Let's Not Bullshit Each Other - You’re Not Starting This Week. So Here’s What You Need for Next Year

Stop pretending the last week of December doesn’t count. We cut through the holiday fog and the “January will fix me” myth to show how small, steady choices right now create a January that feels possible instead of punishing. No gimmicks. No miracle plans. Just blunt truth and five practical strategies you can carry into the new year without burning out by the second week.

We start by dismantling the fake fresh start and the idea that seven chaotic days are invisible to your body or habits. Then we lay out a path that actually works under real-life stress: hold the line, avoid the all-or-nothing spiral, and make one or two smart choices daily. You’ll hear why joining a gym out of guilt backfires, how “new year, new me” overhauls collapse, and what to do when motivation is nowhere to be found. Instead of chasing the perfect plan, we anchor on ownership, consistency, and decisions that fit your current life—because action creates motivation, not the other way around.

From simple anchors like one normal breakfast and a hard stop on late-night grazing to reframing the week as momentum-building rather than damage-maximizing, this conversation gives you a clear, no-BS way to enter January with control. We also point you to resources that keep you grounded when life gets loud: free weekly tips, a practical book on choice-based change, and coaching designed around your real world—not a fantasy schedule. If you’re done performing change and ready to choose it, this one hits hard and leaves you with steps you can take today.

If this resonated, subscribe, share it with someone who needs a reality check, and leave a quick review so more people find no-BS, sustainable strategies. Then tell us: what small choice will you make today to protect your January?

Stop Dieting. Start Choosing.

I’m Jonathan Ressler, Transformation Guide and author of Shut Up and Choose. I lost 140 pounds and built a movement the diet industry hopes you never find. No starvation. No obsession. No gym marathons. Real transformation starts when you stop outsourcing discipline and start leading yourself.

The truth is simple: weight loss isn’t about willpower—it’s about integrity. Every time you keep a promise to yourself, you rebuild confidence. Every smart choice strengthens self-trust. That’s the foundation of lasting change. My mission is to help busy, high-performing people take back control of their health, energy, and mindset—without diets, shots, or shame.

Each episode of the Shut Up and Choose Podcast cuts through the noise with real talk, proven strategies, and small, smart steps that actually last. No gimmicks. No hype. Just truth that works in real life.

Get free weekly tips at JonathanRessler.com/weekly-tips.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open And No-Excuses Premise
• 1:19 Holiday Brain And The Fake Fresh Start
• 3:10 Owning Delay Without Self-Destruction
• 5:15 Why Seven Days Still Matter
• 8:12 Hold The Line: Small Smart Choices
• 9:44 Five Strategies For The New Year
• 16:08 Action Over Motivation And Perfection
• 19:05 Two Paths Into January

Transcript

Annoucer: 0:01

You're listening to Shut Up and Choose. The no bullshit, no excuses podcast for people who swear they want to lose weight, but keep choosing everything that stops them. And before we continue, if you're gonna bitch and moan and act like a fucking pussy the entire time, skip this one. This dude dropped 140 pounds with no shots, no diamonds, no pills, and not one single fucking membership slide at the gym. Just real choices that fit real life. If you're tired of gaming, tired of the bullshit, and ready for somebody to finally call you out and tell you the truth, you are in the right place. This show punches all of them right in its fat face. Stop coming in, start choosing. This is Shullip and Chews. Now, here's Jonathan.

