Episode 35: Struggling with Motivation?

Trainer Tips

Feb 6

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Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast! I'm Jayd Harrison (@Jaydigains), a personal trainer and wellness coach. I created this podcast to share helpful tips to help you make gains in your fitness journey 💪

It’s normal to struggle with motivation to work out. In this episode, I talk all about how to handle periods of low motivation in your fitness journey. Many people start their fitness journey with the aim of losing weight or achieving a specific physique, but this mindset often leads to unsustainable habits and yo-yo dieting. I advocate for building a fitness lifestyle that includes consistent healthy habits (like daily physical activity, eating vegetables, and consuming enough protein). These foundational habits not only help in achieving initial fitness goals but also in maintaining them over the long term.

I also highlight the importance of adapting your fitness routine to stay engaged and to avoid burnout. This includes setting micro-goals, changing workout routines, and focusing on skill development.

Ultimately, the key to sustained fitness is patience, consistency, and viewing it as a lifelong journey rather than a temporary fix.

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Jayd Harrison (00:09):
I want you to think about fitness as not just a means to an end. A lot of people get involved in fitness because they want to lose weight, and so they think, oh, I'm just going to go to the gym for a short period of time and then when I reach my goal weight or when I reach my goal physique, then I'll stop. And that is a mindset a lot of people have when they first start and it's good enough to get the foot in the door to kind of get you started on your journey. But what you'll find as you go further and further along in this journey is that's not going to really sustain the body that you're looking for. It may be great to achieve that fat loss goal, but what a lot of people struggle with, and I think it's because of this mentality, is actually sustaining that, reaching that body weight goal and keeping it right.
(01:05)
You see a lot of people who lose a bunch of weight and then they gain it all back and then they lose a bunch of weight and then they gain it all back. They yo-yo diet or they, yo-yo go to the gym. They stop once they kind of achieve what they wanted and then they stop and then everything comes back. Your body is a reflection of your lifestyle. So if you want to achieve a toned physique, that's the language a lot of people are using these days, a toned physique or if you want to maintain a certain body fat percentage, it is something that you have to maintain. It's not something that you can just achieve once and then you're done. When you carry that sort of like, oh, I'm just going to do this until I achieve my goal physique. When you treat it like that, it's very difficult to hold on to motivation.
(01:51)
Your motivation is like, oh, I had this end goal in mind and that can help you, like I said, to get started. But the value that you place on that end goal result and also your belief in yourself that you can achieve that end goal result is something that's going to fluctuate over time. Some days it's going to be more important to you than others, and it's not realistic for you to think that right now when you first get started, you may be really passionate and really excited and it may be really, really important to you, but maybe two months in down the road you're not going to have that same fire because it's hard to maintain that excitement for such a long time. And then also sometimes those physique goals they take much longer to achieve. They might take a year, they might take two years, and you kind of have to make peace with the fact that it's going to take a year or two years in order to be able to stick with it for that long.
(02:50)
You have to sort of develop a different mindset and approach towards fitness where it's not just this short-term means to an end, but instead it becomes a compilation of habits that you build into your life that promote what you want your body to look like. Remember, your body is a reflection of your lifestyle. It's a reflection of what you do most of the time. So over the course of the time that I spend with my clients, what I try to work on is helping them to build out their fitness lifestyle that will sustain them even on days or weeks or long stretches of time where they don't feel very motivated, where they're like, they don't really want to work out, they're just like they're not excited about it and that happens to everybody. Everybody hits that wall of motivation where you're just like, I don't want to do this anymore.
(03:44)
It happens to everybody. It doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong and it doesn't mean that it's time to stop. It happens to everybody. It's just like work. You don't always want to go to work, but most people who work, you have to work so that you can keep a roof over your head and buy groceries. You know what I mean? If you want to sustain your physique goals, you're going to have to kind of have this mindset of my physique is a reflection of my lifestyle, and so I need to build my lifestyle in a way that I can sustain over the long term so that I can over the long term make progress towards my goals. So just first of all, you want to make peace with the fact that it's going to take longer than just a month or two months or even three months.
(04:29)
Usually the people that I work with, the goals for their bodies that they want to achieve, it takes a year or two years sometimes to build up to that because it's not just showing up for your workouts. It's not just eating a calorie deficit or learning how to eat healthy. It's learning how to do these things and do them for a longer enough period of time that it takes effect and that it takes sustainable effect, that it's going to stick. Not only you're going to achieve that physique, but it's going to stick for a much longer period of time. And so what you want to do is think about your fitness journey as all of these little habits that you build into your life to promote overall a baseline of wellness first, a baseline of health and wellness and then other stuff that you do on top of that, which is like bonus.
(05:22)
Because a lot of times when people first start their journey and they have a huge fat loss goal or they've never worked out before, just establishing a baseline of wellness, just getting healthy habits built into their life will in and of itself start to change your body. Your body will start to change, your physique will start to change, your dress size will start to go down, your weight will start to go down just by incorporating healthy habits like moving every day, eating vegetables every day, increasing the amount of protein you eat, drinking more water, sleeping as much as you need to. These things alone by themselves will be enough to push you towards that physique change that you want to see. And they are the necessary foundation for achieving that physique and maintaining it. And then the workouts and how hard you work out, what exercises you do when you out.
