainable, but like, you know, if you're 500 pounds right now and you're saying by June, I want to be 182, that's not really achievable. Okay. Not without drastic.

Tiffany Wickes (25:39.348)

measures, which would probably include surgery. So listen, if you need more support guys, 100 % reach out. I am so here for you. I love talking about this kind of stuff. Get, get my podcast, share it with your friends. Make sure you subscribe. So you're alerted every Monday when episodes release, hit me up in the DMS and Instagram or Facebook. Like I'd love to talk to you guys out there.

and as always, my, my round actually starts today. So if you're listening to this early enough and you think I really do want some extra support with my fitness journey, like let's go, let's join, join right now. Don't second guess it. it's not, not too expensive. However, it could be expensive for you. So maybe this is one of those things that you say, babe, let's put this on the credit card. This is an investment in my health. This is not, you know, just, you know,

discretionary spending. Like this is an investment in us and me as a mother and a wife in, I want to be sexier for you. I want to, you know, feel better in my skin. I want to, I want to, you know, reach the point of confidence. That's a little higher than where I'm at, but we're going to start with confidence, confidence enough to say, I need some extra support. And you know what, if you're crushing it, like keep going, keep going. I'm so here for you. Clap in from the other side of this computer in this app. So.

All right, love you, mean it, stay strong, keep showing up, mamas. We'll talk soon, bye.