3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Make ‘Lose Weight’ Your New Year Resolution
If you think about it, a new year’s resolution is a funny concept. We all claim we’re going to make them, but how many of us actually keep them? Well if we look back to before the pandemic of Covid 19 when things were kinda normal, a survey showed that only 7% of participants stuck to all of their new year’s resolutions in 2019. And a despondent 57% didn’t even bother to make any.
So why do so many people fail to keep the new year’s resolutions that they make? Well according to psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, there are 3 main reasons:
- People don’t make their resolutions specific enough.
- People word their resolutions in a negative way.
- The resolutions are not relevant enough to the individual.
It’s these 3 reasons why, here at New You HQ, we don’t recommend making lose weight your new year’s resolution. In declaring that’s what you will do, you are setting yourself up for failure. Let’s break it down further for you.
Being vague leads to failure
Declaring your good intentions to lose weight in a general sense doesn’t allow you to measure any progress you make. If you can’t understand how well you’ve done, you will feel a failure and not be motivated to continue.
Instead, be as specific as you can by deciding how much you want to lose, by what time and how you are going to do it. By placing these markers you can see how well you are doing and whether you are on track to reach your goal or if you need to change things up a bit to get there.
Checking in with yourself on a weekly basis will keep your mind on your target, help you to plan your next move and help you stay motivated to succeed in your goals.
Negative wording leads to a negative outcome
When you start to tell yourself that you’re going to stop eating junk food or stop drinking alcohol and sugary drinks, you’re focusing on all the things you are going to try and stay away from and avoid. Speaking or thinking in this way comes from a negative perspective.
The problem with this is that when you say and think about something that you want to stop doing (that you potentially enjoyed before), the more you are going to want to not stop. In this case, you will crave the junk food and calorie-laden drinks even more than before. Again, you are setting yourself up for failure using this language.
Instead of instantly framing your goals negatively, try flipping them around to be positive. Switch, ‘I will stop eating junk food’ to ‘I will eat more New You healthy snacks.’ Switch, ‘I will stop drinking sugary drinks,’ to ‘I will drink more water with Berry Blast in.’ Focus more on what you will be doing rather than what you won’t.
If it’s not personal, why do it?
It’s so easy to hop on the bandwagon of weight losers at new year. Your best mates doing it, Julie from next door says she’s going to, even the postman mentioned he needed to lose a few Christmas pounds. So why wouldn’t you join them?
What you have to think about is if losing weight in its simplicity is actually what you want. Probably not, because your desire for losing weight will be deeper than that, and looking deeper is how you will find your ultimate goal and chief motivator. We are talking about your why. Your personal reason why you want to lose weight and what it will mean to you.
So rather than ‘I want to lose weight,’ you could feel that ‘I want to fit into my size 12 clothes again,’ or ‘I want to reverse my type 2 diabetes,’ or ‘I want to be able to run around and play with my kids.’ Reasons like these are specific to you, individual and personal. Keeping your why at the front of your mind will help you to stay strong and be successful.
So please, please, please don’t make lose weight your new year’s resolution! We suggest you have a good think and follow our advice on being particular, positive and personal, that way you will be setting yourself up for the best 2022 yet.
Before you go, we do have one other piece of sage advice on making a start on your new year’s transformation goals:
DON’T START ON THE 1ST JANUARY!
It’s the worst day to start ever!
Why?
Well for one, everyone says they will start on the 1st January, and you don’t want to be one of the sheeple, right? And it’s too much pressure. Most of you will be celebrating the coming of the new year on the night of the 31st, so will be up until the early hours of the morning. You may have allowed yourself to have a few drinks if you are going off-Plan for the holiday season. Trying to make a healthy start when you’re sleep-deprived can be tough, so be kind to yourself and plan your start day a little later. New year’s day is a Saturday, and we all know that people like to make changes on a Monday. So give yourself a few days grace and get back on Plan 100% on Monday 3rd January – or whenever works for you!
We hope this has been helpful and we’d like to wish you a happy new year.
Remember, it’s not really a new year without New You!
