Forget the pressure to transform yourself overnight. Leading lifestyle coach Andrea Marcellus believes real change starts with curiosity, pleasure and simplicity — not discipline at all costs. Her refreshingly practical philosophy could be the antidote to all those resolutions you’ve abandoned in previous years.
Every January, millions of us vow that this will be the year we finally overhaul our lives. We draw up regimented fitness plans, cut entire food groups out of our diets and invest in gym memberships, apps and matching activewear in an act of hopeful reinvention.
But by the time the first week is over, reality has usually crept in: the punishing workout schedule feels impossible, the restrictive eating becomes a slog and our carefully crafted resolutions dissolve under the weight of daily life. What was meant to be motivating ends up feeling like a personal failure.
According to Andrea Marcellus, author of The Way In: 5 Winning Strategies to Lose Weight, Get Strong and Lift Your Life, the problem isn’t a lack of willpower — it’s the way we design our resolutions in the first place. They’re too big, too intense, too joyless and too disconnected from the lives we actually live.
Her approach flips the script entirely, offering a gentler, more sustainable way to create changes that last.
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Don’t wait for January
Andrea isn’t shy about dismantling the mythology of 1 January. If you want to make a change, don’t delay it until the rush of Christmas is over; do it now.
“In my world, clients don’t gain weight over holidays. They don’t set New Year’s resolutions,” she says with a calm matter-of-factness. “We find customised lifestyles for busy people.”
For her, the New Year isn’t a line in the sand, but simply another opportunity to practice consistency. And that practice, she insists, works best when life is at its most chaotic. “The holidays are a great time to start,” she explains. “If your habits work when you’re pressured and stressed, they’ll absolutely work when life calms down.”
That means beginning with something so small, so doable, that there’s no friction involved.
Andrea is a champion of short, sustainable daily movement. “Less is way more, but it needs to be strategic,” she says. Ten minutes of deliberate exercise, done with focus and intention, carries more power than two weekly bursts of overambitious intensity. A mere seven minutes can be transformative — if you do it every day.
What matters is that the ritual is repeatable. The energy it generates should ripple into the rest of your day, leaving you steadier, stronger and a little more anchored. “Life isn’t about working out,” she explains. “Life is about enjoying life, and exercising is just a way to help facilitate this.”
Let life become the workout
In Andrea’s world, movement isn’t something you schedule — it’s something you inhabit. She explains how even standing at your desk can be a workout if you do it properly: with one foot elevated on a low stool, core engaged, shoulders relaxed, ribs softened. “You’ll be strengthening your abs and improving your posture all day long without even thinking about it,” she explains.
Zoom meetings? Ab work. Email sessions? Postural training. Long phone call? A chance to reset your alignment. These subtle shifts accumulate, turning idle moments into strengthening ones. They weave wellness into the texture of daily life, which, for Andrea, is the entire point. “It’s not about fitting your life around wellness,” she says. “It’s about weaving wellness into your life.”
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Rethink the way you eat
When it comes to food, Andrea’s philosophy is disarmingly liberating. Instead of rigid dieting or food group elimination, she divides eating into two categories: the meals you don’t share with others (which should be intentional and nourishing) and the meals you do share (which should be joyful and guilt-free).
Give yourself permission to enjoy your meals out with friends, order that burger or finish those fries — just ensure you return to healthy eating when at home.
Perhaps her most beloved concept is the ‘Rule of Awesome’. It works like this: take one bite of whatever treat or social food you’re about to eat. Then ask yourself: “Is this awesome?”
“If it’s awesome, enjoy it,” she says. “If it’s not, it’s not worthy of you.”
It’s not about restriction; it’s about discernment. Cold chips and mediocre pastries no longer make the cut; mindless munching while watching TV should be a thing of a past. Your social foods become treasured, intentional choices rather than impulsive ones.
Andrea is also keen to dismantle the cultural obsession with protein-maxxing. While protein is important, she frequently encounters clients who are, in her words, “over-proteining and under-fibring,” leaving them bloated, uncomfortable and confused by their lack of progress. Her solution is simple and utterly devoid of trend-chasing: “Stop with the idea of maxing. Relax on the protein and add more fibre.”
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Address stress before anything else
The biggest saboteur of New Year’s intentions, Andrea argues, isn’t food or motivation. It’s stress.
She describes the human tendency to overeat at night not as weakness, but as a biological strategy. Chewing stimulates the vagus nerve, creating a brief sense of calm in the nervous system. “We’re chewing our uncertainty away,” she says. When we feel overwhelmed, the body reaches for something — anything — that tempers the internal static.
Her antidote isn’t discipline. It’s curiosity. She teaches clients to pause and ask themselves what they’re actually seeking. Rest? Reassurance? Relief? According to Andrea, this simple moment of pause and questioning shifts the brain out of the reactive amygdala and into the prefrontal cortex, where conscious choices are possible again.
Curiosity becomes a balm. And over time, it becomes a habit of its own.
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Learn something new
Perhaps the most unexpected cornerstone of Andrea’s philosophy is her insistence that we all need at least one learning goal (or three, if possible) each year. Something with no grade, no pressure, no expectation of mastery.
Pottery, archery, painting — whatever sparks a flicker of interest.
“Being a student activates such a positive place in the brain,” she explains. It reawakens play, keeps the mind agile and recreates the upward trajectory we naturally lived in childhood, but often lose in adulthood, when routine becomes a kind of inertia.
It is, in many ways, Andrea’s secret weapon: a reminder that growth feels good.
Choose expansive resolutions, not restrictive ones
Andrea isn’t anti–New Year’s resolution. She simply wants us to set intentions that open us, rather than shrink us. The kind that cultivate possibility rather than promote punishment.
And if you must adopt a single resolution this year — a theme, a mantra, a tether she hopes you’ll return to — it’s this: “Focus on what you can do. Don’t make resolutions about what you can’t.”
A gentler year doesn’t mean a less transformative one. In Andrea’s world, gentleness is the transformation.
Feature image: Andrea Marcellus
