New Year’s Resolutions: How Do I Make Mine Successful?
We all know that New Year’s resolutions have a low success rate. Only 1 month in, as much as 80% of people are already off their resolution path.
What does this tell us? Resolutions don’t work. If anything else had an ~80% failure rate, we’d be doing it differently.
At InHealthRVA, we are all about getting to the root cause of things, so let’s take a few moments to dig into what’s going on with resolutions, why they don’t often work and what we are really trying to get solved here.
So don’t beat yourself up, this isn’t simply a unique personality flaw. This year, resolve to resolve your resolutions to get to the root of the matter and find your solutions.
Why don’t resolutions generally work? Simply put:
Most resolutions fail to address the real issues.
Most resolutions aren’t in sync with the human psychology of behavioral change.
The wrong resolutions
A lot of the time, resolutions fail because they are not addressing the real root cause(s) of the problem.
Since so many of us have weight loss as a resolution, let’s use this one as an example.
Why do we diet? If nothing else, the 3.8 billion dollar diet industry proves that diets don’t work. Or when they do, it is temporary. Why? Diets fail to address the real causes of our weight gain.
What are we really trying to change here? Food restriction does not address the underlying causes of our weight gain. Weight gain is usually years of habits in the making so simply temporarily restricting food isn’t the right solution to address how you got here.
Since weight loss is such a common New Year’s resolution, let’s take a Functional medicine approach to try and understand the root-causes of this.
Here are some of the main root causes of unhealthy weight gain:
Poor/processed diet
Emotional/stress eating
Distracted eating
Sedentary lifestyle
Hormone imbalances
Inflammation
Poor/inadequate sleep
If these are the reasons why your weight has gotten above what is healthy, then simply trying to enforce a low(-er) calorie diet -for a temporary amount of time - completely fails to address why/how you actually gained weight in the first place.
Make the right resolution
Identify the actual root causes
Design solutions to address these underlying causes.
Plan doable changes: Big versus small changes.
Externalize it
1. & 2. Identify root causes and design solutions that address these underlying issues.
Check out the worksheets below to help you through this process. The first is filled out with the ever-popular weight-loss for example. The second is blank, so you can use it for whatever resolution you need.
3. Big Changes vs Small Habits
Another reason resolutions often don’t succeed is making too drastic of changes. There are times and personalities that do better with big, drastic changes, but for most of our resolutions, success is more likely if you make small changes and build on those changes over time.
Big Change: Sometimes we are just ready to do a complete 180 degrees in an area of your life. When people reach a tipping point, drastic change may be the only option. Or, you may have something that is “all or nothing,” so a complete change is the only way forward.
Small Habits: For most other things, smaller steps are more likely to be successful. Don’t expect yourself to be a new version of you by the end of the month. Instead, write down the smaller, continual steps, and build on them throughout the year. Taking 6 months or even 2 years of steady small, but actually doable and maintainable steps to get towards a sustainable healthy lifestyle will seem like no time in the scheme of your life.
4. Finally: Externalize your resolution.
Introverts and extroverts and everyone in between benefit from support and accountability from others. Think out what your resolution really needs to be using the worksheet template provided below. Then make a list of whose support you will need or benefit to be successful in your resolutions.
Think of the people who will be your:
Accountability partners
Emotional support
Cheerleaders
People you need to tell not to sabotage you
Don’t leave it up to just the thoughts in your head to keep you on track, motivated and accountable when there is pressure to abandon your resolutions! We all need support and we all do better with it.