We’ve probably all made New Year’s resolutions at least once in our lives. But how many of us have actually kept them past the end of January?
Danielle Townsend, a registered dietitian with Primary Healthcare Centers, says the No. 1 resolution people make, which comes as no surprise, is losing weight. The second most common is joining a gym. Then, she says a lot of people resolve to take a trip somewhere or start a new hobby. The last two don’t take a lot of commitment. It’s the first two that can give us the most problems when it comes to sticking to them.
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“I think the biggest reason we don’t keep behavioral resolutions, like changing our habits, is that we tend to go too hardcore in the beginning,” Townsend says. “We have an all-or-nothing approach to eating healthy and cut out the foods that we love and enjoy. Then we start to lose weight, but then the weight loss plateaus. Once we don’t lose any more weight — after another restrictive couple of weeks of dieting — we resent the fact that we traded our favorite things for being miserable and we give up.”
Sound familiar? Townsend says it’s important to get out of that restrictive mindset and realize that change takes time. It’s all about baby steps.