Yes, we’ve made it to the last full week of the decade! It’s certainly been an interesting one, and the next one promises to be even more so 🙂

It’s usually around this time of the year that people start coming up with some grandiose New Year’s resolutions. Mostly, these resolutions are linked to diet and/or exercise. And sadly, they rarely make it past January. 

This week, we’ll talk about three great resolutions for the new decade, paying particularly close attention to one key detail: actually making it happen. 

The key to a successful New Year’s resolution

If you promise yourself you’ll go on a diet from the 1^st of January, let me save you the trouble. It ain’t gonna happen, at least not for the long run. 

The one and only way to successfully achieve a New Year’s resolution is to change your environment so that actions consistent with your goal happen automatically. It’s well worth reading this long sentence a couple of times. 

If you commit yourself to the latest fad diet inspired by access to a fresh new decade, you’ll soon end up relying on willpower alone. And, over time, willpower always runs out. 

Diet vs. lifestyle change

The weight loss industry is one of the most fascinating constructs of our affluent modern society. In the United States, for example, this industry is worth $72 billion, significantly more than the clean energy industry. 

Yet, the long-term success rate of diets and other weight loss schemes hovers around 5%. This means that almost all of those 72 billion dollars might as well have been burned. 

The rather obvious reason for this great failure has been discussed earlier: the powerful cravings that kept us alive through millennia of extreme scarcity are still just as strong in today’s world of great affluence.

We’ve evolved to eat for our very survival and, in today’s world with hyper-palatable nutrient-free treats around every corner, an obesity epidemic is a pretty obvious result. 

Fad diets and exercise gizmos are powerless against millennia of evolution. Indeed, the only way to victory is to gradually implement permanent lifestyle changes that automatically control our primitive cravings. 

This is what we’ll be doing over the next three days. So, stay tuned… These strategies could help create a New Year’s resolution that actually happens, making the 2020’s your best decade ever 🙂