It is estimated that 30% of the UK population will make New Year’s resolutions of some kind. That’s approximately 12.4 billion people, and nearly half of those self-promises will relate to health and exercise, the most popular being to lose weight and get fit.
Women, more so than men, seem all too familiar with the New Year drill. We verbally commit to no more chocolate, to take the stairs and to rise an hour earlier to hit the gym, only to find that by mid-month we lose all motivation. In fact, statistics show that more than 500,000 of those who make resolutions will have broken them by now.
So why do we punish ourselves with unrealistic goals? Are we a nation of dreamers who think things will come easy to us? Or do we purposely make false promises to ourselves and expect to be disappointed?
The key lies in the way we make our resolutions. “We should take smaller steps to reach our ultimate goals,” says nutritionist Zoe Martin at Discount Supplements. “If your goal is to lose three stone then break it down and make it more achievable. Set yourself a target weight to lose over the course of a month, and set smaller targets in between such as going to the gym twice a week or not eating takeaways. These small resolutions will change your behaviour in the long term and can really feel like you are making progress, rather than think the challenge is just too great and giving up within days.”
92% of people fail at their resolutions by the end of the year. It’s not always because they have not tried or are not committed; they merely chose the wrong type of resolution. You may be flying along sticking to your new fitness routine for the first month only for things to get on top of you and you miss a session. It does not mean you have failed. If you plan your resolutions beforehand you can create ones that you will always be able to reach with reasonable effort. Here, Zoe Martin gives us some tips on setting goals for the New Year.
1. Be realistic
Be realistic about your resolutions. If you can actually see yourself achieving it then it is more likely that you will stick to it. 63% of people that start New Year’s resolutions fail within the first month, so keep it realistic and don’t lie to yourself.
2. Make it measurable
It can be inspiring and fun to have an ambitious goal but if you can’t tell if you are getting closer to achieving it then you will fail. For example, you can’t exactly measure how happy you are but you can measure how many nice or good things you have done for others in the past week.
3. Never doubt yourself
While working towards your goal, you must always believe you can do it. If you doubt yourself, you will start to become complacent and will slowly give up. If you allow yourself to take a break even for a small period of time you will most likely never get back to working on achieving your goal. Having a list up on the wall of what your goals are and how you plan to achieve them will help stop you from giving up. For example, have it on the wall facing you when you wake up; it will keep it fresh in your mind so you won’t start to forget or doubt yourself.
4. Keep it short
This happens more often than you think, where people set themselves extremely long-term goals that can be very difficult for many people to stick to. This is purely because the more time it takes to achieve the goal the more time you have to quit before you achieve it. For example, it appears easier to stop drinking carbonated drinks for six weeks than trying to stop for an entire year.
5. Create small challenges
After you have been working towards your set goal, you can start to give yourself small challenges to keep you from slipping into laziness. It could be a simple challenge like adding an extra five minutes to your workout or not checking your social media accounts until the evening.
6. Get a friend involved
If you have a friend trying to achieve the same goal you can help keep each other on track. This buddy system helps both of you, as won’t want to let each other down by giving up or putting it off.
Fitness adviser Luke Thornton from Discount Supplements has worked with Zoe to create a guide to sticking to your resolutions and meeting your goals. You can download it here.
