How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution This Year

Making a New Year’s resolution has been a time honored tradition where at the beginning of each New Year, people make a vow to be better in some aspect of their lives. While this act may seem honorable, many people do not make it through the month of January before slipping up and dropping their resolution completely. Many speculate the resolution is dropped because of pure laziness, however, I believe it is more due to the fact that many people set an unattainable goal for themselves, one that by any means cannot be met. Thus, we must scale back our expectations of ourselves and realize that we are only human and that all good things come with time and hard work.

One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions comes in the form of some sort of weight loss or pledge to lead a healthier and more active lifestyle. A survey conducted in New York found that on average less than 30% of people are satisfied with their weight and overall health, this means that over 70% of people believe that they are overweight or average at best. If this percentage is indicative of the nation at all then our country has millions of people who believe that they are, well, fat. This mentality leads many people to set goals for themselves in which they must lose 10, 20, 30, and upwards of 40 pounds by a certain time, the truth though is that losing weight in a healthy way can take months and even years and definitely does not happen overnight. In a world of instant gratification, this is fact is unacceptable and leads to frustration which in turn often leads to giving up.

Instead of pushing your body to lose gregarious amounts of weight in a small amount of time by exercising excessively and eating next to nothing, a well thought out and planned outline of weight loss and dieting as well as realistic goals has proven to be much more effective. The reason for this is that breaking down your plan and knowing exactly what you are going to eat and how and when you are going to exercise will allow you to mentally prepare as well as allow you to realize that reaching your goal will take time and effort. This forethought will also allow you to account for any times where you might need a healthy snack in place of a pizza outing with the girls or guys or a time when you need to extend your workout to replace one that might be missed the next day.