Tired of Setting and Forgetting New Year’s Resolutions? How to get RESULTS this year.
Research shows that 80% of people break their resolutions by the first week of February and only 8% are successful in achieving their goals at all.
We set lofty goals that quickly become overwhelming, and we fail to make a plan to achieve these goals.
In this episode, I break down why the resolutions you set aren't typically successful and provide tips how working with a coach can help you meet your goals.
Transcript of the Episode
Andrea Heyman 00:00 Hi friends, it's Andrea Heyman here with another episode of Adventures In Feeding My Fam. Today we are talking about New Year's resolutions. And I have pretty strong feelings about New Year's resolutions. But what I want you to do first is take a minute and think about what was your resolution last year? And what was your resolution the year before? Chances are, they were the same. So if you are tired of setting the same resolution year after year, and not ending up with lasting results, I'm going to share some really good tactical tips. But I'm also going to talk about why the heck do we even have resolutions. So this is going to be a fun episode
Adventures In Feeding My Fam is a weekly podcast discussing the challenges and fun around feeding your family healthy meals. I'm Andrea Heyman, and I've been a registered dietitian for over 25 years. So I know the importance of good nutrition. But I'm also a mom of three so I understand the challenges in tumor that comes along with trying to make this happen. In this podcast, I'll share my tips, tricks and menus, but also share the stories and food prep failures that come along the way to interview guests. We'll discuss family food traditions, how to strengthen bonds around the family table, as well as their favorite family recipes. There isn't one right way to feed your family. But there are countless stories, you can take bits and pieces and learn from all of them.
So What in the world? Like why do we do this thing called New Year's resolution? Well, I did a little research. And because I was curious about this myself, and the first New Year's resolutions deep back over 4000 years ago to ancient Babylon. So the Babylonians supposedly started the tradition, and they had a 12 day New Year celebration. And at that celebration, they would plant crops, and then they would make promises to the gods to pay their debts and return their borrowed items. So they believe that if they kept their word, then the gods would be very, very happy, and would grant them good things for the coming year. But if they broke their promises, then they would consider that a failure to the gods and then the gods would be upset with them. So that's where it originated from. Then New Year's resolutions continued in ancient Rome. And Julius Caesar introduced a new calendar in 46 BC. And then that declared January 1 as the start of the new year. And it honored Janice, who was a to face God, who symbolically looked like Cynthia to basis like, would look back to the previous year, and then also would be able to look forward to the upcoming year. And the Romans would offer sacrifices to Janice and made promises of good behavior for the year ahead. So that's a little history about where new year's resolutions come from. And the interesting thing is initially was very rooted in the belief of gods and that if you didn't follow your resolution that you would be punished and it would really affect your year.
But that is not really how we see them. Now they're considered more of a opportunity to start the year fresh, accomplish some things that we've always wanted to accomplish, and really making promises to ourselves as opposed to promises to any god. So the tradition tends to be self improvement. And the most common resolutions you can think about it because they're probably resolutions that you've set for yourself. And they are typically eat healthier, exercise more lose weight, stop smoking, pay off debt, learn a new skill or hobby. And those are typically the resolutions that folks set for themselves. But I think this is really interesting. About 40% of people in the United States set new year's resolutions and even people who don't actually set a resolution. It's on the back of their mind somewhere. However, the research shows that 80% of people break their resolutions by the first week of February. So within a month, the resolutions have gone by the wayside. And only 8% 8% are successful in achieving their goals at all.
