Why I'm going to do more of what makes me happy in 2024

I know my mammy friends have the best of intentions, but it is all feeling a bit much too soon when it comes to the health kicks

As parents, we have a duty to mind ourselves because our children need us for as long as they need us

Though we are now knee-deep into January and the season of good intentions, I can’t help but yearn for a simpler time, a time when it was completely socially acceptable to eat chocolate for breakfast and calling unannounced to anyone’s house was basically illegal. Of course, I am talking about Christmas. I am still grieving the absence of obnoxious fairy lights and hit-and-miss handpainted Santies - playschool artwork, which we are under a moral obligation to praise for fear of the ramifications with our adult children down the line.

What with its absence of fairy lights and plum pudding, January is tough going, especially given the number of friends who have already texted asking me to join a boot camp, a spin class, or, even more pedestrian still, to go for a walk (this is what we call a top-shelf pun). It appears the continuation of our friendly chats has become contingent on one or other of us huffing and puffing our way to a cardiac arrest while analysing the latest episode of Real Housewives. I know my mammy friends have the best of intentions — even the ones with Groupon vouchers — but it is all feeling a bit much too soon, and I am much more inclined to proceed towards a New Year, New Me with caution.

Watching the return of Operation Transformation (which is, somehow, in its 17th season), I couldn’t help but be struck by the motivations most participants had when applying for the show. Virtually all spoke of wanting to live as long and as well as they could for their kids. Some talked of parents and siblings who had died young. It was genuinely moving but it also got me thinking about how we approach health changes as we become parents.

In my younger single days, getting healthy was synonymous with one thing: losing weight and fitting into a smaller jeans size as I pounded the pavements of Dingle over the course of a Saturday night determined to procure what the French refer to as ‘the shift’.’ Now, of course, my outlook has changed, and if I were to rejoin the tag rugby team it would be motivated by my desire to get healthier and to have more energy to argue with my son about why he can’t have ice cream for breakfast (again).

The way I look at health is a little less superficial now, not just because I think of the ramifications of shuffling off this mortal coil for my family, but also because as we get older things like heart disease and high blood pressure and artificial hips are no longer something impacting our parents’ generation. 

With the passage of time, such health issues regularly cropping up for our contemporaries.

So it is no wonder I no longer look at being at my peak as quantifiable with fitting into the size small leggings in Zara (or fitting into the extra large leggings in Zara because as much as we love our ‘Spanish Penney’s’ on any given day, you could be either. Their vest tops are second to none, but their sizing is about as predictable as your toddler’s mood).

As parents, we have a duty to mind ourselves because our children need us for as long as they need us. At the start of the year, I genuinely feel the moral obligation to move a little more, to dispense with the sweet treats just a little, and to make better choices. Yet it is easy to make better choices when you can frame it as doing it for loved ones, but it is harder still to make better choices when it is for yourself. Often, despite what L’Oréal ad campaigns have told us for years, we can’t quite believe we are worth it.

But worth it we are, whether we are parents or not. That said, as parents it can be all too easy to make excuses not to make the time to look after ourselves — what with the 24-hour shifts and terrible working conditions. Yet because a happy parent is a happy child it is always good to at least try to practise a bit of self-care — which might take the form of mountain hikes or trampolining, or perhaps eating chips alone in your parked car whilst simultaneously texting your husband to say you’ll be home soon to get that healthy Operation Transformation salad recipe ready for the dinner.

Watching the five participants share their stories on Operation Transformation was inspiring. Still, it also reminded me that while we often focus on our relationships with others, we spend so little time focusing on our relationship with ourselves. I realise I am dangerously close to rehashing Sarah Jessica Parker’s voiceover narration at the end of a Sex and The City episode here, but our relationships with others, kids included, cannot be all that they can be until our relationship with ourselves is better, and that includes our relationship with our health. (Yes, I am officially a doctor now, and have the relentlessly awkward bedside manner to prove it).

This morning, I had full intentions of going for a dip in the sea, but then I found a forgotten Advent calendar, and without going into the specifics of what transpired, let’s just say I’m fairly sure my blood is composed of 95% Lindt chocolate now. As I dive into being a 2024 mammy, I am going to do more of what makes me happy, be it eating chocolate for breakfast or getting fit and healthy, because maybe L’Oréal was right all along —maybe I am worth it. After all, Jennifer Aniston told us we were, and a friend never lies, especially a friend with great hair and a multi-million dollar sponsorship deal.