The beginning of the New Year is often a sign for change and other new beginnings – whether it’s trying to compensate for the indulgence of Christmas or the freezing January weather driving us to new pursuits, New Years’ resolutions are popular globally. But how do our goals differ globally and are we actually any good at keeping them?
A new global YouGov study of 9 different countries across the world reveals that, in the UK, a quarter of adults have made at least one resolution for 2016. The most popular resolution in the UK is to lose weight during the coming year (40%), and this is higher than in any of the countries YouGov’s study was conducted in.
However, although many UK adults said they planned to lose weight in 2016, far fewer said that they planned to get fit (26%) or eat heathier (24%) this year. This disparity might point to some key reasons why the UK struggles to keep resolutions throughout the year.
Over a third of UK adults with a resolution for 2016 said they think they’d break a resolution within the first month of the year (36%) and one in six (16%) said they expected to break a resolution in the first week of the New Year.
In Asia, the priorities are slightly different to ours as respondents are more likely to note getting fit (40%) as a resolution rather than losing weight (33%). Perhaps the key to keeping a resolution is then to keep it simple – losing weight can be a side effect of increasing your fitness level rather than a goal in itself.
Our neighbours across the channel in France are more likely to break a resolution in the first week, with over a fifth of those who planned resolutions for 2016 saying they’d expect to do so (22%). Curiously enough, in Asia the response is much more steadfast with only 8% of those in Malaysia and 9% in Singapore expecting to break a resolution in the first week.
