5 Secrets to Make Your New Year's Resolution Stick for a Healthier You
- Dec 29, 2016
- 3 min read
How many times have you made the New Year's Resolution to get healthy, lose weight, and/or eat better—and then broken that resolution within a few months, if not a couple of weeks? With this new year, resolve to sticking it through! Taking a look at the goal-setting, goal activation and behavioral change literature, here are five common themes I've extracted across the health and psychology literature to help you get on track and stay on track. Understanding the psychology behind how health goals are activated and sustained just might be the secret ingredient to you achieving your health goal in 2017. So, let's get started!
1. Set clearly defined health goals. Most folks proclaim that they want to lose weight as a part of their New Year's Resolution. But instead of generally proclaiming that you want to lose weight or get in shape, clearly define your goals so that they are achievable, measurable and specific enough to accomplish within a certain time frame. The better defined your goal, the greater the chances of your health goal becoming realized.
2. Track your progress. A fundamental principle of goal progress is evaluation of your progress change over time. Evaluation feedback loops serve as a source of motivation as you reflect on your current versus ideal health goal state. This allows you to know when you are making progress compared to when you've plateaued or have slipped backward so you can adjust your efforts accordingly.
3. Pencil it into your calendar. Make your new health goal a priority and schedule it into your calendar. Schedule recurring time blocks for your daily health and fitness routine. Treat this New Year Resolution’s for your health just like you would a doctor's appointment. This reinforces the idea of goal setting and health behavioral change because you're constantly reminded to engage in accomplishing your health goal.
4. Doing something is better than nothing. Don't think “all or nothing.” A lot of time, folks end up giving themselves a license to misbehave once they've fallen off the wagon. For example, do you ever think, "Since I already blew my diet earlier today, I'll just start again next week?" Goal progress research shows that goals become more likely to be attainable when some progress is made, therefore attainable, rather than no progress at all. The idea here is that starting or re-engaging in a health goal-directed behavior (e.g., healthy eating and/or physical activity) is much harder than simply continuing a behavior. So even if you don't feel like going for a 45-minute run, lace up and do 15 minutes. A little progress toward your health goal is always better than no progress.
5. Resiliency is key. Sometimes temporary failures turn into excuses for us to give up on our health goal completely. Don't allow that to happen this year; instead, dust yourself off and get back up again! Re-committing and re-engaging your health goal (shortly after disengaging) still improves the chances of you achieving your initial health goal compared to completely disengaging from that goal when you wait too long. The longer you wait to re-engage that health goal, the less likely your chances of achieving that goal. Moral of the story: don't give up. Remember, it isn't about whether you get knocked down...it's all about whether you get back up! And in this case, get back up as quick as you can.
Wishing you the best of luck with your New Year's Resolution and hope these five strategies unlock the secrets to you achieving your health and fitness goals in 2017! Happy New Year!!
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