episode 245: why it’s so hard to exercise (and how to finally make it happen)
You don’t lack motivation—you’re just motivated to do something else.
Scrolling TikTok. Sleeping in. Sitting on the couch.
In this episode, I’m breaking down:
Why going to the gym is NOT a habit (and why that matters)
The hidden reason you keep skipping workouts
How to start exercising when it feels impossible
If you’ve ever said, “I just need to get motivated,” this one’s for you.
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245
[00:00:00] Hey friends, thank you for listening to the Diet Diaries today. Um, so this episode is gonna air Monday, September 29th, and I'm gonna talk today about why it's so hard for some of you to exercise. This was actually a podcast request topic. Um. From someone who had submitted on Instagram. And it's funny 'cause since then I've talked about this in sort of different, a couple different forms and reels and social and whatever, but I wanted to kind of consolidate everything, specifically answer the question that had come in and kind of consolidate some of the different things I've talked about.
So you have all these resources in one place and can, um, use them to then determine, well, what are you going to work on? What, what specific skill or what is going to be your action step If you are someone who has been struggling to exercise? Regularly, or let's say you're someone who walks regularly, but you're not strength training and you wanna strength train, right?
So any part of [00:01:00] exercising that is not happening on a regular basis hasn't happened at all that you want to get started with. Um, super quick, I'm just gonna mention that in October. I am gonna take on two new one-to-one coaching clients. It is one of my most favorite times of year to start with people because typically coming into like October, as we're heading into holidays, people are either in one or two camps.
They're in the fuck it. I'm just gonna go all in and I'll deal with this in January, or they're in the, I'm gonna buckle down and I'm not gonna, I'm gonna cut out sugar and carbs, and I'm only gonna have dessert on Thanksgiving from now until January 1st. There's truly like never a quote unquote right time to start, and because there's always life, life is always happening.
So I love this because within the first couple of weeks of starting, you can get skills in place to support you through the holidays so that you are not. On either one of those extreme spectrums, you are in a place where you can enjoy the food of the holidays, starting with Halloween all the way into Thanksgiving, [00:02:00] Christmas, Hanukkah, new Year's, and all of the things.
And whatever it is that you celebrate or don't celebrate, um, you can go into the holidays with. Skills already in place to help support you so that you're not gaining weight, you're not feeling like shit, you're not like binging on the leftover stuff, sitting in the cabinet. Um, and you're also not not enjoying anything.
Right? Sometimes I talk about what I do as coaching as this concept of stop eating all of the cake or none of the cake, right? And let's figure out how to have some cake. And that's not the same as like, quote unquote eating and moderation. That's, that's a way oversimplification of. What, what we're trying to do here.
Anyway, just a heads up that, that's coming. If you've been thinking about coaching, now's your time. Um, so I will share, uh, links to book consults both here and on my email list first, um, before I even open it up on social media. And, um, so if you're listening here, you're already in. Alright, [00:03:00] let's talk about why it's so fucking hard to go to the gym sometimes.
So specifically the question that came from the person was, um, is she struggling with motivation to exercise or lack thereof? Why so many obstacles? Just tired. And just the way she wrote this was like, oh, that's, yeah. I, I hear you and I think so many of you listening can probably resonate with this. And so kind of one of the big concepts I wanted to talk about with this, this Ed Plus might be a little bit longer.
I'm gonna try and keep it around 20 minutes. Everything we do is a behavior, everything. Um, eating cookies in front of the TV is a behavior. Um, sitting, scrolling on your phone instead of working out is a behavior. Um. Staying up late, finishing work. Emails is a behavior. Um, sleeping in in the morning instead of getting up with your alarm to work out is a behavior.
I think sometimes we tend to think as behaviors, as only the quote unquote good [00:04:00] things, but everything we do is a behavior. Some of those behaviors are in alignment with how we wanna be taking care of ourselves, and some of them are not. And so when we think about behaviors, if everything is a behavior, that means we are always motivated to do those behaviors.
Now again, we tend to think of motivation only in terms of doing the thing that we want to do that positively benefits us or that we think we should be doing, and we think that. When we don't do that, we are lacking motivation or we have no motivation. You have motivation. It's just being directed at something else.
It's being directed at something that is not serving you, that you actually don't want to be doing. Right? Like for instance, um, let's say that you have, you know, you wanna go to bed early, but you end up scrolling. TikTok and I should be using a gym example, but I'm not Right. You end up scrolling social media, right.
