New Year’s Resolution & Fitness Goal Statistics: What the Data Shows

Every January the same questions come up: How many people make New Year’s resolutions? How many are about fitness? How long do they actually last, and does anything make them stick?

This page pulls the best current numbers into one place, from Pew Research Center, YouGov, Gallup, the CDC, the Health & Fitness Association and peer-reviewed studies on goals and habits. Where the data splits women and men, you’ll find both.

Every figure links to its original source at the bottom of the page. Data last checked November 2026.

Jump to a sectionIn this article12 sections

1. Key New Year’s Resolution Statistics at a Glance
2. How Many People Make New Year’s Resolutions?
3. The Most Common New Year’s Resolutions
4. Women, Weight Loss and Resolutions
5. How Long Do New Year’s Resolutions Last?
6. What Makes Resolutions and Fitness Goals Stick?
7. Gym and Fresh Start Statistics
8. The “80% Quit by February” Claim
9. What These Numbers Mean for You
10. How to Cite These Statistics
11. Sources
12. Frequently Asked Questions

Key New Year’s Resolution Statistics at a Glance

• 30% of U.S. adults made at least one New Year’s resolution for 2024, and half of them made more than one.¹
• Exercising more was the most common resolution for 2026, named by 25% of Americans.²
• 79% of people who made resolutions for 2024 set at least one about health, exercise or diet.¹
• 21% of women planned to lose weight in 2026, compared with 13% of men.²
• 58% of U.S. women want to lose weight, but only 30% say they’re seriously trying (men: 46% and 22%).³
• 46% of New Year’s resolvers were still continuously successful after six months, compared with just 4% of people who wanted to change but didn’t make a resolution.⁴
• 77% of resolvers kept their pledge for the first week, and 19% were still going two years later.⁵
• 55% of Americans who set health or fitness goals for 2025 say they fully achieved them.⁶
• Goals framed as something to start doing worked better than goals to stop doing something: 58.9% vs. 47.1% success after a year.⁷
• 63% of new gym members in one large study quit before their third month, and fewer than 4% kept going for more than 12 months straight.⁸
• A new daily habit took a median of 66 days to become automatic, with a range of 18 to 254 days.⁹

How Many People Make New Year’s Resolutions?

The answer depends a lot on how the question is asked. A strict “Did you make a New Year’s resolution?” gets about 3 in 10 adults. A broader “Will you set personal goals for the year?” gets more than half.

Survey	Said yes	Question asked
Pew, Jan 2024	30%	Made a resolution for 20241
YouGov, Dec 2025	31%	Will make a resolution or goal for 20262
HFA, Dec 2025	56%	Will set personal goals for 20266

Resolutions are much more common among younger adults. Here’s who made at least one resolution for 2024, by age:¹

Age	Made a resolution
18–29	49%
30–49	31%
50+	21%

• YouGov found the same pattern for 2026: 43% of adults under 45 planned a resolution or goal, compared with 21% of adults 45 and older.²
• Pew found only modest differences between women and men in who makes resolutions.¹
• Of the 70% of Americans who made no resolution for 2024, 56% said they simply don’t like making them and 12% said they break them too easily.¹

The Most Common New Year’s Resolutions

Health and fitness lead almost every resolution survey. YouGov asked about 25 possible resolutions for 2026. These were the top five among all U.S. adults:²

2026 resolution	Share of adults
Exercise more	25%
Be happy	23%
Eat healthier	22%
Save more money	21%
Improve physical health	21%

• Among people who made resolutions for 2024, 79% had one about health, exercise or diet, 61% about money, 57% about relationships, 55% about hobbies and 49% about work.¹
• In the Health & Fitness Association’s survey, 54% of 2026 goal-setters (about 82 million Americans) planned to focus on health, fitness and exercise, ahead of money (49%) and nutrition or diet (40%).⁶
• Among people setting fitness goals for 2026, 50% wanted to build muscle or strength, 48% wanted better mobility, flexibility or posture, and 46% wanted to improve their mental health through exercise.⁶
• In a Swedish study of 1,062 resolvers, the most common main resolutions were physical health (33%), weight loss (20%) and eating habits (13%).⁷

Women, Weight Loss and Resolutions

Women are more likely than men to set weight-loss goals, and they have been for decades. The gap shows up in every major data source.

