How New Year’s resolutions work

First things first: ease off the gas! Even if you are motivated and perhaps want to change your entire diet, you should proceed slowly and gradually. Here are three tips on how to make your New Year’s resolutions a success.

1. Make yourself aware: What do I want to change and why?

Before you make a run-of-the-mill New Year’s resolution, you should think about it: What do I want to change and why? Here’s an exercise for you:

Step 1: Take paper and pen and write down what you want to change about your diet and why.

Step 2: Set priorities: Number your noted points starting with 1: What is most important to you and what do you want to change immediately? What can wait? Be aware: you can’t change everything overnight. It is better to work your way forward step by step in order to optimize your diet in the long term.

Step 3: Now take the point that is most important to you and define a goal for it. The goal should be as specific, attractive and realistic for you as possible. Then develop two to three measures that you can implement in your everyday life to achieve the goal.

Step 4: Work on it continuously and don’t let setbacks stop you from achieving your goal.

If you realize during this exercise that there are many things you want to change about your diet and you may feel overwhelmed, I recommend that you seek support. Dietitians can help you make lasting changes to your diet with nutrition coaching. They take your needs and preferences into account and are the only ones who are allowed to provide nutritional therapy for existing illnesses.

2. Add foods instead of banning them

Instead of banning certain foods with your New Year’s resolutions, you should start by increasing your food choices. Many people make New Year’s resolutions to eliminate certain foods or nutrients from their diet, for example to stop eating sugar. But then you have to spend 24/7 thinking about what you are NOT allowed to eat: No sweets, no jam, no sodas, no fruit yogurt …
So try to add healthy foods to your diet instead. Psychologically, such a goal is much more attractive and easier to achieve. So if you want to cut out chocolate as a dessert, you can consider dessert alternatives, e.g. a fruit salad, yogurt with fresh fruit or dark chocolate to reduce sugar. A New Year’s resolution could be to eat two portions of fruit a day. Or: Switch to dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate. Sounds much better, doesn’t it?

3. Good planning

If you have a concrete goal in mind, you can start planning straight away. Because good planning is half the battle! For example, if you want to make sure you eat regular meals in the new year, a weekly meal plan can help you. If you want to cook for yourself more often, you can look up delicious recipes, print them out, write the ingredients you need on your shopping list and go shopping accordingly. The more concrete your measures are, the easier it will be for you to implement them in your everyday life.

And last but not least: Stick with it

Even when changing your diet, setbacks are part of the process. There will be days when it works great, and then there will be days when things go wrong. Don’t let these days get you down and focus on your progress. After all, it’s better to make small progress than none at all.