4 Studies That Justify Ditching Your New Year’s Resolution

January is all but over, winter is at its peak and if you’re anything like us, your dreams of a “New Year, new you” are long dead and buried—probably under a heap of wine bottles and take out boxes. But before you get too down on yourself for failing to stick to your resolutions, consider these four studies that make your bad habits not seem so bad after all.

Superfoods, might not be so super.

If you had planned to eat healthier this year, then take solace in a recent study that found that kale is actually killing you. No, not really. But the study that went viral thanks to Mother Jones’ ‘Sorry, Foodies: We’re About to Ruin Kale’, suggested that eating too much could be bad for you. And it’s not the first to make the claim that these so-called ‘superfoods’ might not be all they are chalked up to be. An 84-year-old Nobel laureate also claimed that antioxidants may have caused more cancers than they prevented.

Wine is just as good as the gym.

Cutting back on alcohol intake is ironically, but not unsurprisingly, another popular vow many of us take the morning after one of the biggest drinking holidays of the year. However, if like us you only managed to hang on to that pipe dream for a few days, don’t feel too bad. A University of Alberta study found a compound in red wine that benefits your heart and muscles the same way hitting the gym does. So if the only exercise regime you’ve found yourself able to stick to in 2016 is popping a corkscrew out of your wine bottle, then you’re doing better on your New Year’s resolution then you thought.

The early bird doesn’t get the worm.

Do you have more than one alarm set for tomorrow morning? More than two? Face it, if you’re not a morning person you’re just not a morning person, no matter how many “how to” articles you pin on Pinterest. But now, there’s no reason to get guilted into waking up at the break of dawn to drown yourself in black coffee trying to fight being what mother nature made you, because according to several studies “early to bed and early to rise” does not make you healthier, wealthier or wiser. In fact, in a study featured in a 1999 issue of Personality and Individual Difference, it’s the night owl that scores higher on intelligence tests.

Social media is one addiction that might actually be okay.

The new trendy resolution we noticed this year is the amount of people vowing to cut back on social media in favor of #IRL (in real life) experiences. But there’s no reason to be ashamed because studies found your social media addiction results in a multitude of benefits, from lowered heart rates and reduced stress levels, to boosting of self-confidence. One study even contradicts the widely accepted belief that social media platforms like Facebook are distracting at work and argues that social media breaks help you step back and refocus.

So kick back, pour yourself a glass of wine and get ready to feel better about skipping the gym again tonight.