Measure	Women	Men
Want to lose weight3	58%	46%
Seriously trying now3	30%	22%
Tried in past year10	56.4%	41.7%
2026 goal: lose weight2	21%	13%
2026 goal: be happy2	26%	20%

• Gallup’s November 2025 survey found 52% of U.S. adults want to lose weight, but only half as many (26%) are seriously trying.³
• CDC data from 2013–2016 show that within every age, race and income group, more women than men tried to lose weight in the past year.¹⁰
• The two most common weight-loss methods were exercising and eating less food, each used by 62.9% of adults who tried. Half (50.4%) ate more fruits, vegetables or salads, and 88.3% combined two or more methods.¹⁰

How Long Do New Year’s Resolutions Last?

The drop-off is real, but it’s slower than most viral numbers claim. These studies used different methods and timeframes, so read each row on its own rather than as one curve.

Source	Checkpoint	Still on track
Norcross 1988 5	1 week	77%
Pew 2024 1	Mid-January	87%
Norcross 2002 4	6 months	46%
HFA 2025 6	Full year	55%
Norcross 1988 5	2 years	19%

• When Pew asked in mid-January 2024, 87% of resolution makers had kept at least some of their resolutions and 13% had kept none. Among people with more than one resolution, 59% had kept all of them so far.¹
• The 2002 study followed 159 resolvers and 123 people who wanted to make a similar change without a resolution. At six months, 46% of resolvers were continuously successful, compared with 4% of the non-resolvers.⁴
• The HFA figure is self-reported: 55% of adults who set health, fitness or exercise goals for 2025 said they fully achieved them.⁶
• For 2026, 39% of resolution makers said they were very likely to keep their resolution and 50% said somewhat likely.²

What Makes Resolutions and Fitness Goals Stick?

• Start-doing goals beat stop-doing goals. In a one-year experiment with 1,062 resolvers, 58.9% of people with approach goals (“start walking after dinner”) were successful, compared with 47.1% of people with avoidance goals (“stop snacking”). Overall, 55% considered themselves successful after a year.⁷
• A little support helps. In the same study, the group that got some support and goal-setting tips was more successful (62.3%) than the group with no support (55.9%). More extended support didn’t add to that.⁷
• Slips are normal. Among resolvers who were still succeeding after two years, 53% had slipped at least once, with an average of 14 slips along the way.⁵
• Confidence and readiness matter. Self-efficacy, change skills and readiness to change, measured before January 1, predicted who succeeded.⁴
• Habits take longer than 21 days. In a 12-week study, a new daily habit took a median of 66 days to become automatic, with a range of 18 to 254 days.⁹
• Exercise habits take the longest. Exercise behaviors took about one and a half times longer to become automatic than new eating or drinking habits (a median of 91 days vs. 59 to 65).⁹
• Missing one day doesn’t break a habit. Missing a single chance to do the new behavior didn’t materially affect habit formation.⁹

For the full breakdown of what goes wrong, see why New Year’s resolutions fail, and for a step-by-step plan, read how to keep New Year’s resolutions past January.

Gym and Fresh Start Statistics

January isn’t the only “fresh start.” A study of 11,912 university gym members found that gym visits rise at the start of many new time periods:¹¹

Fresh start	Rise in gym visits
New week	33.4%
New month	14.4%
New year	11.6%
New semester	47.1%

• In the same research, Google searches for “diet” rose 82.1% at the start of a new year, and sign-ups to pursue goals on a commitment website rose 145.3%.¹¹
• Among 5,240 members of one fitness center tracked over 12 months, 63% stopped before their third month and fewer than 4% stayed active for more than 12 months straight.⁸
• A study of 7,752 health club members found that people on monthly contracts of over $70 went an average of 4.3 times a month, paying more than $17 per visit when a $10-per-visit pass was available.¹²
• A record 81 million Americans belonged to a gym, studio or other fitness facility in 2025, or 26.1% of the U.S. population aged 6 and older.¹³
• 49.4% of fitness facility members met or exceeded the federal aerobic activity guidelines, compared with 24.5% of non-users.¹³

For how many women meet the exercise and strength training guidelines, see my women’s exercise statistics page.

