New Year’s goals worth sticking to

Jan. 1 can be a daunting day for those looking to create better habits and make significant lifestyle changes. In a recent survey from Forbes, most adults feel pressure to create New Year’s resolutions. While setting goals can seem like light work, sticking to the promise of a new you in the new year can get tricky.

Whether it be adopting new fitness habits, eating cleaner or committing to less screen time, staying true to your New Year’s resolutions is possible with the help of expert advice and mindful motivation.

To commit to a New Year’s resolution, it’s important to look at the goals as a long-term solution rather than a short-term problem that needs solving. According to a Forbes survey, only 13% of resolution-setters continue to work towards their goals four months after setting them. Limited access to facilities and motivation loss are two of the many reasons that goal-setters ditch their resolutions. However, there are solutions to help you stay true to your New Year’s goals.

In Syracuse, new businesses are leveraging New Year’s motivations and committing to push audiences towards healthier lifestyles. Club Pilates, a national reformer-based pilates studio, recently opened its first Syracuse location in Dewitt, ten minutes from SU’s campus.

Since its unofficial opening at the beginning of the year, over 300 people have committed to monthly memberships, according to Marina Lopez, a front desk associate at the studio. The grand opening of the studio is set for Feb. 24 and Club Pilates expects many more to join as members before then. 

Pilates is a safe and effective workout that focuses on acute muscular balance, improved flexibility and increased body awareness, according to the Better Health Channel. The workout is low-impact, allowing the classes to be suitable for those who struggle with cardio-based exercise.

For those looking to achieve fitness-related goals in the New Year, pilates is an excellent program to commit to. The classes are individually focused and feature knowledgeable instructors guaranteed to help improve mobility and strength.

For those looking to achieve a healthier lifestyle through nutritional choices in the New Year, the commitment to eating cleaner can be difficult to stay consistent with. However, safe and effective ways to fuel your body without restrictive diets exist. Implementing small changes over time is a key element in achieving long-term goals. 

One way to help achieve your health goals takes the form of an app. The Yuka app is a great start when it comes to clean eating. Yuka is a food analyzing service that gives precise health risk ratings based on the additives in certain foods.

The app is simple; scan the barcode of any item and Yuka will give you a percentage score of the item based on the nutritional quality, presence of additives, and organic dimension. Yuka uses benchmark statistics for its ratings based on data from the European Food Safety Authority and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The app is effective in helping users create clean diets and staying true to health choices. Yuka is not a calorie tracker but rather a way to measure quality.

Another common resolution in the New Year is cutting back on screen time. The average American spends almost seven hours per day looking at screens, according to a study from the Global Web Index. High screen time can damage attention span, cause sleeping trouble, and lead to physical changes in your brain, especially among developing young adults, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

There are several ways to commit to reduced screen time. Most effectively, these methods include moving chargers away from your bed and setting Screen Time limits for certain apps.

Sleep is one of the most important foundations of physical and mental health. Disrupting sleep patterns to use mobile devices can lead to a decrease in natural melatonin levels and an increase in exhaustion, according to a study from the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Whether you want your New Year’s goals to center around bettering your health or your mind, by following the outline of creating small changes to achieve long-term goals, 2024 can be the year your resolutions extend past Jan. 31 and turn into successful habits.