And then you say, oh, like, I'm just like not motivated to go to bed early. Like, it's so hard. It's so much work. You're motivated to [00:05:00] stay on TikTok. You're not motivated to go to bed early. You are motivated to be doing something else, right? So let's put it in the context of the gym. Um, you know, making time.
Let's say it's like getting up half an hour earlier than you normally would to go outside and go for a walk or do a, a workout in your basement, whatever it is, right? So you have to get up at, let's say, 6:00 AM instead of six 30. And you say, oh my God. I'm just like, I'm so not motivated. It's so hard to get up.
I just have no interest in doing this. Okay, you're maybe not motivated to get up, but you are motivated to sleep in. So I think acknowledging that the motivation exists, it just doesn't exist in the place that we want it to exist, is really, really important because every behavior that we do is driven by a motivation.
Even sitting on the couch and doing nothing and literally what people are now calling, like, you know, rotting on the couch all day, you're motivated to do that. Um, I think we typically would think of like, oh my God, I'm so unmotivated from sitting on the couch. No, you are motivated to sit on the couch.
You're not motivated to go and run errands or get the shit done that you want to get done. [00:06:00] So there's a mismatch between what you have motivation for and what you actually want to be doing that's going to benefit you. Okay, so what do we do about that? Right? We don't magically just redirect or shift that motivation.
We have to walk ourselves through doing the thing that we want to do, and that requires a different, different skill sets. So when it comes to going to the gym. Right. A lot of us walk around thinking, I have no motivation to go to the gym. I have no motivation to exercise. I don't feel like it, it's hard. I don't enjoy it.
I don't wanna make time for it. I'm super busy. Um, lots and lots of reasons. Excuse me. Well, you're motivated to do lots of other things in that, in, in place of that. And so how do we create that motivation to exercise? Well, that's what we need to do, right? In order to get yourself to do a behavior, you do have to motivate yourself and you are going to essentially create that motivation.
Now, another piece of this that I wanna talk about, which I talked about, um, [00:07:00] on social media. Well, by the time you see this, it'll have been like a week and a half before. But again, I will link the reel 'cause I think it's helpful. I'm gonna talk about it in more context here. Is, I talked about that going to the gym is not a habit.
And literally I feel like people use the word habit just as like a stand in for anything that they want to do. And I think it's very common for people to say, I need to get into the habit of going to the gym. I need to get into the habit of waking up early. I need to get into the habit of making veggies for dinner.
I need to get into the habit of putting my phone down or putting my phone in another room before I go watch tv. Right. This is the thing where language matters because none of those things are habits. They are all behaviors that happen as a result of a series of steps and thought processes that we are going through internally and also as a result of some external structure that we create.
So let's just keep it, let's keep it focused in terms of talking about the gym. Going to the gym is not a habit. [00:08:00] There is not a single person on this earth for whom going to the gym is a habit, and here's why. Let's talk about what a habit is, right? A habit is a repetitive behavior that occurs automatically, and it's acquired through repeated actions over time, and learned associations.
So going to the gym does not happen automatically. It does not happen without conscious thought. And so when we say that I need to make going to the gym a habit or, you know, I wish that I could, you know, make going to the gym a habit like, like she does, whoever you see on social media. What happens is because that's not even really how it works, we then start to feel ashamed because we're not able to do this thing, but we have a inaccurate perception of what's actually going on.
Again, nobody goes to the gym automatically. Nobody, it just doesn't, doesn't happen with, with unconscious thought, right? Examples of habits are like brushing your teeth when you wake up in the morning, uh, putting on your seatbelt when you get in a [00:09:00] car. Um. I think for a lot of people like washing your hands after they get like really dirty and they're gross.
Um, those are things like, those are ingrained behaviors that we do, you know, pretty automatically without having to think about it, without having to have a lot of like, drive or walking ourselves through, um, like a process, like a thought process. Going to the gym again, is not one of those. Going to the gym can get easier over time and it can take less effort, but it's always gonna take some amount of effort.
When am I going, where am I going? What am I doing? What do I need to wear? What time do I need to leave? Right? There's so many things that have to happen in order for you to go to the gym. And I think just understanding and acknowledging that this is the process is really helpful because I think it'll help, I'm hoping it'll help take away some of the, the shame that people have around why they struggle with going to the gym because they think it should just be this thing that they automatically do because they think all these other people are automatically doing it, and that it's just a habit and that there's something wrong with them because they [00:10:00] can't make it a habit.
Nobody can make it a habit. It doesn't exist that way. So what we need to do is we need to figure out, well, what are the steps? What is the support that I need to have in place internally for myself to get myself to go? Right? Because if you've decided that you need and want to go to the gym, awesome.
