Resolving Your Resolutions

As the end of another year begins to draw to a close, it comes a time to reflect on what a year it has been, what we have accomplished, what we haven’t accomplished, and what we want to accomplish for the upcoming one.  That latter one is also known as a New Year’s Resolution.  People make them left and right on December 31^st, and quite frankly, it amuses me.

Example:  While at a New Year’s Eve party last year, a friend of mine told me that he resolved to quit smoking in 2011.  By 2 A.M., he officially broke that resolution.

Each year, people resolve to lose weight, exercise more, eat better, spend less money, etc—and by February, most of these resolutions have fallen by the wayside and have been almost completely forgotten.

I am no model myself.  One year (actually I’m pretty sure I have made this resolution several years) I decided to stop drinking soda.  I did great for 19 days, but then a trip to a favorite restaurant of mine broke down my willpower, and by day 20, I was back in soda-drinking bliss.  Fail.

I think what sets us up for failure is that most of our New Years resolutions are absolute and/or unspecific.  Take for example, “I will eat less junk food.”  That could mean almost anything.  That could mean eating one less bag of Funions that year and chalking it up as a victory, albeit a weak one.  Or conversely, “I will eat no junk food” is equally destined for disappointment.  “Junk food” is not defined, and the moment you slip up and eat a single fun-sized Milky Way, your goal is totally and definitively failed (in which case, why not eat the whole bag?).

Like a diet, a good resolution needs to be specific and it’s imperative that it has some wiggle room.  The conditions must be defined properly (“I will eat no chips, candy, or dessert”) and for a specific time period (which is often implied to be either the entire next year or the rest of your life, either of which is a very daunting interval).  The short-term failure terms must also be defined (“If I eat junk food I will jog 3 miles for each serving I consume”), although this can end up selling you a default for the price of your punishment.  It might be better to set a limit of… not zero.  Thus, the resolution may be something like, “I will eat fewer than 3 servings per week of chips, candy, or dessert for the next year, and going over limit results in the overage being subtracted from the allotment for next week.”

Does this sound like it’s getting complicated?  In a way it is, but now that you have set up rules for yourself, you have a framework for behavior.  Although the actual sentence is awkward, the directions are simple.  You know exactly what to do, how long to do it, and what happens if you don’t.

Of course, any great resolution can be crafted, but actually following it is a different matter.  Probably one of the two best things you can do to accomplish your goal are to write it down, preferably in a place you will see it often enough to be reminded (if necessary, on the fridge), as well as keep track of your progress.  In this case, a simple diary of junk food consumption would suffice.  You could take a piece of notebook paper and label lines 1-52 for each week of the year (both sides required), and each week you would jot down the days you consumed junk food.  That way you have a visual record of when you last ate that cheesecake.  With this, you can also plan around events that will likely make you default, such as eating cake on your birthday (a must, believe me).

I have focused on basically dieting because it’s the most common resolution for New Years, but this can work with almost anything (in fact, I challenge you to think of a realistic resolution that cannot and put it in the comments).

Lastly, I want to add an anecdote about going cold turkey.  It is my belief, based on what I have observed in others, learned in my studies, and learned from myself, that goals that require dramatic changes in lifestyle made literally overnight are pretty much doomed. 

My friend’s resolution to quit smoking is a good example.  I don’t know how many cigarettes he smoked a day, but going from say 15 to absolutely zero is not only really difficult psychologically, but in this case even physically.  Quitting smoking is a fantastic goal and I urge any smokers to try, but this is probably not going to work for 97% of the people who make the attempt, and almost for no one on the first try.

Likewise, ending habits we don’t normally think of as chemically addicting can be almost impossible to do overnight.  As someone who studied a lot of neuroscience in college, I can tell you that the way your brain processes information makes quitting anything hard, as the boundary between psychological and chemical dependence almost disappears at the level of the brain.  I could (and might) do an entire blog about this in particular, but suffice it to say that to your brain, addiction to junk food is almost as hard-wired as addition to alcohol, cigarettes, or other drugs.

Knowing this, don’t be afraid to do a roll-out of your New Year’s Resolution.  Eat five servings of junk food the first few weeks.  Then four, then three.  If this works, you may just get down to that zero we decided was unrealistic earlier.  But it takes time.

In the interest of actually doing something and not just talking about it, I will undertake a very special set of New Year’s Resolutions, which I will describe in another blog a little closer to New Year’s.  Until then, good luck getting your remaining shopping done!  I still haven’t done mine.  Maybe I should resolve to do it earlier next year…