February 3, 2009

Just one month ago, many Americans made their New Year's resolution to lose weight, to exercise more, or to watch less television. Few people, however, manage to keep their resolutions over time, say experts. So, why are bad habits so hard to break?

"The problem is that people make rules for themselves that they can never keep," says University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) psychologist Rudy Vuchinich, Ph.D. Vuchinich is a professor and associate director of the UAB Medical Psychology Program. He studies behavioral economics, self-control and substance abuse.

"One of the big issues [concerning] self-control involves being confronted with the choice between immediate and delayed consequences," says Vuchinich. "We know, for example, that if people are given a choice between getting $5 on Feb. 3, 2010 or $10 a year and a week from now, most would pick the $10. But if given the choice to receive $5 today or $10 a week from today, most people's preference would be the reverse. When $5 is available right now, we prefer the smaller, more immediate reward. Part of the brain is wired to overvalue things that are immediate, and unfortunately, today's 21st century environment is full of those kinds of immediate gratifications."

Vuchinich says one reason people fail is because they make unrealistic rules for themselves. "People routinely make rules when they are trying to change their self-control. So, if an individual makes a rule to not eat more than 1,500 calories a day, a rule like that is unlikely to be successful.

"That is because if the individual breaks the rule and eats more than 1,500 calories in a day, the legitimacy of the rule collapses, and they're back to where they started. One trick is to make rules that allow for well-defined exceptions such as 'I will eat no more than 1,500 calories a day except on special occasions. But the special occasion has to be outside your control such as a holiday, a home football game or when visiting parents. It has to be a special circumstance that does not lead to the collapse of the whole rule."