Exercise Motivation: How to Fuel the Fire
A couple years ago, my friend competed in one of those biggest loser competitions at her gym. She worked incredibly hard, looked dramatically more fit, and actually won the $1,000 prize. A year later, she gained back the weight, plus ten more pounds. Using slightly different carrots and sticks each time, she’s repeated this pattern of exercise, weight loss, drop out, and weight gain since I’ve known her. There is an answer to combat this all-to-common yo-yo cycle that will grow and maintain exercise motivation long-term….
Identify Ineffective Long-term Motives
Our culture tells us a bunch of lies about growing our exercise motivation—
that if we just give ourselves the right reward…
if we sign a commitment contract…
if we tell enough people to keep us accountable…
if we hang a picture of a fit model on our fridge…
if we have a coach yell loudly in our face…
then, we will be motivated to exercise.
While such strategies may get us started with an exercise program, they don’t maintain motivation for long. The problem is that they’re imposed from the outside. Such external motivation is like spray paint on a rusty car. Eventually, it flakes off.
Research shows that your energy and desire to exercise will grow when you embrace and cultivate the motivations that are already within you. You can think of the following four components as fuel that feeds your exercise motivation fire:
1. Purpose
When you have a big enough why, you can achieve any how.
As an athlete, I exercised because it enhanced my performance. Today, as a middle-aged mother of three, I exercise because it makes me a better version of myself. I am physically healthier, mentally more resilient, less anxious, and I am able to serve others in each role of my life with a greater level of energy and strength.
Uncover your exercise purpose:
Why is exercise important to you?
How does exercise change your life?
2. Self-Determined
Your reasons for exercise must be your own.
Do you exercise because… your spouse nags you? your doctor threatens you with medication?
When you exercise because other people pressure or guilt-trip you, your exercise reasons are no longer determined by the “self.” That means exercise it is not “self”-determined, which decreases motivation.
In order to maintain control over your own decisions (i.e. self-determination). You have to put commentary and judgement from others aside. Then, move forward with your exercise program (or not) because you chose it. No one can make you exercise. If you exercise, you chose it. If you don’t exercise, you chose it. Maintaining psychological awareness of your power to choose is directly related to your exercise motivation.
3. Fun
I’ll risk stating the obvious and remind that we need to choose exercise that is enjoyable.
When exercise is fun, it inherently keeps us coming back for more. To prevent boredom, give yourself permission to change your exercise mode, intensity, and scenery to keep it interesting.
4. Competence
Motivation is enhanced when you design an exercise program that you believe you are capable of completing. It’s great to challenge yourself, but it’s also important to be realistic relative to your time constraints, preferences, and past experience.
The paradox of motivation is that it’s not something that you can find in the world and fill yourself up with. But rather, lasting motivation blooms from the inside out. Motivation that lasts through the stress and storms of life are rooted from within.
Motivation is not something that you can find in the world and fill yourself up with. Lasting motivation blooms from the inside out.
Thanks for reading! 🙂
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References:
Anshel, M. H. (2008). The Disconnected Values Model: Intervention Strategies for Exercise Behavior Change. Journal of Clinical Sports Psychology, 2, 357-380.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2002). An overview of self-determination theory. In E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 3-33). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
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