HSOS #23: Why January Resets Don’t Work for Women

If January has you thinking you need to fix everything, cut everything, and be perfect by next week, let’s pause. Reset culture sounds motivating but usually ends in burnout and self-blame. This conversation dishes out a much better plan: fewer habits, more consistency, and a foundation that actually works in real life. 

Let’s talk.

Welcome to Her Season of Strength—where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy—registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman when it comes to aging like you mean it.

This show isn’t about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It’s about building real strength—physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I’ll share straight-talking nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies, and conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin once again.

Menopause is not an ending, it is only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

 📝 Here are a few things I cover: 

• The noise and pressure of January resets
• Why detoxes and cleanses fall apart
• All-or-nothing thinking and burnout
• Motivation fades, structure sticks
• Fewer habits, better results
• Supporting your body, not shrinking it
• Consistency over starting over
• Strong in 21 (21 days for $21) Challenge

Links & resources for this episode:

Fit After 50 Plus Program: 8-Week Nutrition Coaching & Fitness Program for women 50+. Next session starts winter of 2026. Join the interest list today for the best bonuses and discounts offered.

Free cheat sheet: "20 Tips to Crushing Menopause"

Join my free weekly newsletter list and get a new high protein recipe sent to your inbox every Thursday.

Find me on social media: Instagram I Facebook I Tiktok

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there, and welcome to her season of Strength, where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy, registered dietician, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman. When it comes to aging like you mean it, this show isn't about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles.

[00:00:20] It's about building real strength, physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I'll share straight talking, nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies. And conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin. Once again, menopause isn't an ending. It's only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

[00:00:39] Happy New Year and welcome to 2026. I cannot believe it's 2026 another year in the books. And if you're listening to this on New Year's Day, I just wanna pause and say thanks for choosing this kind of conversation today. Thanks for listening in. Maybe your house is quiet, maybe you're still in your [00:01:00] PJs.

[00:01:00] I hope you have the day off and you're able to just chill out and rest from the craziness of the holidays. Maybe you're already scrolling social media, seeing detox teas and cleanses and "what I eat in a reset" and promises that this program or that influencer or that coach will finally fix everything.

[00:01:22] January has a really loud voice and it tells us YOU need to start over. YOU need to clean things up. YOU need to undo the damage that you've done over the holiday season, and underneath all of that is this subtle message. It says, you messed up. Now fix it. And I don't believe that's true, not about your body and not about your health, and not about the woman that, that you are today.

[00:01:46] So today I wanna offer you something different, not hype and not hustle. Not a dramatic overhaul, just a little calmer, smarter, more long-term and sustainable way forward. So before we tear it apart, [00:02:00] let's acknowledge why that reset idea is tempting. Because reset feels clean, it feels hopeful. Resets promise clarity.

[00:02:10] And when you've been feeling tired, when you've been feeling off track or uncomfortable in your body, the idea of wiping that slate clean, it feels comforting, doesn't it? It feels like control, certainty and a fresh start. And here's the catch, resets focus on removal. Getting rid of things, not replacing things or not replacement.

[00:02:35] They take things away without teaching you how to live. Once that reset is over, that's where things fall apart, because eventually real life, it shows up again. It's always gonna keep coming back. Sorry. Let's get honest about what a reset usually means. It usually means cutting out whole food groups, like cutting, whole macro groups, cutting carbs or sugar, or [00:03:00] eliminating foods that you enjoy.

[00:03:02] Doing workouts that feel punishing, expecting energy that simply you don't have right now. And women in midlife, were trying to do this on top of all of the hormonal shifts that are going on, all of the increased stress, decreased sleep, or decreased quality and quantity of sleep, and just decades of diet baggage.

[00:03:27] So when the reset collapses, the story becomes, "I just can't stick to anything", or "I've tried everything", or "something must be wrong with me", and nothing's wrong with you. What's wrong is the expectation that you can radically change everything overnight and sustain it forever. That's not discipline.

[00:03:47] That's just unrealistic. And I say this with confidence after 30 plus years in the field as a registered dietitian, that sustainability always [00:04:00] beats intensity, always. I also see that in training. I've been a personal trainer for over four years now, and I see the same thing when it comes to exercise as I see with nutrition.

[00:04:13] So let's talk about what does work. So instead of asking, what do I need to fix, ask, "what do I want to build?" Because habits are built the same way that strength is built. You don't walk into a gym and live the heaviest weight on day one and expect your body to suddenly adapt and be stronger and everything to change.

[00:04:37] You start exactly where you are, you repeat. You progress. The same is true with nutrition and lifestyle habits. This is why I encourage women to focus on one or two habits at a time. Not because they aren't capable of more of changing everything all at once be, but because success, it compounds. [00:05:00] So some examples might be eating a protein rich breakfast most days.

[00:05:04] I know that seems small, that just that one little change. It can make a big difference. Maybe it's that you start strength training twice a week consistently, and maybe it's only for 15 minutes each time, but that's a big change from what you were doing before. Maybe it's about drinking more water and hydrating your body better before worrying about loading up on tons of supplements.

[00:05:29] Maybe it's about planning your dinners instead of deciding when you're already exhausted and you get home at the end of the day from work and you do not have the mental capacity to actually think about eating healthy. And these may sound so simple, but simple doesn't mean easy and simple does not mean ineffective.

[00:05:49] In fact, these are habits that make big differences when it comes to our metabolism, our energy levels, as well as our confidence over time. [00:06:00] Because motivation, it's unreliable. It's super high on January one. I always call this the honeymoon period. And it's not necessarily always, January reset, January mindset.

[00:06:12] It can be any time that you start something new. It's so exciting and you're like, oh yes, I'm gonna do this and everything's gonna be great, and I'm gonna be perfect and I'm never gonna have any, missteps and. All of a sudden that starts to decrease or it can com, completely disappear.

