“Get more fruits and veggies. Cut down on fast food. Choose better snacks. Eat at home more often.”

You just read the first four resolutions from a slideshow on WebMD’s website about becoming a better eater in the upcoming year.My thoughts about these suggestions - and all New Year’s resolutions, really - come next.

“Blah, blah blah, blah blah blah . . . blah.”

It’s not that I’m against the idea behind New Year’s resolutions. It’s that I can’t get that famous line by Einstein - the one, by the way, writer Garston O’Toole argues he never said, - out of my head.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

If a survey conducted in January 2020 by OnePoll and cited in a 2020 New York Post article is correct, resolving to do anything around the time you hear “Auld Lang Syne” is such a sucker’s bet that we really should question your mental capacity if you do so. According to 2,000 Americans, it merely takes 32 days for the average person to abandon a New Year’s resolution.

In fact, 68 percent of those surveyed gave up on theirs before Feb. 1. Further testimony of the tradition’s impotence: About 15 percent in the survey claimed they made their resolutions expecting not to succeed.

Something clearly is amiss with this tradition, and I’m concerned. Not only because 50 percent reported eating healthy as a struggle and 40 percent admitted the same about working out, but also because of a bigger quality-of-life issue.

Nearly three in four respondents felt the “little failures” in life, like not sticking to a diet or not exercising enough, lead to life’s bigger disappointments and regrets.

So what do I suggest instead of New Year’s resolutions to incite much needed change? It’s not a once-a-year pronouncement, but something best done a few times a day.

It’s what Troy Szczurkowsky calls a “self-diagnostic check,” and what he does every 15 minutes or so each day he does the 1000-mile bike race from Anchorage to Nome held at the end of each Alaskan winter called the Iditarod Trail Invitational.

He does so to survive this absolutely insane race where you might push your bike through deep snow instead of pedal for hours, encounter temperatures well below zero, and be the winner if you can finish the race in under 20 days. But he does more than merely survive; he thrives, finishing as high as third in 2019.

He attributes that, in part, to his self-diagnostic checks during the race. But a self-diagnostic check a few times during a more typical day is also a great way for you to manage your day-to-day health and fitness - and happiness.

Now before you dismiss this suggestion as nothing more than clever word play, allow me to explain why New Year’s resolutions don’t work for most people but self-diagnostic checks will.

In a word, it’s flux.

One of the strange ironies to this strange thing we call life is the only thing about it that doesn’t change is that it changes constantly. It would be sheer folly for anyone other than the hermit in the Himalayas to argue otherwise after nearly two years of twists and turns attributed to the pandemic.

Case in point: In the summer of 2020, I went through the hassle of getting all my clearances renewed in order to teach in the state of PA for another five years. By Aug. 14, 2020 - after hearing about the new measures the Palmerton Area School District would institute as a result of COVID-19 just three days prior - I did something that I never could have imagined doing even one hour before hearing about the new measures.

I retired.

No matter how hard we seek stability, dear reader, we get flux.

Those like Szczurkowsky thrive despite it (or maybe because of it), since they’re always doing some sort of internal check on their health, fitness, motivation, happiness.

You name it. They check it. And then they adapt.

Making a New Year’s resolution runs contrary to all that, and that’s why so few succeed.

So here’s an example of what I’m suggesting you might do. If you were considering making losing 20 pounds this year’s resolution, don’t.

Instead decide to eat small, healthy meals throughout the day slowly, and end the meal not when your plate is empty, but as soon as a self-diagnostic check tells you you’ve had enough. Exercise frequently throughout the week, but don’t be rigid about how long or how often.

In the back of your mind, keep the thought that longer and more often is better, but let self-diagnostic checks while you’re actually engaged in the exercise determine time, frequency - and intensity.

As long as you don’t lie to yourself, these adaptations you make will make you better - and more successful than if you did that thing that normally lasts 32 days.