Oh crap….
If that was your response to being reminded of your New Year’s resolutions, then you are not alone. In fact, it’s been discovered that by the second week of February, around 80% of New Year’s resolutioners have already called it quits. Many people base their resolutions on guilt from the holiday season, saying that this is the year they will “be healthy” and plan to start off the new year by going on fad diets or cutting out entire food groups. Carbohydrates, for example, are often one of the first groups to go when people start these extreme trends, despite often causing people to feel absolutely miserable after even just a few days. Glucose is your body’s main source of fuel and your brain alone needs around 120 grams of carbohydrates daily just to function properly!
These resolutions are ones that are usually destined to fail. Why? Because someone saying that they are going to cut out entire food groups or go on fad diets as a new lifestyle is a very drastic and unrealistic change. As mentioned previously with the idea of guilt after the holidays, this tends to start from the force-fed idea that losing weight will equate to a healthier, happier you. When considering the New Year’s resolutions to make (and stick with), it is important to remember that dieting does not guarantee that healthier or happier you.
Dieting doesn’t tend to have much success anyway, meaning that any weight lost tends to be gained back. One explanation for this is the lipostatic hypothesis, which is the idea that the brain oversees body fat levels throughout the body and protects energy stores against change, maintaining weight at a specific level. This is tied into the concept of homeostasis, which is the scientific name for the maintenance of the body’s internal systems. A great example of this is body temperature. While temperature can have a small range for what is considered average, 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit is typically thought of as “normal” for the human body. If the body strays away from that set point, there are immediate responses that take place in attempt to get back to the set point of (around) 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit. These can include shivering when you’re too cold to generate more body heat or sweating when you’re too hot, like during intense exercise or during a fever.
The brain, particularly the region of the hypothalamus, is responsible for regulating many homeostatic processes taking place within the body, like temperature, but also food intake and weight maintenance. Body weight, and subsequently the amount of body fat, has a certain range that the body has defined as its set point. This is a similar concept to what is seen with temperature, but different in that all humans do not have the same set point (or narrow range of values) when it comes to weight. An individual’s set point for their weight comes down to a wide variety of factors, with genetics playing a key role.
Making New Year’s resolutions with the intent of losing fast weight is not going to be effective and will probably make you miserable in the process. While I am not saying to never make New Year’s resolutions regarding your health or weight, it is important to make sure that those goals are attainable, healthy, and set you up for success..
The goals that people are most likely to stick to and actually maintain, or the most effective goals, are likely to be those that are both specific and difficult and produce quantifiable outcomes. What does this mean? Think about the difference between a goal like “I am going to eat healthy” vs “Five days a week, I am going to add in one extra serving of fruit or vegetables to my dinner.” The first option is very vague and is not something you can quantify. There’s no set definition for what that “eating healthy” means – does that mean only eating a certain number of calories every day? Does that mean eating a certain kind of food everyday? The potentially never ending list of variables makes this a very hard goal to track. The latter option is very specific in that someone can clearly identify whether they accomplished the task or not.
At the end of the day, what is important is making sure to take care of your body and mind in healthy ways. This can be as simple as setting a goal to floss every night before bed or incorporating more fruits and vegetables into your diet. Remember – just because you didn’t stick to your New Year’s resolutions does not mean that you lack willpower or that you’re a bad person!