If you're jonesing to give your year a major upgrade setting a few doable goals is the first step. That means nixing bad habits that may be sabotaging your progress in addition to promising to do more stuff that's good for your health. Here are 5 harmful habits you should leave behind in 2017.  

1) Spending so much time on the couch. While downtime is good for both your body and mind, too much of it can be damaging. People living a sedentary lifestyle tend to be less healthy. As a general rule, you should get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity per week, or some combination in between.

2) Using distractions to numb your negative emotions. Every time you feel uncomfortable, the world offers you a host of ways to numb that discomfort. You can check Facebook endlessly, eat a pound of brownies, or have a couple of cocktails. Instead of actually cutting down anxiety or sadness, these tactics just bury those emotions so they can stew and eventually erupt.To truly experience happiness, you have to let yourself experience the less shiny side of the coin sometimes and work on better coping habits for stress.

3) Using electronics before bed. You already know you should be getting between seven and nine hours of sleep per night. Putting a moratorium on before-bed Instagram scrolling will  help you get better quality Zs. By lowering your exposure to sleep-disturbing blue light, which can disrupt your circadian rhythm.

4) Complaining non-stop. If things feel out of control, complaining tricks your brain into thinking you're doing something about it, but you're not fixing anything when you complain. You're actually priming your brain to only look for the bad instead of the good. When you complain, you train your brain to look for patterns in things you don't like.When you catch yourself complaining, redirect your attention to something good about the situation, or start working on a plan to change what isn't up to par. It doesn't necessarily mean accepting what you don't like, but training your brain to look for things you appreciate.

5) Making goals that are hard to achieve.There's a misconception that if you set a goal, you can achieve it through willpower. But humans change very slowly and incrementally, and people try to change too much too fast. Instead of setting overly ambitious goals, take small steps and introduce change slowly so you can form the neural pathways that are essential in cementing habits. Once you succeed at those, you can take on larger goals from there.