The fresh start effect
lars.yencken.org
lars.yencken.org
> I have a different perspective. Overall, I admire people who try to make change in their lives for the better.
This is good general advice. Why not just be supportive and nice to people instead of dismissing whatever effort they put in things that they want to do or are passionate about.
This makes it easier for yourself to change too, whenever that is desirable or needed.
There is nothing wrong with a new years resolution but you have to take it for what it is. Actually getting fitter, eating better and losing weight is a multiple year commitment at least. If it is hard for any extended period of time the likelihood of success is low.
Another line of thinking that goes into things like New Years' resolutions is the idea that significant change can only be intentionally and effectively made in a long series of tiny steps. The OP discusses the dual of this idea but misses the main thing:
> The reality is that if you are going to do something that's really difficult, like changing your whole approach to eating, you are likely to either fail, or to accumulate the kind of micro-failures over time that erode your motivation, death by a thousand cuts.
The flip side here is that overall progress is composed of micro-successes over time that build your motivation.
I've kinda got a hypothesis on this... see in the cold of winter, going to the gym is a great idea. But as spring comes around, you want to be outside - maybe even hiking, biking, etc, IE: being physically active. Then the kids are home all summer and you get distracted with family activities. Then the kids go back to school but you are out of routine going to the gym and it takes a while to get back into the pattern.
My point is, I think we all jump to this idea that the person who stops going to the gym is being lazy, whereas I think a lot of it has to do with patterns of behavior and "externalities."
So don't use statistics as an excuse to be a dick.
For my money I'm going to expose the person to a better strategy rather than supporting and reinforcing a clearly bad one.
stares awkwardly at the Bottle of Ozempic in the corner
It’s more a confession to the mindset of these people who fixate on the pessimistic side of a pitched battle.
For an individual, the attempt to improve yourself is usually admirable.
But I am cynical about New Year's resolutions, and I think my priors are something like "the decision to make a change on New Years is more likely to fail than the same decision made at any other arbitrary point in time because 'everyone knows' that New Year's resolutions fail".
If someone had a problem that involved making life changes to fix or make progress on it, amongst the worst possible prescriptions for fixing this problem would be "make a resolution".
Most people don’t start, some do but don’t stick with it, a minority make it to that point where they see what I was saying and make it a habit long term habit.
There were so many days I didn’t want to but just pressed play and figured I’d get 10 minutes in. But I knew it I just decided to do the whole workout.
Eventually moved off of P90x and mixed in a variety of predefined and made up workout to keep it interesting. But now I don’t feel on my game if I didn’t get a chance to workout in the morning, so it’s become a pretty strong habit.
Thankfully I don’t have any known disruption events on the horizon. But for little things, like when I have to fly at 6am I get up at 3/3:30 to get a quick (and intense) mile in around the neighborhood. And I workout in hotel rooms, etc.
I can confirm this "milestone age", by looking at some relatives who started running and participating in marathons at an older age.
They actually claim that they focus more on family, less focus on self, also adopting more spiritual pursuits…whatever that means.
Without reading too much into it, let’s not deemphasize family rearing importance to society in order to emphasize the need to fill some equality gap. The source of which could be complicated [1][2]
[1] https://www.neonarrative.us/p/no-matter-how-much-parenting-d...
[2] https://ifstudies.org/blog/equal-not-identical-in-sharing-fa...
> Without reading too much into it, let’s not deemphasize family rearing importance to society in order to emphasize the need to fill some equality gap
Why not? Many women talk about it at length, it's already been a part of feminist theory and action for a long time.
Why should I not listen to them if they tell me they've been hurt? Because it "could be complicated?" On a site dedicated to intellectual stimulation that won't cut it for me.
I really recommend you to check out Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez to get a sense of the breath and number of barriers we put up for women. They are not being given a fair choice, and they're it loudly.
Funny enough, from my own research with my project, a Green Day (a day where 5 out of 5 goals were achieved) either comes right after a Red Day (0 of out of 5 goals achieved) or right after another Green Day.
