26: Why Your Body Hates New Year’s Resolutions (And What to Do Instead)

Why do New Year’s resolutions feel so motivating… and then fall apart?

In this first episode of 2026, Dr. Brook sets the tone for the year ahead by breaking down why the body resists resolutions—especially extreme, outcome-driven health goals—and what actually works instead.

Rather than pushing harder, ignoring signals, or swinging between extremes, this episode invites you into a different approach: learning how to listen to your body, honor its signals, and make sustainable changes that build trust instead of burnout.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why the body naturally pushes back against resolutions
• How outcome-based goals disconnect you from body wisdom
• The hidden cost of extreme health changes
• Why “all-or-nothing” thinking keeps people stuck
• How listening builds relationship—and relationship builds trust
• A simple way to begin asking your body questions without fear or obsession
• What’s coming in 2026 as we explore body signals like fatigue, brain fog, sleep issues, and more

This episode is an invitation to start the year differently—not by forcing change, but by partnering with the intelligent design God placed inside your body.

✨ Coming Up in 2026:
We’ll be diving into common body signals like headaches, chronic fatigue, sleep disruptions, stress patterns, and more—learning how to interpret what your body is asking for through a clear, grounded framework.

Upcoming Event

🗓 Live Workshop – San Diego
January 10 | 11:00–1:30
Learn how to build a relationship with your body and understand its signals in real time.
👉 Register Here

✨ Ready to shift from fear to faith in your body? Discover the Talk to Me, Body affirmation card deck—your daily reminder that God designed your body with wisdom and resilience.
Get yours here → drbrooksheehan.com/talk-to-me-body

🎧 Stay Connected + Explore More Support:

📲 Come say hi on Instagram: @drbrooksheehan

⭐️ If you loved this episode, would you take a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more women learn to listen, trust, and transform their health.

Transcript

So what I'm saying is with these resolutions that are outcome oriented and they're going towards all these things, it's based on what somebody else is saying.

So the trainer might say, no, you have to be here, Sally, you need to be here six days a week

Welcome to the body speaks podcast with me, Dr. Brook Sheehan. Join me, on a journey, in discovering how to interpret the subtle signs your body uses to communicate with you - the whispers, the screams, and everything in between. Your body truly holds the answers for your health and wellbeing. It’s time to discover them, together. Let’s dive in. 

Hi friend, Dr. Brook here with another episode of your body speaks Welcome, happy new year. We have made it officially day one of 2026. Holy moly, how did we get here? These years, I'm sure from your perspective as well are just flying by. And I don't want that to happen anymore. I really want us to really be able to slow down time. I actually...

This is not even related to what I want to talk about today, but I want to share this. I read a book last year in 2025 towards the end of the year called 10 X is easier than two X by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. And they were talking about all different things about business and things like that. But there was a section in the book talking about Kairos time and Chronos time.

And Kairos time is the time spent on things that really fulfill us, that bring us life, that get us excited, that bring joy. And Kairos time is not linear like Chronos time, right? Chronos is January 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and so forth. But when we have more Kairos time moments, we're really operating from a place where we're slowing down time. It's not just moving.

in front of us and we're not able to get our feet out from under us. So I thought that was a really cool thing. I've heard that concept before, but because I just read it recently, it's really anchored into me. I really, truly believe again, unrelated to what I want to talk about, but we'll get there. I truly do believe that no matter if you've read a book once or heard a concept at one point in your life, you've moved forward.

whether you believe it or not, you've moved forward at some point and your mindset is different. so then when you get reintroduced to a concept or an idea that you've already heard or you've read about and so forth, it's brand new. And from a biblical perspective, I've read the Bible so many times front to back over and over and I'm in it every single day and there's always something new that is pulling out.

on the page for me because I'm a different person when I wake up that very next day, right? So we're all different people. It's a brand new day. get to start a brand new year and start a beautiful journey understanding our body's better. If you heard last week's episode on Christmas, I talked about building a beautiful relationship with your body, but I really want to set the tone for where we're going in 2026 in learning

certain body signals and being able to figure out, interpret, right? Interpret those body signals, figure out what's going on so that we learn to listen better. And then when we listen better, we develop a better relationship with our body. And then when we have a better relationship with our body, there's trust and our body feels like, okay, she's gonna listen to me. Now I will tell you, I've been doing this for six years. I am not.

perfect. It is something I've developed over time, but I know there are moments and I can tell you there are. I don't even need to say I know there are moments. I know confidently that there are moments where my body said don't do it, don't do it. And I didn't anyway and I paid for it. And that actually showed up in a recent sickness that I got about six weeks or so ago where it was notifying me that hey,

All the signals were popping up that my immune system is going into action. The body was waving a little flag like, Hey, we need some support here. We don't need you trying to burn the candle at both ends. We don't need you eating sugar. We need you resting and we need you drinking water. And I didn't do any of that. I actually consumed sugar when I shouldn't have. it was a dairy free gluten free cookie. Okay guys. but I had it and I paid for it and I got sick over the course of a three day weekend. Not horribly.

unwell, but I didn't listen to that. And there are going to be times when you try to override your body signals. And I know another episode prior in 2025, I talked about your body will always win on the two surprising signs your immune system is, kicking up. I believe it's episode 22. Don't, quote me on that, but something titled around the immune system.

