How to Stay Consistent With Working Out (When Motivation Disappears)

Each day, most of us live our lives prioritizing other people's needs and happiness while pushing our own well-being to the back burner. It's time to change things around. When you start prioritizing your own well-being, the well-being, happiness, and quality of life of those around you often improves as well.

I think the mental side of the game is important to talk about. So let's talk about it.

No One Stays Motivated Forever

The first thing you need to remember: no one stays motivated forever.

At least not in the sense of, "My daughter's wedding is in three months and I need to look better than her husband's mom."

That type of motivation is called extrinsic motivation. It comes from something outside of you: an event, a deadline, someone else's opinion. It's the kind of motivation most people picture when they hear the word.

And it has an expiration date. After the wedding, what happens to your exercise plan?

Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation

Maybe, by the time the wedding comes around, you've developed some intrinsic motivation. You actually enjoy it now. You like how strong you feel, how you sleep, how your head clears after a session.

That's the best-case scenario, and the research backs up why. A 2012 systematic review of 66 studies on exercise motivation found that intrinsic motivation, doing it because you value or enjoy it, was more predictive of long-term exercise adherence than other kinds of motivation.

	Extrinsic motivation	Intrinsic motivation
Where it comes from	Outside you: an event, a deadline, a number	Inside you: enjoyment, how you feel, what you value
Example	"I need to look good for the wedding"	"I like how strong I feel after I lift"
How long it lasts	Until the event passes or the goal is met	Can last for years, but takes time to develop
Best use	Getting started	Staying with it

But what if you hate it? What if the wedding's over and the gym still feels like a chore?

Are you just never going to exercise again? God, I hope not.

So how do we get past it if we hate it, or just don't want to do it?

Discipline Is What Keeps You Going

Discipline.

Discipline is how we keep going three days per week, forever. Discipline is how we stay consistent.

Here's a little story from today.

I enjoy writing these emails, but I don't love the research side of it. And today, I slept pretty poorly. My hip hurts. I spent two hours at the doctor and the hospital getting blood work and other tests. Afterward, I just didn't want to do it. The gym. This email. Much of anything, really.

I got the gym done.

And you're reading this.

I wasn't motivated to do it. I wasn't happy to be exercising today. I just knew I had to get it done, and I knew it would make me feel better. It kind of did, haha.

Discipline got me there, though. It kept me consistent.

Discipline Builds Habits, and Habits Do the Heavy Lifting

You have to tell your subconscious what you're going to do, and then stick to it.

It's kind of like teaching rules to little kids. Discipline and sticking to your guns is how you get a kid to listen. Most people can't discipline themselves, but they expect discipline out of their kids. Make that make sense.

Here's the good news: discipline gets easier, because the goal of discipline is a habit.

A 2015 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, across six studies and more than 2,200 people, found that people with strong self-control didn't succeed by white-knuckling their way past temptation every day. They succeeded largely because they had built beneficial habits, including exercise habits, that ran on autopilot. Less daily effort, better results.

That's what "telling your subconscious" really means. You make the decision once, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then you stop renegotiating it every morning.

So how long does that take? A 2015 study of 111 new gym members in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine found that exercising at least four times per week for about six weeks was the minimum needed to establish an exercise habit.

Six weeks. That's the stretch where discipline has to carry you. After that, it starts carrying itself.

The same study found what helped habits form: consistency, keeping the workouts simple, a supportive environment, and actually enjoying the sessions. Those are things you can control.

How to Build Discipline Into Your Week

• Decide your days in advance. Pick the days and times, put them in your calendar, and treat them like a doctor's appointment. Not "when I have time." If you're not sure when, the best time of day to work out is whichever slot you can protect.
• Keep the plan simple. A program you can repeat beats a perfect one you can't. Complexity is a reason to skip.
• Lower the bar on hard days, but show up. Bad sleep, sore hip, long day at the doctor? Do a lighter version. The goal is to protect the routine, not to set a record.
• Make it about the 100th workout, not the first. I said the same thing about walking vs running for weight loss: what matters is the 108th run, not the third.
• Get someone expecting you. An appointment with a coach is a lot harder to skip than a vague plan with yourself. That's a big part of why finding a trainer you actually like matters so much.
• Notice how you feel afterward. That feeling is where intrinsic motivation starts. Pay attention to it.

If it's been years since you trained and you're starting from zero, how to start working out again after 40 lays out what the first few months should look like.

The Bottom Line

Motivation is great while it lasts. But it doesn't last, at least not the extrinsic kind.

Discipline is what gets you there on the days you'd rather do anything else. Do it long enough, and it becomes a habit. Do it longer, and you might even start to enjoy it.

If you're in Allison Park, the North Hills, or anywhere around Pittsburgh and you want to work discipline into your life, let us know. Give us a call or fill out the form.

-Cody

Always remember: the more willing you are to make changes to prioritize your well-being, the better you will be at taking care of those around you. YOUR well-being is important, and it is time to start prioritizing it, FOR LIFE.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to train smarter?

Motivation fades. A coach who expects you on Monday doesn't. Let us know if you want help staying consistent at Full Circle Function & Fitness in Allison Park.

FREE PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION