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How was your week? Our family has been busy eating leftovers from the holidays. Does anyone else have a refrigerator full of cheese and salami from charcuterie boards? I just weighed myself, and I’m still under my COVID weight, woot woot. The diet starts tomorrow! At least that’s what Americans say on New Year’s Day.
But it turns out that losing weight is not the No. 1 New Year’s resolution in the United States. For this week’s list, I checked with Statista Consumer Insights, a company that tracks statistics of all kinds. Here, then, are the Top Five New Year’s resolutions made by American adults heading into 2025.
By the way, 43% of Americans do not make New Year’s resolutions. Where do you fit in here? For more stats about anything that could possibly be measured, visit www.statista.com.
5. Spend more time with family/friends
I already try to do this. (I’ve visited almost all of my cousins this year, on both sides of my family, in Florida and New Hampshire.) A lot of us travel for work quite a bit, and families get put on the back burner, especially during trade show season. A wise man once said, “You’ll never regret spending time with family.”
4. Lose weight
I thought this would have been No. 1. I think a lot of us have tried and failed to lose weight over multiple New Years, so we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s dropped down a tad. But I’ve been seeing a ton of online ads for diets since Christmas “vacation” started a few weeks ago. I’ll be traveling a few times in January, so this is a moot point. When I’m on the road, I tend to “eat like a campground raccoon,” as comedian Kyle Kinane once said.
3. Exercise more
This is one of mine. I have a “new to me” Nautilus elliptical, and I’ve been hitting that fairly often. I’m still bullish about this crazy thing. The first five to 10 minutes on an elliptical are great, because there’s no impact and it feels like you’re just floating. But by 15 minutes in, you really start to feel it, and soon you’re making plans to jump off and go back to watching “The Bear.”
2. Eat healthier
This ties in with losing weight. I’ve been making an effort to read the ingredients in everything I buy, and almost everything that’s pre-packaged is high in salt and/or fat. If I find something that’s low in fat, then the salt content is usually through the roof. So I’ve been cooking a lot of meals from scratch, because that’s the only way to really eat healthy. Is this one of your resolutions?
1. Save more money
This is a big one for all of us, I imagine. Most of us are closer to retirement than we’d like to admit, and none of us want to be waiting on a check each month as we whittle on the front porch in a paisley cardigan. So we put money into Roths and non-Roths, and we listen to our “retirement guy” when he says, “Hey, this one fund is underperforming. Let’s put that money in this other fund.” He was in my band for years, so he has my best interests in mind. Right?