Right? And honestly, everyone needs to exercise in some form, whether that's at a gym or not separate thing, but everyone needs to exercise. Their bodies. Um, just fact. Um, I guess if you don't care about your health, um, maybe not, but if you care about your health, if you want to feel good, um, you want to take care of your body, lots of different reasons you need to exercise.
Um. That can show up in many, many different ways. Right? Going to the gym is just one way to exercise. There are lots of different ways and places to exercise. And this is really not specific about the gym, this is about exercise in [00:11:00] general. Right? So I'm gonna kind of now loop this back to the specific question the person I'd asked was motivation to exercise, right?
So I've kind of already addressed that, right? You're motivated to do other things. We need to redirect that motivation. I'm not redirect, but we need to create motivation to exercise, which I'm gonna talk about and why so many obstacles. Okay, so two things here. One, in terms of motivation, right? If I am wanting to exercise, but I'm never feeling motivation, I'm motivated to do something else in its place, you need to get really clear on why you're exercising.
What is it that you want to get out of it? And I kind of just like randomly, you know, rattled off reasons why people exercise, but you need to know for yourself, why am I doing this? Um, and it could be just because I know it's good for my health, but it might be helpful to get even more specific. It's good for what part of your health, your mental health, your physical health, cardiovascular health, musculoskeletal health.
Um, I think the more specific you can get. The more helpful it's gonna be. 'cause when things are like big and [00:12:00] broad and vague, it becomes a little bit harder for us to, um, kind of hold onto those things and really connect with them. Um, right. Maybe exercising is, is alone time for you. Um, maybe there's something, you have something going on in your body specifically that you want to deal with, that you know you need to build strength for.
Maybe it's like you have a hard time getting up and down off a floor and you know that's something you need to work on, or you wanna be able to pick up, you know, your 30 pound grandkid or niece or nephew. Or, um, there's, I have a friend of mine who talks about this all the time. She's in her fifties and she always says, I am, um, I strength drain.
So I wanna be the strongest 90-year-old that I know. I think that's fucking awesome. Um, and Hi Stephanie. If you're listening, um, you know, creating a specific reason or understanding, acknowledging what is your specific reason for exercise is really important because when you don't feel like going, it's something that you can come back to, right.
Um, acknowledging that it's okay to not want to [00:13:00] exercise that that is normal, that you don't always have to want to do it, and being able to kind of sit in the discomfort of that. Having ways to make it simpler to exercise, right? So if you have a plan to exercise and then you don't feel motivated to go, what's your backup plan?
Is it to do a 10 minute walk around your neighborhood? Is it to lift weights for five minutes in your basement? Is it to throw in a 10 minute YouTube dance video? I'm just throwing out random things. You need to have a backup plan that feels pretty easy to do. And then along with that, right this, and this kind of speaks to the whole thing, your brain is gonna tell you, it's not enough.
If I can't do half an hour, why would I bother doing 10 minutes? And that is a really big downfall for people. Huge. And so. We tell ourselves when we go to exercise, it's gotta be half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour, and then it feels really hard to find the motivation to do that. So I gua, I'm not gonna guarantee you, but I'm going to strongly suggest that [00:14:00] starting off with less is gonna make it a lot easier to find that motivation.
And if you tell yourself if you commit to exercising for five or 10 minutes. You are going to find it a lot easier to follow through than if you say it's gotta be half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour. Um, right. So these are, these are all the different things that you can do to create that motivation for yourself, right?
You're motivated to do something else in that moment. You have to create the motivation for yourself, making it simpler, making it easier, making it more accessible, and doing less are gonna be the absolute best ways that you can do that. Now, this kind of speaks to right back to this question again. Why are there so many obstacles, right?
If you are feeling obstacles to working out, you need to identify what those are. What are your biggest one to three obstacles? Is it time, is it resources? Is it mental energy? Um, mental energy I think would really be kind of like the same thing as motivation. Um, is it knowing what to do? Is it having kind of support or like, [00:15:00] uh, needing programming or needing, needing someone, someone to tell you what to do?
There are a lot, there are many different obstacles you need to identify. What are the one. To three biggest ones that are stopping you. And then you need to identify how can I make those things easier, right? A big one for people is time. I don't have time. So the number one way to address that is to exercise for less time.
Um, and again, that's gonna come back to noticing your all or nothing brain telling you it's not enough. Acknowledging that and saying it's okay. It's okay that my brain's taking that. I know why it's thinking that. And also just because my brain is thinking that doesn't mean I have to listen, doesn't mean that's true.
