How Long Will Your New Year’s Resolution to Lose Weight Last?

92% of people don’t keep their New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, eat healthier, and get fitter. Most people give up on their resolutions in the first few months of the year.

You can be part of the 8% of people who keep their resolution in 2018. Here’s what I recommend you do to help you lose weight, get healthier, and fitter without fad diets or weight loss pills that don’t work.

1. Pick only one thing to focus on

Don’t resolve to start going to the gym five times a week, start a Paleo diet, and start sleeping eight hours a night. One reason people fail at keeping their resolutions is that they make too many resolutions.

Implementing a lot of changes at the same time will work short term in January, but will be hard to maintain long term, and then you’ll get frustrated and fall back into bad habits. If you want to lose weight pick one thing you’re going to change, for example, how you eat.

I try to have only one main goal for the day, and if I accomplish something related to that, then I start trying to accomplish secondary goals. When I wake up in the morning I think “What’s my #1 goal right now and what am I going to do to move towards it today?”

2. Break your one goal down into smaller pieces

If your goal is to lose weight by eating healthier, break that down into smaller pieces because one big goal can be overwhelming. Try making a smaller goal for every month. Decide what’s a reasonable first step for you.

Eating healthier could be something as small as no dessert after dinner on Monday in January. That’s a small goal that you can reasonably expect to hit. Once you hit that goal, you can make your next goal, no dessert after dinner Monday to Thursday in February, and so on.

3. If you break your resolution don’t give up

You should try to hit your resolution 80% of the time, no one is perfect 100% of the time. Well, maybe Beyonce, but everyone else should aim for 80% of the time. Even people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off have bad days. So don’t beat yourself up when you have one.

Instead when you plan your resolution, plan a Plan B too, in case you have a setback. For example, when I’m trying to get back into a workout schedule my plan A is to workout for 30 minutes, but if that seems too daunting, my plan B is to workout for 5 minutes. Then eventually I’ll work my way up to 30 minutes. Think about where you normally have setbacks when you’re trying to lose weight and have a Plan B for when that happens.

Want to learn more about keeping New Year’s Resolutions to be healthier and lose weight? Listen to my interview on the Mind For Life podcast.