4 Practical Tips to Setting Sustainable, Realistic New Year Resolutions
If you’ve ever been to the gym in January, you already know about the overcrowding. For regulars, it’s a month of frustration and long wait times. For those with New Year’s resolutions to fulfill, it’s a time of hope.
At least for a few weeks. Then, what started as a personal life transformation, fades into the background, and all the same habits and routines that left them disappointed start to return. By March, they may as well cancel their membership.
If this sounds familiar, don’t be too hard on yourself. We’ve all been there to some degree, and it’s only natural to use the calendar changing to set your sights on something out of reach.
There is one thing you need to do, though: Learn from your mistakes. They say the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
If you actually want to make progress, you need to instead take a better approach. And the following four tips will help you set realistic goals, follow through on your plans, and achieve the long-term success you want when it comes to your health.
1. Be Realistic
The end of the year is a time for reflection. We take pride in our accomplishments and regret other choices. If weight loss, fitness, or overall health goals fall into that second category for you, it will be tempting to try to fix it all overnight. When we want to change our ways, the quickest way seems to be doing a complete 180. It’s time to reinvent yourself!
This is nice in theory, but, it is often not realistic. It might work for a few weeks. You might even keep at it for a few months through sheer grit. You might even get some results. But this manic approach will likely leave you burnt out and falling back into bad habits before long.
2. Think Long Term
Instead of radically changing everything — from diet to gym routines to meditation — think longer-term. Make a few smaller, sustainable changes. You shouldn’t go from never going to the gym to thinking you’ll be there two hours every day. Don’t go from beer and cheeseburgers twice a week to consuming only kale and celery juice.
Find a happy, healthy medium and settle in there. The progress might feel like it comes slow. And that can be frustrating. But slow progress for the entire next year — and the years to come — is way better than amazing results by March that disappears a few months later. Cramming for a test never worked in high school and you can’t take shortcuts on this journey either.
3. Set Tangible Goals
A lot of people who are inexperienced in fitness, nutrition, and overall healthy living set vague goals. This is understandable. “I just want to start living healthier!” sounds great. But this makes it hard to stay on track and measure progress. How will you know if it’s going well outside or a general feeling? And how will you know if you’re actually making progress or your definition of “healthy” just keeps changing over time?
This doesn’t mean you need to obsess about numbers. Goals like “losing 30 pounds,” "deadlifting 135 pounds,” or “stop drinking sugary beverages" are much easier to target, however. Not only does it give you something specific to shoot for, but it will also prevent you from the common problem of missing out on progress by always chasing the next big trend and abandoning what you’ve been doing.
4. Stop Chasing Trends
Many people flutter between different approaches. First, it’s running then it’s strength training then it’s yoga. Then it's keto for weight loss then it’s fasting then it’s going plant-based. And on and on and on. Some of this just comes with learning more about fitness and nutrition. There are certain approaches that make sense to adopt. There is nothing wrong with a little experimentation. It can help you hone in on the right path for you.
But by always jumping from one thing to the next, you might end up accomplishing nothing. Most health goals worth pursuing take at least several months of concerted effort to start seeing some real progress. And you’ll never get there if you’re always chasing something else. Try to find something that works and feels right for you — then stick to it. If three months go by and nothing good happens? Then it might be time to re-evaluate. But don’t just listen to change everything every time you hear about the next big thing from some YouTuber, friend, or stranger at the gym.