[1] https://medium.com/@5goals/faith-is-the-foundation-of-habits...
It can be both
I want to agree with something you didn't quite spell out: the incentives are not really properly aligned in this kind of industry. You get paid up front, when people are at maximum motivation, but progress takes a long time and many people drop off along the way. Some kind of business model where you get a half-refund for non-usage would be a reasonable compromise for everyone, but I've never seen it in action.
Speaking for the people I know who are involved in this work, they are not cynical. They do this kind of work, instead of other work, since they genuinely want to help people. Our product worked if you stuck at it, so we spent a lot of time encourage people to come back each day and work at their goal. You can take my word about this, or not, as you like.
Something even a cynic would celebrate: there seems to be a push in some parts of the US health system to pay for outcomes (e.g. confirmed weight loss; stopping smoking) rather than processes (e.g. access to an app for losing weight; access to a quit smoking program). That's a really welcome development, it aligns everyone's incentives nicely.
Can't you send your data to further prove that this effect exists? PR for you, win for science.
When you flex your decision making so that it regularly turns up right answers you have "got on the wagon". I have done this with diets and I'm currently "off the wagon" and this business of getting on usually starts with one big long bit of exercise - like an especially long walk and somehow I get the discipline out of that to kick me onto the right track.
Once on the track I'm ok till I am sick or until the darkest bit of winter or until very stressful things happen at work.
So I realise life will always be up and down for me - which is just better than always down.
There is a .bg saying .. "when the cart goes wheels up, roads are many.." that is usually taken negative - like "it's too late to fix stuff" - but could be used otherway around - do turn the cart wheels-up if u want more road/s..
All in all, happy with Lifesum though! The database is _excellent_ for The Netherlands, which means that barcode scanning just works (something I barely even tried with Noom anymore), and syncing with Fitbit works well, too (as long as you set your base metabolism to 0 in Lifesum).
I especially love the "compare products" feature, where you scan a couple of barcodes and the app tells you which product is the 'better' option and why it chose that one.
vs.
What a goof the past you was, eh? Good riddance!
Find a mentor, and start connecting your past and your future but not an app.
I started my fitness journey around the time I turned 30 years old. I don't know why, I just somehow decided to do Couch to 5K, and from there it turned into something that I really enjoy and spend a lot of time doing.
That said, I'm a _little_ skeptical about the premise here, which, if I'm reading it correctly, is that "people start things and don't finish them." I guess that's true -- certainly of myself -- but OP is talking from the perspective of Lifesum, a dieting app.
My mind goes to this question: if people use Lifesum on Mondays and then drop off, is that the fault of the customers or the fault of the app?
To put it a different way, I exercise every day. I watch what I eat. I'm in very good shape. But sometimes I think "I should track my calories," so I download LoseIt or MyFitnessPal or something else. And I track my calories for... a week, maybe two, maybe three.
In real life? Still eating healthy, still exercising daily, still enjoying my fitness journey.
On the app? Gone. I've dropped off.
Why did I drop off? There are probably a few things.
One is that I am possibly not the target demographic. (Although, am I? As a fitness person that is tracking macros religiously, shouldn't these apps be critical for my success?)
Another is that I just lack the discipline to track my food and diet. But that can't be true, either, can it? I've exercised in some form or fashion every day for the last 1843 days. I read every day. I call my parents twice a week every week. I have discipline to follow schedules and plans that I stick to.
A third is that I just don't care enough. This feels most likely to me. I'm doing well in my fitness journey. The app doesn't provide enough value to me. I don't _need_ it and it feels like extra cruft getting in the way of my enjoyment of life.
I'm not saying OP is wrong, but I'm offering an alternative view: maybe it's not that people can't stick with resolutions and that temporal milestones are, well, temporary. Maybe it's that we're making the wrong resolutions in the first place. Or perhaps that the tools that exist to tackle the "wrong" resolutions aren't sufficient.
Anyway, just my two cents.