You may as well face it: Lack of willpower means the New Year's resolutions you're about to make won't last long.

A recent survey of adults who break their resolutions found 35 percent of 1,055 people cited lack of willpower for not keeping resolutions. Lack of time was the reason for 27 percent, and 23 percent listed "too much stress."

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Still, hope springs eternal, and those surveyed had creative solutions to avoid future failures.

The leading change to make resolutions last, listed by 47 percent of respondents, is to make more modest resolutions, a strategy encouraged by experts.

"When people make resolutions, they often set goals that are unrealistic and are easy to break," says Catherine Christie, a registered dietician and co-author of the books I'd Kill For A Cookie and Eat To Stay Young. "If we can be a little more modest in our expectations, then that feeling of 'Oh, I've broken it' is less likely to happen," she says.

Christie says that scenario often occurs with one of the top resolutions -- to lose weight.

"With the average weight gain being something around seven pounds over the holidays, people want to lose 10 pounds in a week, and that's just not realistic. It took you the entire 'eating season,' over Christmas and New Year, … to gain that weight, so to lose it quickly just isn't going to happen," Christie says.

"If you fail, however, that shouldn't mean you should give up on the resolution. You just may want to step back a little and try to lose it over a longer period of time," she says.

Also on most peoples' list of ways to keep New Year's resolutions are: enlisting support of family and friends (38 percent); writing down resolutions and posting them where you can see them (35 percent); giving yourself rewards for keeping your resolutions (30 percent), and reading self-help books or going online for inspiration (21 percent).

The survey, commissioned by the Diet Rite soft-drink company, included 515 males and 540 females, all over age 18.

One novel approach to New Year's resolutions is not making them at all, suggests Bonnie Marano of New York City, a certified-fitness trainer and author of the book Road Warrior: Fitness on the Road.

"There's nothing wrong with setting your New Year's resolutions beforehand, because every day is an opportunity to start a programme. If you mess up, you can always start over the very next day," she says. Meanwhile, the top 10 resolutions listed by the survey respondents to increase their well-being are:

• Get more exercise (41 percent)
• Have more fun (39 percent)
• Eat more healthfully (36 percent)
• Get more sleep (34 percent)
• Make spirituality a bigger part of my life (34 percent)
• Lose weight (27 percent)
• Forgive someone (27 percent)
• Spice up my love life (25 percent)
• Cut back on work hours (20 percent)
• Stop arguing with my family (18 percent)

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