And I did talk about that. If you try to override your body's signals, it will always win. So in 2026, we are gonna learn how to figure out what our body is saying. You are not going to have to sit here and learn a different language, but you will need to learn certain things about yourself. And I'm gonna walk you through frameworks and I'm gonna talk all about that in great.

detail. But today, really what I want to talk about is why your body and my body hate resolutions. Yep, I said it. Here we are. January 1st. Everybody's building resolutions if they haven't already built them, which would have been a better thing to do. Although I'm not big on resolutions whatsoever.

But I think January 1st, when you're looking at the very first day of the year and you are barely starting to go, I'm going to go to the gym five days a week, or I'm not going to eat any more donuts, or I'm not going to do X, Y, and Z. If you're doing that on January 1st, you're already behind the times. You're already behind the times. I'm sorry to say it, but that should be something preparation going into the new year to really set yourself up on the right foot.

But I know you as my listener are not those kind of people. You guys really take into consideration everything that you do. And you're very mindful of putting really positive things in your world and positive things in your life. And I think it's so beautiful. And we're such kindred spirits in that. So just wanted to say that. So why does your body hate resolution?

Now I know you probably have been listening for a while and I share all the time that your body is a masterpiece. It's intended to be honored. It's not intended to be hacked. Resolutions

are very outcome driven. So what do I mean by when I say outcome driven? Because of course we want good outcomes. We want great outcomes. We want good outcomes with the pause, connect, ask, and adjust framework. I'm going to walk you through that in these upcoming episodes. However,

When I say resolutions are very outcome oriented, they really speak from a place of, I'm gonna lose 15 pounds. I'm gonna get biceps that you can physically see or six pack, or I'm going to do X, Y, and Z.

They're not taking into consideration what your body is actually seeking and needing. So while your body does want to help support you and while your body does want you to have strong muscles to help burn the sugar out of your bloodstream and get it into those muscles. So it's properly, being utilized while it wants all of those things. The way we go about getting those kinds of things,

is where the problem lies. So a lot of times these resolutions which tend to be around weight loss, if you even drive around the gym over the holidays, if you were driving around the gym or even into now, what are they doing? They're working on getting all the people to come in, right? All the things, 50 % off, come in for January, blah, blah, like sign up now. All that is great. I'm not even saying anything is wrong with that. But are we asking our body questions? Are we?

seeking answers from what our system is asking for this beautiful operating system that resides inside of us that God designed so beautifully. Are we asking it of the wisdom that it carries? Now, us signing up for gym membership, that sounds pretty crazy, Dr. Brook, you're asking me to ask my body if I should sign up for the gym. Yes and no, okay. You can sign up for the gym. But, what I'm saying is be very cautious.

to just do something because somebody is telling you to do it. Now that goes for me too. If you hear me saying something for you to do, run it through your own system, run it through your own body because what is right for me may not be right for you. So what I'm saying is with these resolutions that are outcome oriented and they're going towards all these things, it's based on what somebody else is saying.

So the trainer might say, no, you have to be here, Sally, you need to be here six days a week. You need to be eating chicken, broccoli, and a little bit of rice with a tad bit of sea salt on it. And that's it. And that's all you're going to meal prep. And you're going to do X, Y, and Z. Sure. You may get to the end result, but that's you pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. That's not taking your body into consideration. And a lot of times people get injured.

They get hurt, something happens, they can't keep it up, all of this. This is not about doing these practices that are not sustainable. I'm all about taking care of ourselves in a very, very healthy way, but things that are sustainable. So that's why resolutions suck. I'm gonna say it, resolutions suck in that sense. They don't allow you to do things sustainably because a lot of times we create these really big elaborate things.

They're so extreme. that brings me into the next one is the body hates resolutions because of their extreme ness. We do things so wildly crazy without even factoring in whether our body can actually handle it. Because we just think that because another 41 year old woman was at the gym six or seven days a week that I should already be at the gym six or seven days a week.

