Stossel: New Year's Resolutions

N E W  Y OR K,  Dec. 29 -- Stop smoking, lose 30 pounds, and while you’re at it, become a better person. Every year we set forth a new set of New Year’s resolutions with the best intentions of following through. And every year the majority of those resolutions fail.

“One in four resolutions bites the dust within a week. About half of them are gone within a month,” says Steve Levinson, co-author of the book Following Through.

In his research Levinson illustrates that six months into the year, most resolutions are dead. “They are history. They are toast.”

So why bother making New Year’s resolutions at all? This phenomenon of failure prompts John Stossel of ABCNEWS’ 20/20 to say, “Give Me a Break!”

Were New Year’s resolutions a marketing scheme dreamed up by a health club executive? Not so. New Year’s resolutions actually date back to ancient times. There is evidence there was a tradition of resolutions in Babylon, ancient Greece and Rome.

In today’s health-conscious world, the two predominant resolutions are to stop smoking and to get more exercise.

“January is absolutely a major month for the club industry,” says Bill Howland, the public relations director of the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association.

“Helping people follow through on New Year’s resolutions is a big part of what club people are going to be thinking about right now,” said Howland. He says sports clubs do 10 percent to 15 percent of their initiation business around New Year’s.

But despite the best efforts of personal trainers, after most gyms swell to capacity in January, there is a sharp dropoff in February. And with all of the effort made toward quitting smoking, 97 percent of all people who try to quit wind up smoking again.

Why are we so inept at keeping our resolutions? Levinson and Following Through co-author Peter Greider believe it has to do with our approach to self-help in general. They argue that while our brain makes decisions based on logic, it is much more difficult to train our bodies to behave in a logical fashion. According to Levinson and Greider, a New Year’s resolution is an attempt to impose a logical strategy on behavior, which does not follow the same pattern.