So why aren't resolutions successful? Let's go through some of those reasons. First of all, oftentimes people don't frame their resolution in a positive way. So it's sort of like, stop eating sweets, or stop smoking. But if we framed it in a more positive way, then the psyche, the mind feels better about that resolution. And so what happens when you're framing it in a negative way, you're actually thinking about the thing that you are trying to change, so it becomes more front and center on the mind. So you automatically start to think about doing that and want to do that. Another reason resolutions aren't successful is because it's often not about you, they often tend to make resolutions for based on trends, or how they think other people want them to look and not necessarily what they want for themselves. So that's really, really important concept. If you are going to set resolutions for yourself that you want to do it in a way that is meaningful for you. Again, another reason is that we often are really over ambitious in our resolutions. And we think about it as this has to be done in the next three weeks, or that's it. And really, when we're thinking about resolutions, I like to think of it more as long term behavior change, as opposed to something that's just done in a short amount of time, we want a resolution that's going to last long term, because that is how we really meet our health and wellness goals. And if you think about it, if you're trying to undo a bad habit, and that bad habit wasn't established overnight, or even in three weeks, it was probably months and months, and most likely years and years of establishing that habit. So how could you get rid of that habit in such a short amount of time, that's just not realistic. The next reason is kind of one of those reasons that hits home in the in the pit of your stomach, oftentimes, people deep down, don't really believe in themselves, they don't really believe that they can meet that goal. So even if you've tried and then failed that resolution in the past, you're sort of reinforcing that belief that, yeah, I can't really meet this goal. I'll try again another time. And then another big reason is that people don't have social support. So if you feel alone, or you don't have anyone to keep you accountable, then it becomes very, very hard to meet your new resolutions that you've set. However, that is why a friend or a coach is really, really helpful. And I know that you guys know that I do some coaching, I do wellness and nutrition, meal plan coaching. I love working with people to do this because we really get at the core, like, you know, here in the podcast, and on line, I give you lots of tactical ways to help you eat healthier, and get meal planning done. However, if you don't go to the core of the problem, or the root of kind of the issue for you, then it's really, really difficult to make lasting, meaningful change. And that is where a coach of any type whether it's working with someone like me, or any type of coach or someone who is really going to keep you accountable can help you well. Okay, so first of all, one of the benefits is they will listen with you and professional coaches listen beyond to active listening. They turn into your agenda, your vision, your desires and your values, and really key into the language that you use. In order to help you move forward. A coach can help you bring clarity and awareness to what you're saying. Sometimes we don't even realize the words that we're using on our And in our mind and publicly, and a coach can help you bring awareness to that so that you can begin to carve new language in your life. So that you believe what you want to achieve actually can be a reality. A coach can help you envision what you want for your life. I love a coach personally. And I think that I would never have done this podcast had I not had a coach either. So a coach can help you see what you want, how you want to build your life, and let you know that you're worthy of living that way. And they can help you have that vision. Because sometimes we don't even know what we want from our lives. A coach can shine the light on your strengths and help build your confidence. Coaches also support you in eliminating that self defeating habits and self defeating self talk. Oh, my goodness, this is so so important, especially when we are trying to build new habits. So instead of telling ourselves, hmm, no, I want to be a healthy, I'm trying to be a healthy eater, something of that nature, if we just do a tiny little shift in how we are talking to ourselves, and believe and say, I am a healthy eater. And then we begin to think, oh, in various situations, what would a healthy eater actually do? So tiny shifts in mindset, and language that we use with ourselves can be so effective in helping to meet those goals? coaches help us offer a different perspective, which is really, really helpful when we are trying to change behavior and change behavior for the long term. Working with a coach can help you manage your stress and deal with overwhelm and develop new strategies in order to address more productive ways of handling stress. And I would say emotional eating falls into that as well. Because emotional eating is really, I like to call it a coping mechanism. And if you have more productive coping mechanisms, then you begin to eliminate that habit of stress eating, a coach can also open you up to new possibilities that you never would have thought about. Maybe you never would have thought about it, because you just didn't think it was a possibility. And when it comes to health and wellness goals, we need to think big, because we are limitless in what we can accomplish. And finally, a coach can help you create an action plan to meet those goals. And this is so critical. Because this and keeping you accountable. So if you're meeting with a coach, like if you were to meet with me for one month, weekly sessions, guess what, you're not going to want to come back to me in a week with nothing to report. So that accountability piece becomes so critical, and is one of the key benefits of working with a coach. And finally, a coach is your biggest cheerleader, or one of your biggest cheerleaders. I think my mom would probably be one of my biggest cheerleaders. But a coach also is too because they want to see your life be built into what you want to see into how you envision it, and what you create. And so they are absolutely on your side. So I hope this was helpful. I know I've mentioned this before, but if you want to see if working with me is right for you. I offer 30 minute free discovery calls. You can find the link in the show notes. And you can also find that on my website. The link is adventures and feeding my fam.com backslash work hyphen with hyphen me. I'd love to chat and we can decide if we're mutually beneficial to each other. And if I can help you meet those wellness goals, once and for all because I don't want you to be the majority of people who sets a resolution and doesn't achieve it. I want you to be in that 8% that does take care