Jonathan Ressler: 1:19

Hey, welcome back to Shullip and Chews podcast that cuts in the noise, the nonsense, and all that bullshit that the internet and Instagram and all those gurus out there telling you, or even that woman from a county thing who's taking the GLP ones and can't eat without having to run to the bathroom to throw up or have diarrhea. Well, hopefully we're gonna quiet all that noise for you. I thought I'd leave you that nice image for this Christmas week. And I get it, it's it's Christmas week. So we're not gonna make believe. I I know you're not really listening. You're hearing the words, but nothing is really landing. And because this is peak excuse season, Christmas, New Year's, parties, travel, stress, chaos, you're armed with every reason on earth to delay responsibility. And if you let yourself slide this far into December, you're not flipping the switch now. You're not waking up today thinking, this is the moment. You're thinking, I'll get serious in January. That's you and pretty much everybody else. And you know what kills me? I already know you're not starting this week. You know it, I know it. We both know the performance. I can hand you the most airtight strategy on earth, and you'd still say, not now, after the holidays, after the parties, after I reset. It's the same script every December. People act like responsibility short circuits when Christmas lights turn on. They pretend New Year's has magical powers, but it doesn't. But I'm not here to hammer you today because it's Christmas week and I know exactly where your head is. It's usually the part where people expect me to yell. Not today. Today's about calling out the truth that you're already living. If you let yourself drift this far, you're not morphing into a focused, disciplined, clean eating machine between Christmas and New Year's. That week is the black hole of discipline and swallows up every good intention. People call it the in-between week. I call it the week where everyone gives up completely while pretending they're planning a comeback. So let's acknowledge the obvious. You're not starting today, you're not starting tomorrow, you're not starting until the calendar flips because you, like millions of others, are hooked on the fake, fresh start. And as much as I want to shake you, I know the truth. Nothing I say overrides holiday brain. You already decided this week doesn't count. So instead of pushing, I'm doing something different. I'm going to give you honesty with the snark required to break through the season. If you aren't starting right now, fine. Then stop lying about it. Own it. Say it out loud. I'm not starting this week. Good. Now we can deal with the reality. Because here's what I won't let you do. I won't let you use this week as an invitation to wreck yourself. You want to wait for January? Fine. But don't turn the next seven days into an all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-ruin buffet. You don't need perfection. You don't need willpower. You don't need rules. You need a few smart choices so you don't walk in the January already crushed. I know you're not flipping the switch this week, but I also know you want next year to look different. And that starts with hearing the truth you never give yourself, even on Christmas week. Let's do a holiday honesty check because this week turns people into the most delusional version of themselves. Every December without fail, people say the same line. I'm going to be good this week. Really? You are? Out of nowhere? After three straight weeks of sliding like it was a competitive sport? You're going to pull it all together on Christmas week? That's fascinating. People talk about the stretch of days like it's sacred, magical, and immune to logic. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, the limbo days afterwards, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day. They treat this week like the universe granted them immunity. Like calories don't count. Choices don't count. Behavior doesn't count. Then they promise, I'll be good. It would be adorable if it wasn't just so predictable. The holiday isn't the problem. Your mindset is. There's nothing in the Christmas playbook that requires chaos. No rules says that you have to lose control. No cosmic clause that forces you to eat like you're trying to set records. The day does nothing. They and you do everything. The second December arrives, you start prepping the script. It's the holidays. This is what we do. No, this is what you choose. You choose tradition over responsibility, indulgence over intention, and sliding into honesty. That part is always self-inflicted. So here's the part that most people hate hearing. If someone is waiting for the date to say to them, they're not ready for change. They're not starting a transformation, they're starting another cycle. People who want real change don't worship the calendar. They don't sit around waiting for January to hand them discipline. They make a choice in real time inside of real life. Not because it's convenient, but because they're actually ready. This week exposes everything. If somebody says they're going to be good, but their entire history says otherwise, the issue isn't the holiday. It's the lie they keep selling themselves. They don't need magic. They need ownership. They don't need a clean slate. They need a decision. You don't need a resolution. You need honesty about the choices that got you here. The holiday isn't holding you hostage. Your mindset is. Here's the simple truth the holiday doesn't break people. Your excuses do. And that honesty is the only place that real change starts. So you already know exactly how this week goes. If you've let things slide this far into December, you're not waking up on Christmas Eve filled with discipline, strategy, and self-control. That fantasy died weeks ago. Yet you still cling to the same line every year. It's only seven days if seven days of reckless choices has no impact. As if seven days are invisible to your body and the calendar erases the consequences. This is the thinking that keeps you stuck. You call it a short window, you say that you've earned it, you swear you'll get serious in January. You burn down a whole week because destroying seven days feels easier than being honest for five minutes. The mental gymnastics is impressive. You bend logic and twist reality and rewrite biology, all to protect the belief that you can binge your way through the holidays and transform somehow miraculously on January 2nd. You know that's not happening. You didn't fail in January because the plan is bad. You fail because of what you did in the last weeks of December. You create a problem so big that the new year feels overwhelming before it even starts. You step into