[00:06:29] And this is why we see that so often these January resolutions are over by, sometimes January 9th, sometimes the end of January. Maybe you make it a couple months. But that is normal. Habits don't rely on motivation. They rely on structure and structure is repetition, right? Just keeping doing the same thing over and over. Repetition, it builds your identity.

[00:06:57] You stop being someone who's trying to [00:07:00] get back on track and you start being someone who does these things. You're doing it right. And this is so important, especially, for women as we, get older and we start to see these hormonal changes because you're not trying to shrink yourself.

[00:07:13] You're trying to support your body. So that actually carries you forward through aging and carries you into those next decades of life with strength and  promoting quality of life. We start to change from shrinking our bodies and being thinner and skinnier to more about I wanna be stronger, I wanna be functional. I wanna still do things that I wanna do and be independent. And what that requires is patience and practice and support. Okay. It's just doing the same thing over and it, and I see it after decades of working with women, here's what I know for sure, that women who succeed long term, they don't do more.

[00:07:56] They do less, but they focus on consistency. They focus [00:08:00] on one day at a time, one habit at a time. Whether that's, just trying to get in a little more movement or a little more exercise. Or maybe it's, like I said, maybe it's, doing better at just eating breakfast in general. Making sure you're always getting protein at meals.

[00:08:15] Maybe, you're trying to do meditation or decrease stress levels. Any of these things, just the small changes, but just continue doing them over and over. And the next thing they're gonna become habitual. And then you can move on to that next thing, but. The women who succeed, they stop chasing perfection.

[00:08:34] They stop starting over on Monday. They stop trying to prove something to themselves, and instead they commit to just showing up consistently with support. It's not always gonna look perfect. It's not always gonna be, like exactly how you want it to be. Sometimes it might just be doing something little and going, okay, I did something right.

[00:08:55] That's progress. I've seen women gain strength that they never [00:09:00] thought possible. Did that happen overnight? Absolutely not. That happened with this, them just continuing to come back even after life got in the way, even after lives got really busy or maybe they got sick, which, it's winter time, right?

[00:09:14] I, and I'm frequently seeing my clients, be like, oh my gosh, I got COVID or I'm down with the flu. Or, this illness. Or maybe I had to have surgery and I had to take four weeks off or something. But these are people that continue coming back. They don't quit. Even if they have setbacks, they're, but then, I think with this repetitive nature, with this consistency, they build confidence in themselves.

[00:09:42] 'cause they're like, yeah, a I'm doing this, and they build more energy so that they see what oh, when I exercise more. This is when I have more energy during the days. So they're gaining that confidence, not from resets, but from [00:10:00] routines. So here's something I wanna say very clearly.

[00:10:04] Needing support does not mean you're weak. It means you're human. Accountability is not about pressure, it's about momentum and structure. It's not about restriction, but it's about relief from the overwhelm. Of trying to do everything all at once. And when someone else helps to hold the plan, you can stop carrying everything in your head.

[00:10:28] And that's why community matters. That's why coaching matters. That's why programs work when they're designed with real life in mind. And that means, changes that you're like, I need to do this forever. And I think when you get that into your head, when you move away from I need to lose 20 pounds in.

[00:10:47] One month or two months, or you set a time period on things, when you get away from that and you look at this more about, this is my life, this is what I need to do [00:11:00] forever. And I know that sounds, that can sound scary. Be like, oh my gosh, I have to work out three times a week forever. Or I have to eat lots of vegetables forever.

[00:11:11] Or I need to meal prep on the weekends forever. These are long-term habits that are gonna actually make it easier for you to maintain health and wellness. So when you get rid of that short-term quick fix mindset, and you look at it like, this is my long-term. This is the way I live, this is how I want to live it it's mind blowing.

[00:11:37] It's a big change, and this is why I created, I'm so excited about this program and I hinted to it last week. But I created rather than some reset for January, I created a three week or 21 day just little mini program that's called Strong in 21. And I. I running it [00:12:00] from January 26th through February 15th.

[00:12:02] And so what's gonna happen is these, these people that start things on January one or that first week in January, usually by January 26th, they're done with it. They're like, Nope, I've had it. I don't wanna do it. And that's why this program, it's not flashy, but it's foundational. I want to create solid foundations for the long term.

[00:12:22] So it's about choosing. Just a few habits, a couple things to focus on practicing them consistently and building strength, both physically as well as mentally, right? It's for women who are done starting over because as we, as we hit. Our forties and beyond, it's our mindset changes, right?

[00:12:44] We're done with those quick fixes. We wanna feel capable, we wanna feel strong, we wanna feel confident not just during January, but just forever, for moving forward for long term. So I'm gonna put the link in the show notes for my strong and 21. I think you'll be surprised. It's it's, [00:13:00] I don't wanna say, I don't wanna say cheat, but I did not wanna make it.

[00:13:05] Anyone not wanna do it because of any kind of money reasons. So basically I made it strong in 21. So it's $21 for 21 days. Super simple. And it includes both the nutrition and the exercise piece, but in small bites just to create those, that foundation. I'm super excited. It's gonna be fun and I'll start talking more about it.

[00:13:29] Here, this coming week. You'll hear a little bit more about it. So as you step into this new year, I want you to kinda let go of the idea that you need to fix yourself because you're not broken, you're becoming right. You're becoming so many more things here in this middle life. It's not. It's not the end of anything because progress, it's built on repetition.

[00:13:52] Confidence is built through consistency, and strength is built through support, and you don't have to do this alone. All right. [00:14:00] I hope you enjoy your New Year's day, and I just want you to remember this is about progress over perfection. We're in this for the long haul and this is your season of strength.

[00:14:10] Have an amazing day.