Does this sound familiar?
You make New Year’s Resolutions, and you start out OK, but by March you’ve completely forgotten about them, given up, or simply “fallen off the wagon.” Many people who make New Year’s Resolutions never accomplish them. I believe New Year’s Resolutions are extremely ineffective as a behaviour modification incentive. The resolutions themselves aren’t the problem, but the way and the reasons they are made. I get the appeal of creating goals for a new year, since it seems like the perfect time to change something for the better in one’s life. But New Year’s Resolutions fail for a few reasons:
Why Your New Year Health Resoloutions Just Aren’t Gonna Happen
1. People generally make resolutions for the full year ahead, which is generally too long of a time frame (or actually, not really a time frame at all).
2. People make resolutions that are too generic (i.e., “I’m going to eat more healthily in 2025″).
3. People make resolutions that might be unrealistic (i.e. someone who has been severely overweight all of his or her life resolves to “lose 200 lbs. in 2025,” with no support system in place or real plan to accomplish the goal).
4. People don’t assess their support systems prior to embarking on resolutions.
There are more, but the above are the main reasons I believe people fail in their New Year’s Resolutions.
New Year Health Resolutions
So how can you avoid this pitfall? It’s simple. Change from “making resolutions” to “writing down SMART goals.” SMART is an acronym to help you remember how to set goals that you are more likely to achieve. This is what the letters stand for:
S is for Specific. Make sure that your goals aren’t too generic. For instance, don’t just say “I’m going to eat more healthily;” actually state how you’re going to do it (i.e. “I’m going to eat 5-10 servings of vegetables and/or fruits per day).
M is for Measurable. How are you going to know that you actually achieved your goal? You need a way of tracking it. For the goal above, you should start a nutrient intake journal, and actually write down how many servings of vegetables and/or fruits you’ve eaten per day.
A is for Attainable. Make sure that you can actually achieve the goal you’re setting. If your goal is to eat 5-10 servings of vegetables a day, but you live in an area where access to vegetables is restricted and you somehow don’t have access to that many veggies (highly unlikely in today’s global market world), the goal isn’t realistic or attainable.
R is for Relevant. If your goal is to eat 5-10 vegetables a day but you’re already eating that many, then this goal isn’t relevant to your lifestyle. Choose a better goal that will actually have an impact in your life.
T is for Time-based. Setting a goal to eat 5-10 vegetables a day in 2025 isn’t a good time-based goal. “2025” is too long a time period. You should set an actual date to measure your progress. For example, “I’m going to be eating 5-10 servings of vegetables per day by March 31st, 2025. This gives you 3 months to check your progress. Since it generally takes a minimum of 6 weeks to modify a behaviour, a 3-month goal date is usually pretty good for a check up on your goals. Don’t forget to re-evaluate goals at this time and change them as needed, or created new goals if you have accomplished what you first set out to do.
So instead of simply making a New Year’s Resolution, actually write down a SMART goal that you want to achieve. Finally, instead of setting one huge, vague goal for the year, you should try and set smaller, monthly, weekly, or even daily goals. For instance, if your New Year’s Resolutions included “becoming healthier in 2025,” break this down into smaller, more achievable, and more specific goals:
1. Eat 5-10 servings of vegetables and fruits per day by March 31st, 2025
2. Limit “treat foods” to once per week by June 30th, 2025
3. Walk at least 20 minutes 3 times per week by September 30th, 2025
4. Perform strength training exercises at least 2 times per week by December 31st, 2024
After setting these more specific goals, don’t forget to go back and give each of them the components of a SMART goal.
Finally, it’s difficult to modify a behaviour or achieve a goal without some support. Make a list of your support network, and make your goals public. The more people who know about your goal, the less likely you are to “fall off the wagon,” as you won’t want to disappoint your friends or family. Besides family and friends, using social networks to make goals public is also an effective way to encourage you to stay on track. I’ll be posting more about how to build a support network online later on.
And while I’m biased, I feel the need to emphasize that if one of your goals includes fitness and you haven’t been very active before or have been inactive for a while, you absolutely need to hire a Personal Trainer. Stay tuned for my next post, which will expand on why you need to hire a Personal Trainer. Those who embark on fitness journeys on their own and don’t have the support and knowledge of a trainer to guide them most often fail their fitness goals. Hiring a personal trainer will pay for itself in double when you achieve your goals faster and stay on track for the year. Invest in yourself… if you don’t, no other investment in your life will really matter.
So will your New Year’s Resolutions happen? It all depends on you. Make sure you set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based goals, build a support network in real life and online, and get on with it. Good luck in your journey this year.