January exhausted and guilty and bloated and irritated and already behind. Then you restrict, you implode, you quit, and repeat the cycle next December while pretending it was fate instead of choices. And here's the part you don't want to hear. If you've coasted, avoided, or spiraled your way into this point, you're not suddenly discovering discipline this week. That switch doesn't flip because the calendar looks festive. If you were ready, you would have already started. Pretending otherwise only makes January harder. But here's the part that you need. You don't have to fix everything this week. You don't have to be perfect and you don't have to transform overnight. In fact, you can't. You only need to hold the line, not crash it, not extend the spiral, and not build a mess that you'll spend the next month digging out of. One or two small, smart choices a day, tiny ones, choices that keep you from detonating your progress before the year even ends. You don't need discipline, you need clarity, you need honesty, and you need to stop pretending seven days is nothing when seven days is exactly why you start the year defeated. So hold the line, protect your sanity, stop adding problems you know you can't handle later. This week is not about perfection, it's about control. Stay steady through these seven days, and you walk into January with momentum instead of regret. And deep down, you know that's the truth. So here are the things you need to think about over the next week. I'm gonna give you five simple strategies that you have to use in the new year. Things that you need to carry into the new year if you want a chance of changing your life instead of rehearsing the same bullshit that you've repeated every December for the past decade. I'm not asking you to be perfect this week. You won't be. I'm not asking you to suddenly become disciplined while cookies are flying around your house like confetti. You won't. I'm asking you to think. I'm asking you to use the next seven days to get honest about who you want to be when the calendar flips. Because the decisions you make now are the ones that you'll drag into January with you. So here are five strategies you have to use in the new year if you want to stop talking about change and actually create it. First thing, people are gonna go fucking nuts when I say this. Don't join the gym. Every January you convince yourself this is the year. You picture yourself turning into a disciplined machine running on treadmills and lifting weights, posting sweaty selfies like you found a new identity. Then by February, or maybe even sooner, maybe the second week of January, you get busy. You need a break, you lose motivation, and suddenly the membership becomes a monthly donation. Gyms build their entire business model on you quitting. They count on you thinking a treadmill will fix the choices you refuse to take responsibility for. You don't need a gym to change your life. You need ownership, you need some consistency, and you need just one smart choice at a time. If the gym helps later, that's great. But joining January 2nd because you feel guilty is not a strategy. It's self-punishment dressed up as ambition. The second thing, don't overhaul your entire life on January 2nd. This is the full new year, new me, bullshit performance that makes you feel productive without producing anything real. You build a list of 30 new rules, 12 new goals, five new habits, and a full personality overhaul. It collapses every single time. It's too big, too dramatic, and completely unrealistic. Reinvention fantasies feel easier than reality. Real change is simple and repeated. Real change, honestly, is boring. Real change is steady and it's small. Small wins. Dramatic reinventions fail every fucking time. Third, don't go off the rails this week. Yeah, I know you're not starting now. I already accepted that. But it doesn't mean that you should make things worse. This is the week you say it's only seven days. This is also the logic that keeps you stuck all year. Seven days of chaos is enough to make your January. I'm not asking you for perfection. I'm asking you to hold the line. Make a few smart choices. Eat one normal breakfast. Drink some water. Stop using the holiday as an excuse to become unrecognizable to yourself. You don't need to start early. You need to stop digging yourself deeper into a hole before it even starts. Fourth, stop searching for the perfect plan because there is no perfect plan. There never was. You chase one because you want something to blame when it falls apart, whether that's a program, a system, a blueprint, something official enough to carry the guilt for you. You're not stuck because you lack a plan. You're stuck because you avoid responsibility and consistency. The two things every transformation requires. When you stop hunting for perfection and start making decisions, everything shifts. The perfect plan is not coming. You're waiting for something that doesn't exist. The fifth thing, stop thinking motivation will magically appear on January 1st. Motivation is not coming to save you. It's unstable, it's emotional, and most of all, it's temporary. It disappears the second you get stressed out or irritated or hungry. Action creates motivation, not the other way around. You act, you build momentum, and then you feel motivated. You avoid, you stall, and then you wonder why everything feels flat. If you wait for motivation, you'll be in the same place next December saying the same lines to yourself all over again. So those five strategies, they're not suggestions. They're requirements if you want the new year to look different from the last ten. None of them require perfection. None of them require a plan. None of them require a miraculous burst of discipline the universe has not given you before. They require honesty. They require a little bit of responsibility. They require you to stop performing change and start choosing it. Spend this week thinking about who you want to be on January 2nd. Not the version of yourself who joins a gym out of guilt, not the version who tries to overhaul their entire fucking life in 24 hours, not the version who pretends seven days of chaos doesn't count, and not the version who wakes up with a perfect plan or motivational lightning strike. Think about the version of yourself who takes responsibility for one choice at a time. The version who understands your life is shaped by decisions, not diets, the version who's done waiting for a season or a date to grow up, or the version who's done explaining and ready to choose. The new year is not a fresh start. It's a continuation of who you are right now. Use this week to think about it, then use next week to choose. So I'll leave you with the reality check that you need. You're