Unlock Lasting Habits with This New Year Hack
Quick Health Tip #53
Happy New Year, dear members! 🥳
Welcome to 2026—and to your very first 1-Minute Health Tip of the year.
Every morning (except Saturdays, when you’ll get our deeper weekly dive), I’ll drop a short, science-backed, actionable tip in your inbox.
No prescriptions needed (sorry, Big Pharma! 😉).
We’ll keep working on what actually moves the needle in real life: brighter mood, calmer nerves, mindful eating, blood sugar control, weight loss, cravings, intermittent fasting, better sleep, joint-friendly movement, decoding food labels, gut health, longevity… and so much more.
The sky is the limit.
Think of these emails as your daily micro-upgrade: a tiny habit, a myth-buster, or a clear answer to a common question. Transformative, small and consistent steps with a big long-term benefit.
In case you missed it, here’s yesterday’s post to close 2025:
I truly hope this first post of 2026 helps you start the year feeling in charge of your health.
Unlock Lasting Habits with This New Year Hack
For your brain, January 1 feels like a line in the sand—a natural “before” and “after.”
That sense of a clean slate is a psychological lever you can use.
Researchers call this the fresh start effect: when time feels like a new chapter (New Year, birthdays, the start of a week or month), people are more willing to start healthier, future-focused behaviors—like searching for diets, going to the gym, or committing to goals.¹
In large real-world data, days right after these “temporal landmarks” consistently showed higher engagement in goal-related actions than ordinary days.²
When people were explicitly reminded that a date (like New Year’s Day or the first day of spring) marked a new beginning, their willingness to take a concrete step toward a goal (like signing up for a reminder or clicking on goal-help websites) jumped sharply compared with when the same date was described as “just another day.”
In everyday terms: When a moment feels like “a new chapter,” your brain is more ready to believe “This time can be different.”
That’s the good news.
The bad news? That motivation spike fades fast.
By mid- or late January, many people feel like they’ve “failed” and quietly drop everything.
Here’s where another piece of science matters.
A fresh systematic review and meta-analysis of 20 habit-formation studies (2,601 participants) looked at how long it takes real people to make health behaviors feel more automatic—things like moving more, drinking water, flossing, improving diet, and cutting sitting time.³
Reported median time for habits to form were about 59–66 days.
Average times were even longer: 106–154 days.
Individual range? From 4 days to 335 days—huge variability.
So it’s closer to 2–5 months of repetition, with a lot of individual differences.
Put these two pieces together:
Today gives you a real psychological boost to start.
The next 2–3 months are where repetition (not perfection!) slowly turns that start into a habit.
How to Use January 1 Without Burning Out by January 15
Today, give yourself one tiny, repeatable health behavior, and treat January as your practice month.
1. Pick one behavior you can do almost every day:
10-minute walk after lunch
1 extra serving of vegetables at your main meal
Phone out of the bedroom at night
5 minutes of stretching before bed
2. Make it concrete and realistic:
“On weekdays after lunch, I’ll walk for 10 minutes.”
“At dinner, I’ll always add one vegetable—fresh, frozen, or canned.”
3. Expect the dip.
When motivation drops in a few weeks (yes, it will), remember you’re in the normal habit-building zone. Use the next Monday, the 1st of next month, or your birthday as mini fresh starts to restart on the same tiny behavior.
See you tomorrow for your next 1-Minute Health Tip.
To your zenith within,
Sara Redondo, MD, MS
References:
Dai H, Milkman KL, Riis J. The fresh start effect: Temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior. Manag Sci. 2014;60(10):2563–2582. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2014.1901.
Dai H, Milkman KL, Riis J. Put your imperfections behind you: Temporal landmarks spur goal initiation when they signal new beginnings. Psychol Sci. 2015;26(12):1927–1936. doi:10.1177/0956797615605818.
Singh B, Murphy A, Maher C, Smith AE. Time to form a habit: A systematic review and meta-analysis of health behaviour habit formation and its determinants. Healthcare (Basel). 2024;12(23):2488. doi:10.3390/healthcare12232488.