Is Your New Year’s Resolution to Lose Weight? Keep it to Yourself!
If your resolution for the New Year is to lose weight, you might want to think twice before you announce your plans to your family and friends. Doctors are taking a closer look at effective diet plans, and some are recommending that their patients keep their weight loss intentions to themselves.
Doctor John Walz, who specializes in weight loss, tells CNN that a big part of why he tells his patients to not let others in on their plans is because, by human nature, we tend to spend our time with like-minded people. Obese people generally associate with other obese people, so when one person decides to lose weight they are met with discouragement and judgment from their peers.
"Deliberately or not, the family, the friends, the other people who are part of that individual's culture will resist the change," Walz says. "(They) will try to change them back to what the culture tolerates."
Another argument for weight loss secrecy is more personal. Dr. Peter Gollwitzer, a professor of psychology at New York University, studies the correlation between telling people what your goals are and actually achieving them. In his research paper “When Intentions Go Public,” Gollwitzer says that the praise we receive for setting goals satisfies us to the point where we don’t feel the need to actually achieve them.
The solution, Gollwitzer says, is simple: "You can keep your mouth shut," or "Form different kinds of intention – not only say what you want to do but also when, where and how you want to do it."
8 New Year’s Resolutions You Can Keep
Let’s get real: New Year’s resolutions are so last year. Why do we make these arbitrary lists of ways to improve ourselves and then make them again the following year? What is it about them that keep us coming back for more every January?
Perhaps it’s because we set goals that are too lofty to pursue for more than the first few weeks. Or maybe it’s because we aren’t really interested in keeping the resolutions. Or maybe it’s because we feel obliged to make resolutions.
Whatever the case may be, why not try on some New Year’s resolutions you can actually keep? Here are a few ideas to make 2012 your happiest, healthiest year yet.
