Your New Year Resolve is Paper-Thin
Did you make a bunch of New Year's resolutions? Feeling positive and optimistic about the wonderful life changes you're going to implement? That's sweet, says the Times, but you're totally kidding yourself and you'll likely fail by February—80 percent of Americans do! "It's exceptionally hard to make life changes," according to Alan Deutschman, the author of Change or Die, a book about how rare it is for people to alter their behavior.
Demotivated and uninspired yet? Just in case you still have a sliver of desire to get up off the couch and go to the gym, here are some more gloomy statistics: 70 percent of coronary bypass patients are eating unhealthy diets again two years after surgery, and two-thirds of dieters gain back any weight they lost within a year. "We're hard-wired not to change quickly," says psychologist Marion Cramer Jacobs. "Think of what chaos would ensue if you could snap your finger and change instantly tomorrow." It's true. No one would need shrinks, for one thing.
