“Fitness” is the number one New Year’s resolution for 2024

Recently a survey was completed by Forbes Health/OnePoll asking 1000 adults questions about New Year’s resolutions. These results were interesting as they were slightly different from similar results conducted about 2023 New Year’s resolutions. In this blog post I would like to go over some of the interesting points.

The first thing that stuck out to me was that 62% of the respondents stated that they actually felt pressured to set a 2024 New Year’s resolution. Women were slightly more likely to feel pressure to set a New Year’s resolution.

The most popular resolution was to improve physical fitness in 2024. This was a change from the previous year where the most popular resolution was to improve mental health. Still 36% of the respondents had “improve mental health” as a top priority for 2024. Just beating out “improving mental health” was “improving finances”, which clocked in at 38% of respondents. Interestingly, “weight loss” and “improve diet” were separated into individual categories, even though they naturally go hand in hand. 34% of respondents had “weight loss” as a top priority for 2024, whereas 32% cited “weight loss” as a top 2024 New Year’s resolution.

Disappointingly, only 20% of respondents stated that they keep themselves responsible when setting a New Year’s resolution. To me this would indicate that they either don’t feel sure in their ability to stick with whatever resolution that they set, or they are simply not serious about the change in the long term. This contrasts with the percentage of respondents who state that they feel that their New Year’s resolution will have a lasting impact beyond 2024. A whopping 86% of respondents stated that they felt this way. I guess this makes sense. Why start a New Year’s resolution if you don’t think it will make a long-term impact. The fact that accountability is so low indicates a disconnect with what will be required, however. This might give us a clue as to why New Year’s resolutions fail at such an incredibly high rate.

In our Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky weight loss offices we try to discourage setting weight loss goals simply based on the time of year. I think that most people understand that New Year’s resolutions are kind of hokey and the novelty of them naturally leads to their failure. The best time to start any lifestyle change (whether it be to improve your career, stop smoking, lose weight, etc.) is when you are ready. I would encourage anyone who wants to make a change to make that change when they feel ready, not based on the calendar. I think doing so will lead to a lot higher chance for success. At the end of the day, before a resolution can be tackled effectively, one must understand what it will truly take to be successful. Once this understanding is made, the drive for the change must significantly outweigh the potential discomfort in making the changes needed. Only at this point does a person even stand a chance at being successful long term. In my opinion, long term success is the only success that truly matters.