Why do New Year’s diets fail?

Every January there is a massive influx of diet culture and New Year’s resolution diet based media. It could be gym based, how sleep affects your weight, Veganuary, or just a good old “cut out carbs” based diet.

On one hand, January can be the perfect time to start introducing healthy new habits; everyone loves the feeling of a fresh new year, a brand-new page. Just like the first page of a notebook. It can give you the boost you need in order to kick start the year in the right way, chances are you’ve eaten and drunk your fill over Christmas, so your body might be craving veggies.

Veganuary is also becoming bigger every year, originating in 2014, it’s the trend where you try becoming Vegan for the month of January. Due to its impact, both supermarkets and restaurants have been known to run promotional adverts to coincide with the movement.  

According to the Statistic Brain Research Institute “weight loss” was the second most popular New Year’s resolution in 2017, with only 9.2% then feeling successful in achieving this.  One of the main factors stopping people from succeeding is purely that they get too hyped up about it at the beginning and set themselves unrealistic expectations.

Old habits do tend to die hard. If you’ve been eating a lot of chocolate every day for an extended period of time, then stopping immediately, especially just after Christmas because it can be a bit of a shock for your body. It can also trigger you if you’re an emotional or stress eater. You suddenly feel like you can’t do something which has been bringing you happiness, therefore you’re more likely to then binge. Try just reducing the amount you eat on a daily basis so you can still feel like you’re in control.

Another problem with a new diet resolution is the word itself. “Resolution” is such a demanding word. It creates such an inflexible idea of what you need to do in order to achieve success. Automatically making you feel that if you slip up once then you have failed and may as well give up.

A different method of approach can be to change one thing in your diet, say rather than doing Veganuary and making it your whole month, alter it to Meat Free Monday. This way, you can make more sustainable changes within your life. Also, probably carry it on for longer, rather than just shocking your body one month, you’re making more sustainable changes that with benefit your health in a much more long term fashion.

Adopting a new habit can be an effective way to aid your weight loss, if that’s your aim.  Rather than cutting something out and feeling like you’re missing out on something, adding something into your daily life can have the same affect and make you feel better. For example, making sure you get your 10,000 steps in every day can increase your calorie output, especially if you work a desk job.

This is a guest blog entry.