Motivation can slip and if you’re not in the grips of a powerful enough routine or are yet to find that discipline then days not working out can too easily turn to weeks and months. A profound and deeply ingrained motivation or ‘why’ will make those decisions to train and eat right that much more fluid and reflexive. You live with 100% of your choices, make it about you.
Top Tip 1: Focus on you
Because at the end of the day, you’re answering to you. You are the one that has to get yourself out of bed early, get yourself to the gym after a hard slough at work or get yourself around tuna and avo when you’re feeling something greasy and available on Uber eats. Write down what you want to get out of this and make it personal.
Top Tip 2: Honestly determine your current motivations
It looked like it was going somewhere with that hot girl but now she’s not texting you back? Give a fuck. The scale hasn’t gone down this week as much as it did last week and you’ve honestly been true to your calorific deficit goals? There could be a plethora of totally normal bodily fluctuations behind this. Spend a moment learning what’s motivating you so, if need be, realign to something worthy to see you through the long game.
Top Tip 3: Don’t use short term results to feed your motivation.
Because our wondrously complex bodies are not liable to give us the results we want week in and week out we need to stay focused on our long game. Metabolic adaptation is super normal and progress is often not linear. Think about the fitness you want ten, twenty and thirty years from now. I know I don’t want to just see photos of my grandkids hiking over the weekend. I want to be there. I want to chase them up the mountain. Do it because you see a version of yourself two years, five years down the track that represents the discipline and self care you put in.
Key Take Aways
Work towards building a solid routine as this helps keep you on track when motivation slips. This is part and parcel of the fact that action comes before motivation.
You’re the one who lives with the results and actions to get them so you need to be the one who decides and knows why you are doing this.
Progress is not linear, despite good efforts we will have good and bad days so don’t let one disappointing weigh in throw you off track. Focus on your long game.