Maintaining your resolution through the New Year

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Each year millions of Americans embark on a New Year’s Resolution journey and many fail in spectacular fashion.

This year can be different by making small attainable goals in lieu of big life changes and managing expectations.

The Health and Wellness director at Med Center Health recommends finding things that are attainable and making the end product the goal.

“The most important thing to think about when you’re making a resolution is, number one, that it is realistic and doable for you. So if you set a goal to lose weight in 2024, that’s not realistic for most people because you don’t have full control over the scale of what you do have control over or the healthy choices that you make,” Widener said.

For many people, it is the size of the goal and the lack of immediacy in outcomes that causes them to lose sight of their goal.

“We don’t realize every little bit of progress is great because we’re not going to be perfect. So a lot of times when we’re not perfect, we give up almost immediately. And for most people, it’s not realistic to be perfect. So in sticking to that, we have to realize that sometimes progress looks like three steps forward and two back,” Widener said.

It is important to keep yourself on track and to find ways to keep yourself accountable throughout the year. Widener recommends using an accountability partner.

“I think it’s huge to have a coach, a spouse, a friend, a family member, somebody that’s going to hold you accountable. Because at the end of the week, you know, when they text you or they call you or that coworker walks by your door and says, hey, did you get your 10,000 steps in every day this week? You don’t want to you don’t report now. Most of us, when we’re being held accountable, we want to be able to say, yes, I did,” Widener said.

In the end if you notice your belt becoming loose or that your craving for cigarettes or alcohol is becoming more faint over time, then it means that the goal you have set for yourself was good for your life.

“I think keeping that goal for a year, you hold yourself accountable. You let yourself know that you can show up and you can do this. But again, I think you’ve probably set a really good goal for yourself,” Widener said.