about to walk into January in one of two ways. You'll either walk into a tiny bit of momentum or you'll crawl in feeling miserable. There's no third option. And the difference between those two experiences is not a full plan or a huge breakthrough. It's one or two small, smart choices this week. That's it. Not perfection, not reinvention. A couple of decisions that keep January from punching you in the face. You treat January like a reset button. You talk about it like the month itself will fix your discipline, heal your habits, and erase the damage you spent all December creating. It's never worked that way. It will never work that way. The calendar has never fixed you. Your decisions will. And that's why this week matters more than you want to admit. You can lie to yourself and say that it's only seven days, and you can pretend that none of it counts, and you can repeat the same script you used last year. It doesn't change the truth. Everything you do this week sets a tone for how you start the new year. If you keep going off the rails, January will feel like climbing out of quicksand, slow, heavy, and fucking miserable. You already know this because you've lived it over and over it. But if you make a few small, smart choices this week, you'll walk into January with control instead of regret. You walk in with stability instead of chaos, and you walk in with your head clear instead of drowning in frustration. You'll walk into the new year proving to yourself that you can choose even in the hardest week of the year. You show yourself something more valuable than motivation. You show yourself capability. The difference between those outcomes is embarrassingly small. One solid breakfast, one decision not to binge at night, one moment where you stop yourself before everything goes sideways, one time when you refuse to repeat the pattern you already know makes you miserable. That's all it takes to change the direction of the next week. You love to pretend you need a dramatic change. You love dramatic announcements, you love telling everyone you're getting serious January 1st. You love the idea of a bold fresh start because it feels exciting, it's inspiring, it feels like action. But it's not action, it's performance. And it falls apart every time because the foundation underneath it is weak. The real foundation is built right now in the boring choices, in the unglamorous moments, and in these days when you're not motivated. In the week where you have zero intention of being perfect, that's where the momentum starts. That is where your January is shaped, and that's where you either begin the year in control or repeat the same loop you've been stuck in for years or literally decades. Here is the reality check. You can have a miserable January or a manageable January. You can enter feeling like you need to fix your entire life, or you can enter it feeling like you already started. One path feels heavy, one path feels possible. One is built on excuses, one is built on choice. You already know which one works. This week is not about being perfect. It is about not making your future self hate you. It's about not turning seven days into a disaster you'll spend the next month trying to undo. It's about giving yourself a small amount of momentum so January feels like progress instead of punishment. The calendar will not save you, but your choices will. And you get to make them right now. So let's wrap this up with the truth that you already know. You're not starting now, it's Christmas, it's New Year's, it's peak excuse season. I'm not expecting some magical surge of discipline to appear out of thin air, and that's fine. I'm not here to pretend you're becoming a different person in the last week of December. What's not fine is the fantasy that next year will be different while you change nothing. That belief is exactly what keeps you stuck. You treat January like a miracle. You walk into the year carrying the same habits, the same patterns, the same choices, and then act shocked when the calendar fails to save you. If you do nothing different, January will look exactly like December and February and March, and then the entire year you keep promising will be the one. This is the moment where you decide if next year is the year you talk or the year you act. If you want real change, you need a real strategy, a strategy that fits your life instead of fighting it. That is why my free weekly tips exist. Simple, they're clear, they're useful. Less than a minute to read, no sales pitches. They keep you grounded with the exact moments where you usually fall apart. Tens of thousands of people are to get them every Wednesday and they work. And if you want a real shot at starting the year in control, you should be on that list. And you can find that at my website, jonathanwrestler.com. Then there's my book, Shut Up and Choose, which is not a diet book. It's not another plan you pretend to follow. It's a guide to changing your life through the choices instead of rules. Thousands have used it to understand their habits, to stop their excuses, and finally get honest about decisions shaping their health. If you want a real system instead of another performance, read it. It'll hit you harder than any January resolution ever could. And if you're serious about transforming your life, reach out to me and work with me one-on-one. Not when you feel motivated, not when things calm down, when you're ready to take ownership. More than 300 people have worked with me and lost over 13,000 pounds collectively. That's with no diet, no shots, no pills, no gym requirements, no performances, just choices that fit your real world and finally produce results you can maintain. If you want that level of change, I can help you build it. So here's your reality check. You can keep pretending next year will magically be different, or you can make a few small, smart moves, get clear about what you want, and start the year already. Already moving in the right direction. You don't need perfection. You need honesty. You need responsibility. You need to decide if you want to live the same year again or build something better. So have a Merry Christmas and have happy holidays. And oh yeah, don't forget to shut up and choose.

Annoucer: 20:26

Thanks for listening to Shut Up and Choose. If today's episode slapped you with some truth, good. That means it worked, and you've dropped the pussy attitude. Make sure to like, rate, and review, and connect with Jonathan on Instagram at Jonathan Wrestler Fat Loss. On YouTube at Jonathan Wrestler, and online at JonathanWrestler.com. No diets, no gimmicks, no excuses, no bullshit. Just smarter choices. Starting the second you hit stop on this episode. Shut up and choose. Now go make a better fucking choice.