January

Now January is in full swing you may be interested to know that in the first week already, around 20% of us will have broken, or not made any headway, on our resolutions. But why?

The most popular New Year’s resolutions tend to be around health and fitness, and around seven million of us make these every year.

So, if so many people start the year with plans to lose weight, exercise more and eat healthier with little success, it’s time to get some help.

Here are a few tips to help you focus on these resolutions until at least this time next year, and maybe even for a lifetime...

1. Break up your goals

Richard Wiseman, a professor at Hertfordshire University, says you can boost your will power by completely focusing on one new resolution and breaking that down into smaller milestones, rather than trying to achieve multiple goals. Take the time to plan your approach in advance and make sure you reward yourself when you reach key milestones.

2. Use practical tools, expert advice and useful Apps

There is a multitude of online health and fitness advice and tools; NHS LiveWell has many areas of guidance and there are also a huge variety of Apps to help you log and monitor your intake and output of food, drink and exercise. There are sports trackers that set goals and record your exercise and calories burnt, and health and diet monitoring devices that provide an easy way to record what you eat and drink. But find what works for you as there are dozens of resources.

3. Get support to stay motivated

The Mental Health Foundation suggest we can be more successful by having a support network of friends and family, as they can help you to stay focused, and ensure you don’t obsess over small failures, but start afresh after each of them. Also if you can make your resolution become part of your everyday routine, then after a couple of weeks it will just become habit.

4. Set realistic goals

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at UCL, says we fail because we set ourselves goals that were not realistic. So it is very important to set specific, realistic and achievable goals, which are not trying to change our innate personalities and character traits.

References available on request.

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