Health and fitness goals tend to be high up on the list when it comes to making resolutions for the new year, but the habits of Americans do not always necessarily reflect those goals. A new study has suggested that people do not stop purchasing junk food once the holiday parties and guests have packed up and gone home, but that they continue buying junk food well into the new year.

Old habits die hard? Interestingly in the new year the participants of the study did actually purchase more healthy food than they did over the holidays, but they just added it onto the unhealthy food they seemed committed to purchase as well. Instead of swapping chips for broccoli, they purchased both.

To carry the study out researchers chose 200 households in the state of New York as participants and offered them a discount on food items that they could purchase during the baseline period of the study from July to Thanksgiving.

The two other monitoring periods were Thanksgiving until New Year’s day, and then post holidays from New Year’s day until March. What they found was that the participants purchased 9.3 percent more calories per week in the post holiday period, and 20 percent more than during the baseline period. That comes out to about an extra 440 calories per serving per week.

This study had some interesting findings but does not reveal the entire story. The study did not take into consideration the possibility that people may have continued to buy holiday related junk food because of post holiday sales at grocery stores, and the study did not take place across the entire year or over a variety of locations. They also did not control for the possibility that the participants in consideration still had family members staying with them and eating their food.

The researchers suggested that to stay on track in the new year people should focus on substituting healthy food into the diet instead of just adding it, to shop with specific lists to avoid impulse buys of junk food, and to split the grocery cart into sections if it helps to meet the healthy food quota more efficiently.

It is no secret that changing habits overnight can be hard if not downright impossible for many people.  Some research conducted at the University of Scranton suggests that only 44 percent of people who make New Year’s resolutions will have stuck with them at the six month marker. There are a variety of reasons why people give up on their goals, but there are some ways to reduce the urge to throw in the towel.

Often goals are simply too broad. Eating healthy is a great idea, but it does not specifically suggest a plan. A more efficient goal would be to eat out two nights instead of five, or to cut out refined sugar. Breaking a goal down into smaller, clearer, more approachable stepping stones can increase the likelihood that it will be accomplished. Another important factor is to continue despite any slip ups, and commit to following through no matter what comes up throughout the journey.