3 Reasons to Start Your New Year’s Resolution Before New Year

2020 has been an … interesting year, shall we say. And with only six weeks left until the New Year, we might as well just put our feet up, ride the rest of it out, and hope that 2021 has a lot more to offer, right?

Wrong.

We reckon New Year’s resolutions are going to kick up a gear this year. Plenty of people will be making up for lost time, wishing they’d done more during lockdown, or got a taste for a new hobby that they promise themselves they’ll stick to.

But who wants to follow a crowd?

There’s every good reason to set - and start - your New Year’s resolution before January 1. We’ve picked out just three of them.

• Warm up before the big race.

You don’t just go into the gym and pick up your personal best on the first attempt, right? (And if you do, please give us a call)

Likewise, you shouldn’t work from a standing start in January. It’s said you need about 50 days to form a habit. Strava (the fitness app) says that most people start slipping off their (fitness-based) resolutions from about January 17th.

Do the maths - by giving yourself that month-long run-up in December, you’ll be hitting your stride in mid-January, just as everyone else is starting to wobble.

• Navigate the pre-New Year no-man’s-land

We all know that the traditional concept of time doesn’t really exist between December 25th and January 31st - where eating all the Christmas leftovers from the sofa doesn’t really matter because calories don’t count, right? Wrong, again.

Those who have been disciplined all year throw that discipline and their caution to the wind as they indulge in a ‘well-deserved break’. Others who are determined to ‘start properly, promise’ come New Year see this window as their last chance to treat themselves before the tough training and dieting really begins.

Both of these people regret it on January 1st.

The reality is, it’s quite easy to balance even indulgent festive food, with all its treats and trimmings, with a solid amount of training. True, you’re still likely to be in a calorie surplus, but exercise will make a good dent in that surplus. If you’re getting into resistance training, you might even find this week beneficial after spending a few weeks in a deficit.

Most importantly - when you begin in December, you’re beginning out of your own free will and motivation, not some passive, follow-the-crowd guilt. Which brings us to our next reason -

• Exercise because you want to.

It’s said that only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s resolution. Which means a staggering 92% fall along the way. This isn’t a coincidence.

Starting in January means that your reason for doing so is only ever as strong as “because it’s my New Year’s resolution” - not because you want to, or even really see that you have to.

Finding the motivation and the mindset to start well before that means that you start the journey with much more purpose, and a much more optimistic outlook on ultimately seeing it through. You are no longer part of the crowd - you’re leading the pack.

We can’t find any official statistics to back this up, but our educated guess gives you a very, very high chance of succeeding with this approach.