Ask the Doctor: ‘I’m already struggling with my New Year’s resolutions — how can I set myself up to achieve my health goals in 2024?’

“Each year I go into the New Year full of enthusiasm and resolutions to become fitter, healthier and start practising self-care. By three weeks in, my motivation has waned and I’m back to square one, feeling guilty that I’ve failed to keep up my resolutions yet again. Any tips for setting myself up for success this New Year?”

Answer from Dr Robert Kelly, Professor Robert Kelly MD MBA FRCPI. Cardiologist, Lifestyle Medicine Physician, Health Habits Coach & Behaviour Designer, Beacon Hospital

We’ve just entered 2024 and some of us are contemplating making big changes in our lives. It is a wonderful opportunity to pick out areas of your health and wellbeing to address.

The pillars of better health are found in:

• Healthier Eating
• Exercise and Physical Activity
• Improving sleep quality
• Reducing / eliminating chronic stress
• Spending more time with family and friends.
• Stopping smoking, drug misuse and reducing alcohol intake

Adopting these behaviours will lower risk for heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, and premature death.

For example, what behaviours can you think of that affect your diet or might help you to lose weight. Examples might include reducing alcohol and drinking water instead, exercising more, getting a better sleep routine by eating earlier in the day, switching coffee to tea. Going for walk before dinner, eating more slowly, smaller portions, more fruit, and vegetables instead of potatoes and bread.

Write those down. Pick one or two to start with. Ideally pick those that are easy to do. You now have one or two behaviours to work with. Behaviours will happen once you line up motivation, ability and remember to do the behaviour.

Motivation comes in waves. On January 1 you’re all on for change, January 2 might not be the same, and in 80% of cases, by January 21 you will be back to your 2023 self. Motivation happens when the behaviour makes you feel good and helps you to get nearer to your goal. Take one day at a time and have a plan so you can deal with drops in motivation. You may not feel like doing the exercise, but doing something small and enjoying it will get you closer to your goal. Celebrate doing this exercise!

Your ability to do new behaviours comes from wanting to, having skills and equipment, being in the right frame of mind, having time or being able to pay for doing the new behaviour. If any of these become an issue, then behaviour will struggle. You can solve this with coaching, getting nutrition advice/ coaching as examples.

Remembering to do the new behaviour is achieved by a trigger or prompt. Every daily action that you take is a prompt: get out of bed, go to toilet, put on clothes, walk outside.

Continue through your day with new behaviours, your triggers and celebrations. It is important to plan each day with a few triggers instead of random luck.

Based on the Law of Compounding, as you start small and grow your behaviours, new habits will form. If you do one press up or squat today and add another tomorrow and so on, you can reach almost 300 at end of 2024. You don’t need to get to that level, but you choose your goal and if you need a few extra days to get there, just concentrate on achieving the goal. You can add other exercises and behaviours as you go but start slowly and build the habits.

I take this approach with all my heart patients to help them improve their health, to stop smoking, to eat better, make time for more exercise, sleep better, stress less and I coach the same material.

Have a happy healthy 2024 and get into the habit of doing your small healthy steps each day.

Have a question for the professionals you’d like answered? Get in touch with sarah.gill@image.ie with the subject headline ‘Ask The Doctor’.