Do Your New Year's Resolutions Produce Results?

By , SparkPeople Blogger
I’ve never had much luck with making successful New Year's resolutions. Like many other people, I get off to a good start on the appointed day, but within a few days or weeks, I’ve pretty much given up and gone back to my old ways.

There is at least one local chocolate maker in my home town who is rooting for me to keep this pattern intact again this year.

On the other hand, though, I have been very successful at making and maintaining some important changes in my habits and my lifestyle. I’ve quit a 3-pack per day smoking habit (smoke free since 1983), and gone from drinking 2 six packs of beer per day to about 1 six pack per month. I lost about 170 pounds a few years ago, and have kept 140 of those pounds off since then. I’ve gone from being a confirmed couch potato to putting about 125 miles on my bicycle and hiking another 20-25 most weeks–and loving it.

So, I know I can make changes, including some pretty difficult ones. I just can’t stick to my New Year's resolutions. And I’m pretty sure I know why...


If I really want to change something, I’m not going to wait to get started until some special day in the future. I’m going to start right now. If I put if off, that’s usually a dead giveaway that I don’t want it enough to do what’s necessary to make it happen. For me, a "resolution" is second cousin to a rationalization or an excuse for procrastinating.

So this year I figure that, if I’m not willing or able to make a change starting right now, there’s not much sense in making a resolution about it. I don’t need another failure to feel bad about.

That said, though, there is something about ending one year and starting another that makes this seem like a good opportunity to take stock of where I am right now, where I want to be a year from now, and what I need to do to get there. I try to do this every year, and this year there are three goals that I want to accomplish in the coming year:

1. Expand my social life so it includes more flesh and blood people, not just internet wee-me’s, redwood trees and sand dunes. I’ve been living in my current home for 6 months now, and other than immediate family, a few familiar faces at the grocery store and a couple of hikers who frequent the same trails I do, I can sometimes go days without saying anything out loud to anyone. I’m noticing that this tends to diminish one’s social skills–not good for someone who’s already as peculiar as I am.

2. Improve my flexibility and range of motion before my arthritis leaves me stuck permanently in the position of hunching over a computer screen, and improve upper body strength so that I can perform at least one unassisted pull-up. Otherwise, I may not be able to open a new jar of peanut butter much longer--and that would be a real tragedy.

3. Get my portion control back on track. I’ve put on about 12 pounds just since the end of September, and it’s mostly because my 5-6 small meals have been rapidly mutating into 5-6 regular-sized meals (this may have something to do with a very strong urge to stop shaving and hibernate I've been feeling lately--stupid bear genes!). I've been eating mostly good healthy food–just too much of it. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to do a real pull-up at this weight, so I want to get my calorie intake back down to maintenance level for 215 pounds.

None of these good intentions has much chance of becoming reality without a solid plan for making them happen, so here’s what I’m planning to do:

  • Go to the gym 3 days per week to take a yoga class and do an upper-body strength workout with the assisted pull-up/dip machine. I haven’t been to the gym much or to a class since I took up hiking and biking a couple years ago, so I’m also going to count this as part of my new social activity. I figure that if I can get myself to stick with a yoga class full of people who look good in spandex and can actually bend, without dying of embarrassment, I’ll be half-way there on dealing with my social issues.

  • Join a book-reading “salon” that meets weekly to discuss what people are reading. I’ve found one that has an interesting book list for the coming year.

  • Start measuring portions and tracking all my meals again for a while, to make sure I’m keeping my total calories where they need to be to lose 15 pounds over the next 6 months.

    But I'm not going to wait until the 1st to start--I'm starting today.

    What kind of luck have you had with New Year's resolutions–do you stick with them, or lose steam pretty quickly?

    What are your goals and strategies for this coming year? Are you willing to start working on them today, to see if that gives you the boost you need to keep going?



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