If my options are to exercise for five minutes or zero minutes, five minutes is gonna be better, right? Because if I keep telling myself I've gotta do 30, 45 an hour, and then I end up doing nothing, this guy, I've talked about this for years. Let's use a [00:16:00] little kind of concrete math to support this concept.
Zero plus zero plus zero plus zero is always gonna be zero. But 0.01 plus 0.01 plus 0.01 is always gonna add up to a bigger number. Right. So kind of just a little bit of like a, like a concrete way to think about the idea that doing something is better than doing nothing, which I think we kind of logically understand, but it's hard to translate that.
And so again, if you say, if you, if, if you keep telling yourself I've gotta exercise for 30 plus minutes, and then because that feels like too much, you end up doing nothing. If you say, I'm gonna exercise for five minutes, and you end up doing that five minutes a couple times a week, well there you've exercised 15, 20 minutes over the course of the week when previously you were doing nothing.
That's uncomfortable. This is hard again, because it's not, your brain is gonna tell you it's not enough. And you have to be prepared for that. And this again goes back to the motivation piece. You've gotta be prepared for what your brain is gonna tell you is good or bad, or right or wrong. And you've gotta be ready to notice it and say, okay, cool.
I see you. I see you [00:17:00] brain. I hear you. I don't have to listen to you. I know that there's a different way that I can approach this. Um. So I wanted to mention the time thing because I know it's, it's a really big one. Energy's another one, right? Feeling tired, not having the mental energy, the physical energy.
So again, you're gonna do less, you're going to go for a walk around your block. You're gonna do, um, a five minute strength workout. You're gonna do something that more closely matches your energy level versus saying, well, I've gotta go do a bootcamp class. I've gotta do a 30 minute run. I've gotta do a 40 minute strength workout.
Right? It's noticing, it's so much about noticing that all or nothing mindset. That is probably the thing that keeps most of us stuck in, not just around this, in, in so many areas that we want to change. Um, and again, this isn't about shutting that off or making your brain not think that that's literally impossible.
It's about noticing when you do that and how you respond to it and [00:18:00] responding in a different way. Kind of the last part of this I wanna talk about, which I haven't really talked about, is sort of like the external piece of this, right? When you're not feeling motivated to exercise, but you're feeling motivated to scroll your phone or sit on the couch or whatever it is.
Having some type of external support structure can help create that motivation, right? That could be something like having a buddy that you've committed to, going to a walker class with signing up for a class in advance. Not just signing up, but putting money, right? Money is different than just signing up.
Um, having telling, letting someone know, I'm planning to do a workout at seven o'clock on Thursday night. Hey, can you check in with me and make sure that I'm going to do it? Right. There are lots of different ways to create external support for yourself. If you wanna strength train and you're like, I don't really know where to start.
Okay, well, let's buy a program from someone. Let's get some structure in place and make sure that program matches up with your needs, that it's not a 45 minute workout, that there's a, a [00:19:00] 10 or 15 minute option so that you don't have to show up at the gym and figure it out on your own. Um, so again. Going to the gym is not a habit.
It is a behavior that takes effort, that takes thought, that takes intention, and setting up kind of these building blocks for yourself is going to be a huge part of doing that, and really getting clear around why you want to exercise in as specific as a way of PO in as specific of a way as possible.
And I just totally lost my train of thought. It's so crazy when your brain just goes blank like that. Um, getting as specific as possible and knowing that it's okay to not want to go and not always expecting yourself to be motivated and knowing that every time you go it's gonna take some work, [00:20:00] but knowing that that work gets easier over time, right?
So I walk pretty much every day of the week. Um, it is something that has become so ingrained in me in terms of how I want to feel, where I don't walk. I literally don't feel like myself. I feel like I wanna crawl out of my skin, but I don't do it at the same time every day. I don't, I do a similar route just 'cause of where I live, but I don't do it at the same time.
I don't always go at the same pace or the same way. I have to think about making that walk happen. It's not a habit. There's nothing about it. That's a habit. There's nothing again about going to the gym. That is a habit. These things take effort. And I think just acknowledging that and recognizing that is really important.
And I'm hoping that some of the things that I've mentioned here give you one or two places to start to pay attention to, to help you create the motivation, to go, to help take away some of the shame for why it does feel so hard to go, um, and give you a path. To moving forward. So [00:21:00] that's what I got. Thanks for listening.
If you've got questions, reach out. I'm always here and um, I'll be back next week.