Are you a ‘New Years Resolution’ type? Do you maintain it?
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According to USA.gov, the nation’s official Web portal, Americans commonly resolve every January to:
- Drink Less Alcohol
- Eat Healthy Food
- Get a Better Education
- Get a Better Job
- Get Fit
- Lose Weight
- Manage Debt
- Manage Stress
- Quit Smoking
- Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
- Save Money
- Take a Trip
- Volunteer to Help Others
In an interview with WebMD, Elizabeth Zelvin, LCSW, says that “The cycle [with New Years Resolutions] is deprive yourself, and then binge and make up for it.”
“New Years after New Years, millions of Americans make a resolution to go on a diet, and a diet is a way of eating that feels so depriving that you can hardly wait to get to the end of it so you can go back to doing what you did before,” she tells WebMD.
In addition, people tend to set steep goals and fail to make a plan. If you say, “For New Years, I am going to lose weight,” then you haven’t thought this through. Waking up at 5am and going to the gym, and eating lean meats and veggies is not likely to stick.
Essentially, Zelvin suggests something more realistic:
“‘One day at a time’ is the antithesis of making New Year’s resolutions,” she says. “It’s not saying, ‘I’m going to do this and keep it up all year,’ it’s saying, ‘What can I do today?’”
