Don't Make New Year Resolutions…Make A Behavior Change!

It is now the forth day of the New Year and many individuals have already given up their New Year Resolutions. 

Why can’t I keep my resolutions you may ask yourself? For starters, your approach is all wrong.  Don’t approach a healthy lifestyle as a provisional task you only make to break.  A healthy lifestyle needs to be practiced everyday.  It doesn’t take a vacation for ten months out of the year and still make enough money to pay rent. 

A study was published in Addictive Behaviors on New Year Resolutions a while back.  The study was conducted by J. Norcoss, A. Ratzin, and D. Payne from the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Their research showed that readiness to change and self-efficacy positively affected their participants’ success.   Results also showed that individuals that used behavioral strategies and reported less self-blame and wishful thinking were also more successful at keeping their resolution. 

You have to be ready to make the commitment, to make a behavior change, and not just wish for the changes to happen without any work!  Your best bet at keeping your resolution…is to not make it a resolution.  It takes six months to make a behavior change a habit.  If you want to lose weight, you have to workout and eat healthy daily until it becomes second nature and that may take a while if you have had your old habits for a very long time.

Don’t make excuses for a failure and quit.  Keep working on your behavior until you are successful!

What is one behavior you are planning on changing in 2011?

By:  Brooke Schantz, MS, RD, LDN

Photo courtesy of Dawn-Ritchie.