New Year, New You: Health and New Year’s Resolutions

As the clock strikes midnight on January 1st, 2025 many of us will be making silent pacts with ourselves. Goals—or as they are more commonly called; New Year’s resolutions. For the next month, gym memberships will surge, diets will become more trendy, and consumers will try to get their hands on the most trendy water bottle to accomplish their goals. But, as the year progresses, we see that many resolutions have been completely forgotten. But why is it so hard to stick to resolutions? What’s the science behind wanting to improve ourselves, and drastically failing? Let’s explore to see if this year can make a difference.

First, let’s start with some honesty: I did not stick to my goals last year. In fact, out of ten New Year’s resolutions, I accomplished none of them. Out of those ten, three of them had to do with health, so let’s take a look at what they were and how they went wrong. 

My first and third health-related goals involved taking care of my chronic condition. The goals were in theory simple:  Improve IR (Insulin Resistance), go on a diet, cut down on snacks, and stop drinking soda. Yet this didn’t seem to do anything. If anything, my sugar intake has been at an all-time high in my life, I drank a bottle of Coca-Cola for half of the days in the year, and I am utterly addicted to sugar. My insulin resistance has gotten a lot worse, and there are no signs of improvement. But why did these goals fail, even though I know that I might get diabetes if I keep these habits up?

It’s simple, actually; it’s all in the phrasing. These resolutions were specifically phrased in a way that tends to move away from something or remove something. They are called avoidance-oriented goals; which focus on eliminating or removing the negative behavior, in this case: cutting down on snacks and stopping drinking soda (Oscarosson et al., 2020). Avoidance-oriented goals often concentrate on what you shouldn’t do, and tend to be very ambiguous resolutions. After all, what exactly doesn’t count as a snack? It makes it easier for me to relapse into a habit of eating more and more snacks and drinking more soda, which just causes guilt because said resolution was not met. (Oscarosson et al., 2020). It would explain why so many Americans, at least 41% of them, break some or all of their resolutions in the first month (Garcia, 2024).  Just like I did, people often use negative language that holds them back from meeting their resolutions

Thankfully, there is another side to the coin when it comes to setting resolutions; approach-oriented goals focus on adopting positive behaviors and positive changes to a routine to achieve resolutions (Oscarosson et al., 2020). This means focusing on what you can do, and how you can improve the resolution, instead of limiting and restricting yourself, which can often feel discouraging. It also makes the objective much clearer; planning out my three meals and snacks the day prior is much more achievable than simply cutting down snacks. A resolution like: drinking a glass of water before each meal to avoid sugary cravings can also work to add to my positive behaviors to stop a negative behavior from arising. With these resolutions, I’m forced to take action on what I want to eat and what I want to drink, which will help me anticipate my meals and build long-lasting habits to accomplish my resolutions. 

The second health-oriented resolution I made is simple but extremely vague. It simply says: be body goals. Just from that statement, multiple issues arise from it. The most obvious being: what exactly did I mean by saying “body goals?”. The last time I checked, I was not at an unhealthy weight, (my insulin resistance is caused by other factors), so what exactly motivated me to create this statement? 

Lots of people feel the need to create goals that are focused on losing weight, even though their weight is at a reasonable amount. These types of resolutions are driven by shamed-based motivation; or losing weight which is considered something healthy, instead of gaining it which is seen as something unhealthy (Mental Health UK, 2024). It is also based on tradition, creating a New Year’s resolution on something unnecessary simply because society has peer-pressured us into believing that it is necessary (Mental Health UK, 2024). It is important to recognize that a goal might not benefit us in any way and instead bring us damage and unhealthy lifestyle habits that could continue well on in our lives if we don’t take care of them. 

Instead, be specific about what your body needs from you to be healthy. I recommend consulting a doctor to create essential goals on what you require. For me, it is simply to gain muscle, so this goal can be changed into something like: doing a strength-based workout for 30 minutes each day. This resolution works on what my body needs, follows my doctor’s recommendations, and is most importantly an approached-oriented goal. 

At the end of the day, it all comes down to psychology. We are taught that New Year’s resolutions need to be something about avoidance and changing, but we aren’t taught how to make our bodies switch into that mode. It’s essential that we take these resolutions in small steps, and make them more approachable so that we can meet them. At the end of the day, we will be able to improve our health with basic habits we incorporate into our lives. Here’s to positive changes, have a Happy New Year!

Works Cited

Gracia, Shanay. “Who makes New Year’s resolutions, and why?” Pew Research Center, 29 January 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/29/new-years-resolutions-who-makes-them-and-why/.  Accessed 27 December 2024.

Mental Health UK. “New Year, New Me? Why New Year’s resolutions can be unhelpful, and how to set healthy goals.” Mental Health UK, 2 January 2024, https://mentalhealth-uk.org/blog/new-year-new-me-why-new-years-resolutions-can-be-unhelpful-and-how-to-set-healthy-goals/.  Accessed 27 December 2024.

Osacarosson, Martin, et al. “A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals.” National Libary of Medicine (NIH), PLoS One, 9 December 2020, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7725288/.  Accessed 27 December 2024.