With the New Year right around the corner, it’s time to start thinking about whether or not you’re going to make a resolution to follow. There are many things to make your resolution, but the most common would be eating healthy, exercising more, or saving money.
In fact, for 2017 in Canada, 33% of Canadians made improving their personal fitness and nutrition their resolution. Followed by focusing more on financial goals at 21%, and travelling and leisure’s at 13% for their resolution.
Credit: OurWindsor.ca
Rahul Raj is a Personal Trainer at Planet Fitness, and has seen first hand in the first few months of the year that gym memberships increase.
“I’ve been working here for the past three years, and I’ve seen that usually December’s last week, and January, February, up to March, I can see a tremendous increase in the number of memberships here.”
And although it’s great to make New Year’s resolutions, Raj explains that the hardest part about making one, is sticking by it throughout the entire year.
“Unfortunately, it’s going down after March. The consistency, it’s going down.”
Samantha Ginotti is a Registered Dietitian at Western University, and says that making smaller steps and goals to focus on can make sticking to healthy eating, or any resolution, a lot easier.
“I definitely think an important thing is to make your goals or resolutions ‘SMART Goals’. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. You want to make sure you’re not setting your goals too high, or you want to make sure that you set some details that you know you’ll be able to achieve them.”
But why is it that people tend to make resolutions at the beginning of the year?
“I think we see the New Year as a fresh start,” Ginotti adds. “It’s just a natural kicking off point to be trying to make some healthy choices.”
Whether you decide to make a resolution for 2019 or not, it’s important to make smaller goals so that you’re able to stick by them for the entire year. Or, if you decide to give up on your resolution a few months in, that’s okay too, there’s always next year.
