Why New Year's Resolutions Don't Work
As my colleage Ron Mwangaguhunga pointed out on Wednesday, exercise has been proven to reduce the risks of developing cancer. The study he cited showed that men who have been diagnosed with nonmetastatic cancers are less than half as likely to die as those who do not exercise.
As Ron suggested, it's another reason to get out there and, to borrow the marketing slogan of a fairly major sports brand, "just do it."
But from the perspective of someone who gets out there and "does it" six days a week, logging miles and miles in my local Brooklyn park, and then wrapping up my regimen with a trip to the YMCA, I'm not so sure most others will keep on doing it once the novelty of the new year wears off.
Every January, I see an enormous spike in the number of people at my gym. They line up from morning until night to use treadmills, elliptical machines, and stationary bikes. They jockey for space in the free-weight room and put their names on waiting lists for yoga classes. Their enthusiasm to get healthy is cute, in a way, because I know that it will pass right along with the freshly fallen snow that welcomed us in 2010 here in the New York area.
Of the top 13 New Year's resolutions listed on USA.gov, at least five can be accomplished, in part, by regular visits to the gym: lose weight, get fit, reduce stress, quit smoking, and drink less.
But New Year's resolutions are notoriously hard to keep. This is largely because you spend the rest of the year developing different habits, and habits are, well, habits. And because the only way to make a resolution stick is to make it a habit, I suspect it's counter-productive to even call these declarations "New Year's resolutions." To associate them with a specific date, in my view, only dooms them to fall by the wayside once the "new year" is no longer new.
The only way to actually get healthy, or save more money, or spend less time at work and more with your family, is to do it, every single day, whether you feel like it or not. Then, by 2011, you can join me in looking with skepticism at the sudden crowds at your local gym, or wherever else you may see a bunch of people trying in vain to become someone new literally overnight.
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I just bought a Vita Mix blender to help me eat healthier. Hopefully that will stick because the machine was expensive!
January 1, 2010 isn't that much different from December 31, 2009 - for most people anyway. I like the idea of resolutions. I like the idea of people taking self-inventory and seeing things about themselves that they want to improve or change. I think that's important, but you're only setting yourself up for failure if you gorge over the holidays then try to drop the all the weight in the new year', when you make unrealistic 'resolutions', when you try to rid yourself of a 10 year old habit within the first months of any new year. New Year's Resolutions may not work, but maybe they do, it's all in your outlook and management of expectations. It's good to hold a mirror to yourself and want to improve though, no? People should do it any time of year, many times a year, but well, if they choose to do it on the last month of the year, then so be it.
Keeping resolutions -- where do I begin? When I was younger I would set the bar ridiculously high, end up failing, and then gettingdespondent by year's end. Recently I've taken to lower the bar towards more achievable goals. Whereas a half a decade ago I might say I will stop drinking, I am more likely nowadays to resolve to stop drinking more than a couple of drinks at an event.