Today, January 17th, is national ditch day. It is the day that the majority of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions. A lot of people make New Year’s resolutions in the hopes they will be able to reach a goal they felt they lacked in during the past year. But too often we find the resolution we made is too hard or ultimately something you will not be able to follow through with. I decided to do a little research into New Year’s resolutions, specifically ones that had to do with health and fitness, to try to give some tips on how to not “ditch” your resolution this year.
According to Google, this year 62,776,640 people made a New Year’s resolution that somehow involved attaining a healthier lifestyle. Whether this means more time in the gym or giving up your beloved junk food, most people give their resolutions up. So why are these people failing?
First off, people often make a resolution that is too difficult for them to maintain. Say you decide you’re going to start going to the gym everyday for an hour. This doesn’t seem unrealistic but people’s lives are busy and sometimes there isn’t the time to get to the gym every single day. If you haven’t been going to the gym and all of a sudden try to go everyday it will be a drastic change for your schedule and body. Instead a resolution of trying to get to the gym four days a week and working yourself up to seven days would make you more likely to stick with your goals. Secondly, people try to dive into their resolution too fast. Getting healthy and fit takes time, usually more time and effort than a lot of people realize. If you make your resolution becoming a vegan, first try being a vegetarian or simply cutting meat out for breakfast and lunch but still incorporating it into dinner. This way you will give your body a window during which to transition. When people start cheating on their resolutions because they jumped into a new lifestyle to quickly it makes them want to quit. Lastly, when people don’t see a change they don’t see a reason to continue. As I said before, fitness takes more time and energy than people are willing to spend on it. After seventeen days, people may not be seeing the results they expected and decide the sacrifices they are making for their resolution are not worth it.
When you make a New Year’s resolution it isn’t a commitment to anyone but yourself. Unless you made your resolution with someone else you are going to be the sole motivator when it comes to completing the goals you set out. This means when you decide on your resolution make sure it is something that you are truly passionate about. The more you are invested in reaching that end goal, whatever it is, the more likely you will follow through and make it past “ditch day”.
I didn’t know that Ditch Day was a thing until reading this post but I can see why it is, considering how often resolutions are abandoned, a little over two weeks into the year when people realized how hard making changes in their lives really is. Overcommitting yourself is why so many people’s New Years Resolutions fall through so I like the angle of this post that doesn’t just say people set unattainable goals. Instead, you focused more on how people can avoid those short-comings and gave multiple potential solutions to some typical resolutions. I think it could’ve been even more helpful to others if you provided your own story of setting a reasonable goal and then sticking to it. Also, I feel like you placing the responsibility solely on the individual at the end of the post was particularly important because it established some sense of accountability for people to hold themselves to when they do decide to try to make changes in their lives.