Make new year’s resolutions because you want to change, not because the date has changed

Sitting on the toilet at 11.50pm on 31 December while my friends party on the other side of the door, I’m desperately searching for inspiration. With my Notes app in hand, and visions of myself in a bikini, I’m writing a comprehensive list of all the ways I will punish my body for the next 12 months as penance for a Christmas of indulgence. Resolutions I’d forgotten to write earlier and suddenly felt compelled to get down before the stroke of midnight, or else face going into the new year the same old me. It was a panic-inducing thought.

A quarter of Brits have succumbed to the pressure of making new year’s resolutions and according to YouGov, women are likelier to than men. The most common resolutions? Lose weight, exercise more, improve your diet, stop smoking and drink less. And although seeking positive change and health in our lives is admirable, we should fight the fad for resolutions.

Of course, new year’s resolutions are not a new concept: they can be traced as far back as the ancient Babylonians and to Julius Caesar’s Rome, where promises of self-betterment were made by worshippers to their gods. But today’s resolutions are different. The 21st century has seen new year’s resolutions morph into, at best, social media fodder, at worst, a cynical capitalist ploy.

After months of advertisers selling us the Christmas excess – stockings bulging with presents, tables overrun with food, parties lubricated with endless alcohol – they have pivoted to selling us self-discipline. Suddenly we no longer want party dresses and champagne, we need to buy new exercise clothes and a gym membership in order to lose weight. We need lunch boxes to carry our sad salad to the office instead of buying lunch. We need that new smoothie-maker because we’ll definitely eat more fruit and vegetables if they’re served in liquid form. New year’s resolutions are the perfect marketing ploy: in order to better oneself properly, one has to make a commitment, preferably in cold hard cash. Companies are making money off the back of our own self-hatred.

Regardless of who else is profiting from your resolutions, it’s worth asking: are you? Expecting yourself to emerge at midnight from a bathroom, transformed, having dispelled all your old habits just because the calendar has changed, is setting yourself up for failure; by one estimate, 80 per cent of resolutions are abandoned by February.

In fact, Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, warned against people making resolutions in 2009, because of the negative impact it can have on your state of mind – perhaps because constantly striving for perfection is exhausting. Not to mention the fact that it’s still cold and dark outside, and denying yourself a night in front of the TV instead of pounding the pavements with your Fitbit isn’t a crime.

So make resolutions because you have a genuine desire for change, not because the date has changed. This year I did not lock myself in a bathroom, and although my Notes remain empty, I sense slow change could be on the horizon.

Yours,

Sophie Gallagher

Deputy lifestyle editor