What you don't see is what she was doing in the other days that you weren't there. So trying to put yourself at a place 20 steps ahead of where you should be. You're essentially making your body really angry. And I say this with patients all the time. If you are a patient listening to this, you know, Dr. Brook does this all the time. We have to figure out why is your body so angry? Now,

I work with patients one-on-one and we unravel these pieces and we figure out what is it so angry about? How can we support it? But for those of you who don't work with me one-on-one, this is not a, hey, you need to work with me one-on-one. No, I really want to teach you these kinds of things so that you know how to support your body. You may not know all the nuances and the little things that biochemically go on and all the nerdy medical stuff that I carry. However, you don't need to know all that.

to have a relationship and a beautiful understanding of what's going on in your system. I digress, resolutions. The body hates resolutions because also another one, third one is they create an all or nothing approach. So I mentioned just like the extreme of going to the gym six or seven days a week because you see Sally going six or seven days a week and you didn't see what she was doing prior to all that, you think that you need to be 20 steps ahead.

And so if you don't do that, if you only go two days, then you are out for the count. And for the rest of the year, you're not even doing anything. You're not taking care of yourself. not, you've turned your body speaks podcast off. You're done with it. You don't, you don't want to learn anything about your body. It's just easier just to remain in the dark and to just do what you do. No, no, no, no, no, no. We are not going to do that in 2026. If you still have this on, praise God.

because in 2026, you're going to learn so many incredible things. We're gonna be talking about brain fog. We're gonna be talking about chronic headaches, sleepless nights, dizziness, chronic fatigue, stress signals, all these things that are going on. We're gonna sprinkle in some beautiful guest interviews so that you don't just have to hear my voice. You can hear other people's perspective on what they've learned about their body and.

how they are walking through life in this way of not being all the way on these extremes.

So before I get super long winded and get all preachy over here, and it's not, don't intend to get preachy guys, I just get really excited about the idea of other people experiencing their body and the way that so many of my patients are experiencing, because they learn these concepts in our meetings one-on-one and they're working through it and it brings the biggest smile to my face when.

patient or is telling me and they're like, Dr. Brook, I did X, Y, and Z and my body was telling me this and it's so beautiful to hear that because it's just it's so wonderful what is experienced through that because it is like a superpower. It's not you having to obsess about your health 24 seven and thinking about it and doing all the things and do I need to do keto and my gosh this guy and there's so many conflicting information. What do I do? And all the overwhelm.

cuts that overwhelm and it silences it. And you literally can say, you know, no, my body didn't say that was right for me. No, my body doesn't want that. Or hey, my body's okay with this and I'm gonna have a little bit of this or whatever. And I'm not talking about horribly bad things guys. This is not about giving into our flesh and giving into, my body said to eat two pieces of strawberry pie. That's a lot of sugar.

We want to do things that honor our body and our body is going to ask for good things. If it is our soma speaking, I don't mean to get on another tangent, but very very quickly the soma is the beautiful body God designed. The flesh that we hear about in the Bible, the sarx, is the one that we have to crucify, that we have to lay down, that we have to say, hey we're not giving into these fleshly desires of

having our sugars and our addictive behaviors and things like that. We want to honor our body this year. And honoring our body this year is really asking questions. There's certain things in our world that we do all the time that we don't even think about. I'm not asking for everybody listening to this to go sober. I went sober three

three years ago, was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. And my liver is extremely happy and it's smiling and it loves what it's doing. And it loves that it doesn't have to metabolize alcohol. The moment it enters my bloodstream. Now I never had an issue with it, but I don't know at this point, if I'm ever going to have a drink again, I say that like kind of loosely, you know, not sure. I just, I just enjoy how I feel and I don't.

think that I need to have that in order to feel a certain way. all that to say, coming back to why the body hates resolutions is the extremeness is the fact that it gets ignored. The fact that we try to think that we know better for it or that someone else knows better for it because they have a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. And so they must know, they must know that I have a cortisol issue. Do you?

Let's work through those signals in the best way possible.

And in my closing thoughts, I do want to share with you if you are local to San Diego or hey, if you are in the surrounding areas or hey, if you want to fly in, I am doing a beautiful workshop that not only helps you learn how to build a beautiful relationship with your body, but helps you figure out what these signals are saying, how to run it through the framework and really start to build this beautiful relationship with your body. Because

signals create better listening and listening creates a better relationship and a better relationship creates better trust. So I pray that you received something so beautiful from this episode today. Make your resolutions, but don't make them extreme. Don't make them difficult. Make them in a way that's honoring your body and sit and ask. And if you're not getting information from your body, pray about it and you'll get some information from

the Lord. on that note, I pray you have a beautiful rest of your day and we will see you next week. Happy 2026.