Are you still keeping your resolutions?

It's February. Do you know where your New Year's resolutions are?

If you're like most people, you probably lost them somewhere between the Rose Parade and the Super Bowl. Whatever habit you vowed to break has probably already broken you. Those noble desires disappeared in a big hunk of chocolate cake or in the hours spent watching reality TV instead of working out.

Few of us avoid getting caught up in the spirit of renewal and rebirth the new year brings. In our New Year's Eve revelry we resolve to do this or vow not to do that.

"I think (New Year's resolutions) are a waste of time," said Hyrum Smith, vice chairman of the Utah-based time management firm FranklinCovey. "The ritual that Americans go through each year is just that. It's a ritual."

Resolutions apparently, like sports records, are made to be broken.

"It's just common knowledge that people do that and drop out," said Carol Warner, a University of Utah psychologist.

According to FranklinCovey, most New Year's promises don't take, and by February the people who made them fall into the same habits they they tried to eliminate just a month ago.

Smoking cessation and losing weight were identified as among the most popular and hardest to keep resolutions, a FranklinCovey survey of 400 Americans shows.

If you set goals for the year on a whim at the stroke of midnight, you're probably doomed to defeat. Those who make resolutions and stick to them likely put some thought into it long before the ball dropped in Times Square. And those who make a plan, write it down and stick to it have a better chance of not dropping the ball.

According to the survey, 78 percent of those who achieved their goals had plans. Only 22 percent were successful without plans.

"When you write a plan down, your commitment to it triples," Smith said. "I don't know why. It's magic."

Local fitness centers swell in January with resolute exercisers looking to trim the holiday bulge. A month or so later, the only thing thinning is the numbers of people at the gym.

"It starts to taper off through February and March," said Jason Timothy, an assistant manager at Gold's Gym in West Valley City.

New membership holders typically visit the club six times in the first month, he said, and never return. This year's crop, Timothy said, is already dying out.