Health

Help for maintaining resolutions in the New Year

By Meghan Jaszczak

Community Health Educator at Copper Shores Community Health Foundation

Still fresh into the New Year, motivation and goals surrounding health and well-being are often soaring high. In fact, according to a recent study by Forbes Health, 62% of people felt pressured to set New Year's resolutions at the start of 2024. For many, this time of year represents an opportunity to reflect, evaluate, and set goals through a fresh lens and signifies an opportunity for improved health and vitality. Gyms are bustling, and there's all sorts of chatter about different diets and supplement regimens.

As someone that has worked as a nutrition-focused health educator for the past eight years, I've seen the immense pressure this can create for people. And often the intensity ends up petering out after a few months, as the everyday stressors and hustle and bustle of life catches up with us. Studies also reflect the challenges people face in maintaining these goals, with the most recent Forbes Health/One Poll survey indicating the average length of a New Year's resolution lasts about 3.7 months and research from the University of Scranton suggesting about 8% of people will achieve their New Year's goals.

So, what gives? From my own professional experience and understanding behind the science of habit formation and behavior change, I'd venture to guess there are several reasons as to why New Year's resolutions are difficult to maintain long-term. Let's walk through some of these thoughts and explore some practical solutions together!

1. Robust and Swift Changes

Often when looking to set goals or makes changes, we are excited by the prospective change and motivation is high. This excitement can lead to big changes over a short period of time (ie - going from no consistent exercise to working out at the gym every day). The problem that tends to occur with this approach is that once we're past the few first weeks of adrenaline and excitement, we burn out and begin to feel overwhelmed and exhausted trying to maintain these changes to our routine.

Solution -- Think big, but start small. Seemingly "small" alterations in habits tends to result in greater success long-term because these adjustments in behavior or actions are manageable for people to maintain and build upon. There is quite a bit of research that backs up this idea - if you've ever heard of books like Atomic Habit or Tiny Habits – The Small Changes that Change Everything, they talk about the efficacy of implementing this type of small, yet mighty approach.

2. Black or White Mentality

Thinking of success for healthful habits in black-and-white terms creates a rigid framework that makes it easy to "fail", even though that's not truly the case. Often, this all-or-nothing mentality can cause stress or bad self-image when it comes to your health and wellbeing, such as eating "good" vs "bad" food, and can also be self-sabotaging towards your goals - ie "I already had one cookie, so I might as well keep going".

Solution -- Embrace the gray. Being fluid in your approach and mindset is an important element to sustain long-term changes. Consider that some days our habits may be less healthful than others and that's okay. The biggest impact on our health and wellbeing are our consistent habits, not what occurs in one day or even one week. Remember, you are already achieving success simply by taking each day as a new opportunity towards a healthful life.

3. Comparison

It's easy to get sucked into the notion that we should be doing what "everyone else" is doing or what your peer group is prioritizing with their health and goals. The reality is that what works for one person, may not work for another.

We all are unique and our timelines and outcomes may look different from one another. This isn't necessarily bad and instead represents the individual strengths and skills we bring to the table.

Solution -- Consider taking a step back from assessing what others are doing and reflect on what you want to focus on and what approach works best for you (ie if you want to be focus on increasing mobility/stretching, but tend not to do so on your own, consider trying a yoga class for more structure and accountability.)

Hopefully, there are a few tips that resonated with you, but if nothing else I hope you take away that it's never too late to approach a more healthful life.

Take each day in stride and know that progress is not always linear.

Stay adaptable, keep going, and embrace the uniqueness that is YOU!