The “80% Quit by February” Claim

You’ve probably seen it: “80% of resolutions fail by February.” It gets repeated in articles every January, but I couldn’t trace it to a peer-reviewed study or a survey with published methods, so it isn’t on this page.

The studies that do have methods tell a more hopeful story. Most resolvers are still going after the first few weeks, close to half are still succeeding at six months, and people who make a resolution do far better than people who just hope to change.^1,4,5

The early weeks are still the riskiest stretch, which I cover in why most people quit their fitness goals by February.

What These Numbers Mean for You

Here’s my take as a coach: the data says resolutions are worth making. People who set one do much better than people who don’t, and plenty of them are still going months later. What trips people up is the design of the goal, not the date on the calendar.

So build your goal the way the research suggests. Make it something to start doing, keep it small enough to do on a bad day, plan for slips instead of treating them as failure, and give an exercise habit at least two to three months before you judge it.

And if January doesn’t go to plan, a new week is a fresh start too.

How to Cite These Statistics

Sources

1. Gracia S. New Year’s resolutions: Who makes them and why. Pew Research Center, January 2024 (survey of 5,140 U.S. adults, Jan. 16–21, 2024).
2. YouGov. New Year’s resolutions for 2026 poll. December 2025 (online survey of 1,104 U.S. adult citizens, Dec. 9–11, 2025).
3. Brenan M. Gallup weight-loss findings, West Health-Gallup Health and Healthcare Survey. Gallup, December 2025 (West Health-Gallup survey of 1,321 U.S. adults, Nov. 3–25, 2025).
4. Norcross JC, Mrykalo MS, Blagys MD. Auld lang syne: success predictors, change processes, and self-reported outcomes of New Year’s resolvers and nonresolvers. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2002;58(4):397–405.
5. Norcross JC, Vangarelli DJ. The resolution solution: longitudinal examination of New Year’s change attempts. Journal of Substance Abuse, 1988;1(2):127–134.
6. Health & Fitness Association. Americans Plan to Invest $60 Billion in Health and Fitness in 2026. December 2025 (Kantar online survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, Dec. 5–16, 2025).
7. Oscarsson M, Carlbring P, Andersson G, Rozental A. A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PLOS ONE, 2020;15(12):e0234097.
8. Sperandei S, Vieira MC, Reis AC. Adherence to physical activity in an unsupervised setting: Explanatory variables for high attrition rates among fitness center members. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 2016;19(11):916–920.
9. Lally P, van Jaarsveld CHM, Potts HWW, Wardle J. How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 2010;40(6):998–1009.
10. Martin CB, Herrick KA, Sarafrazi N, Ogden CL. Attempts to Lose Weight Among Adults in the United States, 2013–2016. NCHS Data Brief No. 313, July 2018.
11. Dai H, Milkman KL, Riis J. The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior. Management Science, 2014;60(10):2563–2582.
12. DellaVigna S, Malmendier U. Paying Not to Go to the Gym. American Economic Review, 2006;96(3):694–719.
13. Health & Fitness Association. 81 Million Americans Were Members of a Fitness Facility in 2025. April 2026 (2026 US Health & Fitness Consumer Report; annual survey of about 18,000 U.S. residents).

Frequently Asked Questions

This page summarizes published surveys, government data and research for education only. It isn’t medical advice. If you’re pregnant, have a heart, bone, joint or other health condition, or haven’t exercised in a long time, check with your doctor before starting a new fitness or weight-loss goal.

Stop exercising and get medical help right away if you have chest pain, severe shortness of breath, dizziness or fainting. This page is not a substitute for personal care from a qualified professional.