Really? Dieting Is a Short-lived New Year’s Resolution

As the Champagne hangovers fade, the New Year’s resolutions begin. For many people, that means a new diet. But just how prevalent is the “new year, new you” weight-loss resolution?

In a recent unusual study, two psychologists sought an answer in data on diet-related searches provided by Google. The researchers focused on a six-year period beginning in 2005, during which diet-related searches — involving keywords like “diet,” “Atkins,” “Weight Watchers” and “Nutrisystem” — followed an annual trend. Searches for these keywords spiked on average 29 percent nationwide from December through the end of January, then fell month by month until the same period the next year.

The greatest surges in diet-related searches in December and January occurred in states with high obesity rates. The greatest increases were in South Dakota (a 54 percent surge), Tennessee (50 percent) and North Dakota (46 percent). States with lower obesity rates had smaller keyword surges. Vermont had the lowest (18 percent), followed by Hawaii (22 percent) and California (27 percent).

The findings are only a crude indication of nationwide interest in dieting. But they jibe with previous research showing that many people resolve to diet in January but gradually lose interest, a cycle that one study called “false hope syndrome.”

The annual surge is a good sign, but yo-yo dieting — repeatedly losing and regaining weight — may be harmful to physical and mental health, said Patrick M. Markey of Villanova University, an author of the new paper, published in The Journal of Health Psychology.

“You can’t look at a diet as a temporary thing,” he said. “You have to look at it as something you do forever. Otherwise, you’re just going to cycle forever.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

Diet resolutions are common but often fleetin