January Is Not a Fresh Start – It’s a Threshold
January arrives with frost on the ground, light still scarce and the quiet understanding — at least in the natural world — that this is not a time for bold moves. Yet within hours of the year turning, our inboxes and screens tell a very different story. We are urged to upgrade ourselves, optimise our bodies, cleanse our systems and purchase our way into better health. Preferably by Tuesday. It’s a strange moment to be told to do more when everything around us is doing less. Because the body, unlike Amazon, does not operate on next-day delivery.
While January marketing insists on a fresh start, the body is still carrying the weight of the year it has just lived. Stress doesn’t dissolve at midnight on December 31st. Neither do exhaustion, disrupted sleep, inflammation or the low-level tension that has become a background hum of modern life.
Our ancestors understood this instinctively. Winter was not a time for reinvention — it was a time for survival, conservation and repair. Food was simpler. Movement was intentional, purposeful rather than performative. Energy was guarded carefully, because it had to last. No one emerged from midwinter demanding six new habits and a complete personality overhaul. So when people feel sluggish, heavy, foggy or emotionally flat in January, this is not a personal failure. It’s the body doing exactly what it has evolved to do: slow down, take stock and recover.
Look outside. Trees are dormant, sap sits low and fields rest. Animals conserve energy, feeding on what is available rather than searching for novelty. In Ireland, January traditionally meant hearty soups, broths, stews, fermented foods, preserved vegetables, stored grains and bones. There were no “detoxes” — because nothing about Winter life was excessive enough to require one.
Contrast that with today, where we are encouraged to punish our bodies for December’s excesses — many of which were enthusiastically promoted by the very same influencers now urging restraint. The New Year, New Me messaging is desperate, intense and needy. If it were a person, you’d cross the street to avoid them. It’s worth asking who benefits from this sense of urgency — because it certainly isn’t our health.
Winter bodies are not broken
Modern wellness culture treats Winter like an inconvenience to be hacked. Low energy is framed as laziness. Rest is suspicious. Appetite is something to override. Slowness is something to correct. But winter physiology is different by design. Metabolism shifts. Digestion changes. The nervous system seeks warmth, predictability and rhythm.
Trying to force radical change in January is like planting seeds into frozen ground and then blaming the soil when nothing grows. The timing is wrong — not the intention.
One of the great myths of our time is that health is something we are constantly failing at — and that the solution is a growing collection of powders, patches, challenges and programmes. All offer certainty. All promise results. And all quietly imply that your body would behave itself if you’d only follow the plan properly. Our ancestors, meanwhile, managed without any of this. They didn’t outsource their wellbeing to external authorities. They watched the land, the weather, their energy and their appetite. Health was something tended daily, through routine and attention — not chased in dramatic bursts of motivation.
Real health still works this way. It is built on foundations that are deeply unglamorous and rarely trend on social media. Regular meals stabilise blood sugar and prevent the energy crashes that leave people reaching for stimulants or sugar. Warm, cooked food reduces digestive strain and frees up energy for repair. Adequate protein supports muscle, bone strength and immune resilience — not just for appearance, but for ageing well. Sleep, perhaps the least negotiable foundation of all, cannot be hacked or supplemented. Without enough of it, everything else wobbles. Daylight helps regulate appetite, mood and circadian rhythm, even at this time of year. And consistency — the least exciting concept in the wellness world — tells the body it is safe, all is well.
For most of us, responding to the body in January means eating regularly even when appetite feels dulled, choosing warm meals over rushed or raw food and including enough nourishment to feel steady rather than virtuous. It often means going to bed earlier without apology, getting outside during daylight hours even when you don’t feel like it and allowing routines to be repetitive rather than impressive. These choices don’t generate dramatic before-and-after photos, but they do something far more important: they create stability - and stability is what allows health to build quietly, not just in January, but throughout the year.
In the old seasonal calendar, renewal didn’t belong to January. It belonged to Imbolc, when the light begins to return and energy subtly starts to shift. Change doesn’t need to be forced. It arrives when the conditions are right. January is the pause that makes that possible. Rather than asking “What should I fix?” — a question heavily sponsored by consumer culture — a more useful question might be: what supported me this year gone by, and what depleted me? Am I nourishing myself regularly or reactively? What can be simplified rather than added? This is not exciting but it is effective.
Spring will come, it always does. Energy will rise and appetite will change. Motivation will return — without coercion or discount codes. We do not need fixing right now; we need compassion. Perhaps the most radical act at the start of a new year is to stop taking health advice from algorithms, influencers and the media designed to sell us things and to start listening to the body that has already carried us this far.
Wishing you a healthy, grounded and nourishing New Year.
Happy New Year! Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh.
