Quitters' Day: People most likely to give up New Year’s resolutions today

New Year, same old excuses

(Getty Images/iStockphoto (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Today is officially the day when most people are likely to give up on their New Year’s resolutions, a study has shown.

Research conducted by Strava, the social network for athletes, has discovered that Friday January 12 is the fateful day when your motivation may begin to falter.

By analysing over 31.5 million global January activities, Strava was able to pinpoint the second Friday in January as “Quitters' Day”.

Gareth Mills, country manager for Strava in the UK, explained why a number of us fail to commit to our resolutions at the beginning of the year, especially when they’re health or fitness-based.

“Sticking to resolutions is hard and we all know there’s a lot of talk and pressure in January about getting fitter and being healthier,” he said.

“A key factor in success is motivation, and analysing millions of activity uploads, we’ve been able to pinpoint the day your motivation is most likely to waver.

“However, it doesn’t have to be like this,” he continued.

“We also used our data to analyse ways that active people can get through this time.”

If you believe that you may have fallen into the category of resolution quitters, all is not lost.

Strava has also provided data from their Strava Year in Sport 2017 report to show exactly what forms of exercise could motivate you to get back on the healthy living bandwagon.

(Strava (Strava)

According to their report, exercising with friends could increase your chances of being active by 22 per cent, while joining a sporting club could make you 46 per cent more likely to remain active.

Out of all the athletes recorded who set a goal in January to take part in a race later on in the year, 92 per cent of them were still active 10 months later.

If you’ve struggled to keep your New Year’s resolution already, there’s no reason why you can’t give it another go!