(06:15)
All of that is in addition to that baseline level of wellness. Now, that baseline level of wellness, those parts of your lifestyle, like getting active every day, eating vegetables, eating protein, these are things that you should have in your life at all times. There is going to be periods of your fitness journey where you're going to be on a cut or you're going to be on a diet where you're specifically trying to burn fat or you're in a bulk and you're specifically trying to build muscle or get stronger. Regardless of what phase of your fitness journey you're in, you should be getting active every day doing something active, get a certain number of steps. You can set a steps goal of 5,000 to 7,000 or even 10,000 steps a day, or you do something active like gardening, walking your dog, playing with your kids, something that gets you active for at least 10 to 30 minutes a day.
(07:08)
That should be in your lifestyle regardless of where you are on your fitness journey. That should be part of your daily habits and your weekly habits. Eating vegetables, regardless of your diet goals, you should be doing that every day, ideally at every meal because regardless of whether you're trying to build muscle or burn fat or do both, your body needs the nutrients and the fiber from plant foods. Eating enough protein also very important. So those are the things that I like to focus on first when I first start working with a new client is establishing that baseline level of wellness, wellness habits because one that's going to help you to get started, start building muscle, start burning fat, start improving your heart health. These things will actually help you to do that and they will sustain you as you add in more difficult types of workouts where you're really challenging the muscles, where you're really challenging your heart health.
(08:04)
I want you to think of it as it, it's a journey. You're starting on a journey and it's a journey that's going to last you for the rest of your life. Because when it comes to our bodies, when it comes to strength, when it comes to coordination, when it comes to balance, when it comes to cardiovascular health, when it comes to our body, the rule of thumb is use it or lose it. So getting in shape is not this short-term fix means to an end to get to your dream physique. Your fitness is a journey. It's your overall lifestyle and habits that you consciously add to your life to help your body to function and look its best. And it takes time to build those habits. It takes time to build those habits. So you got to be patient with it. And sometimes our bodies and our brains and our systems can be resistant to adding new habits even if they're good for us.
(09:04)
Because I would venture to say every single person living on earth has some kind of trauma, has some kind of maladaptive coping mechanisms like maybe they smoke, maybe they bite their fingernails, maybe they comfort eat, maybe they eat their feelings, maybe they self neglect. There's so many maladaptive coping mechanisms that you can just pick up from just the drama of life. And our bodies and our brains are resistant to making changes, especially if you don't feel safe in your current living situation. If you're stressed out all the time, then your body is going to be more resistant to making changes. It's like you're trying to paint a massive canvas. Your lifestyle is a massive canvas. It takes layers upon layers upon layers of paint to make a beautiful picture, and you got to paint parts of it and then you got to let it dry.
(10:04)
You got to step away, let it dry. And then sometimes you make mistakes and you have to go in and you have to redo something. That's the sort of mindset you want to have towards your fitness is you are painting a massive canvas, you're building a lifestyle that's going to sustain you. And then all of these habits are things that you're going to stick with if you want to stay healthy for the rest of your life. It's normal for people to sometimes enter this with this short-term goal in mind and then maybe they achieve their goal and then they're like, what next? Then they don't want to do it anymore. They fall off the wagon, they stop working out, they stop eating healthy because they achieved their goal and then they end up gaining all the weight back or getting, losing all of their strength.
(10:44)
And I don't want that to happen to you. So I want you to kind of think of this as a long-term journey. It's good to set little micro goals along the way of things that you want to work on, things that you want to achieve when you achieve a goal, just think of it, this is a milestone in your overall journey. It's not the finish line. So your fat loss goal, whether you want to lose 50 pounds, a hundred pounds or whatever, think of it as a milestone rather than the finish line. And there's going to be other pieces of your fitness journey that are going to be part of that journey. And that journey is something is going to be for the rest of your life. So you want to pick stuff you want that you could see yourself doing for the rest of your life, things that you enjoy.
(11:26)
There's no need forcing yourself to do types of exercise that you hate or sometimes you just get bored. Sometimes you just get bored of your workout routine and that happens to everybody. And when that happens, if you feel like you're not motivated, you don't want to do it anymore, you find it boring, you're just like, then maybe it's time to change what your activity routine is. So you still want to be active, you still need to get active every day, but maybe change the way that you exercise. Try a different block of training. If you want to continue doing resistance training with weights and you've been doing bodybuilding style training or maybe you've been doing a body part split upper body, lower body, upper body, lower body and you're bored with that, try a different split. Try total body every day or try a bro split where you're just going to work chest one day and then you're going to work shoulders and then you're going to work biceps and triceps and then you're going to work legs switch something up in your workout program if you reach this point where you're just feeling like I'm not motivated.
(12:25)
And that's sort of what I wanted to address today because I've seen happen to a lot of my clients and it seems to have happened to a lot of my clients at the exact same time. And I don't know if it's the time of the year, I don't know if this is a time of year where people just kind of get anxious and maybe it's like, I don't know, anticipating the season's changing or something. But it's normal to reach a point in your fitness journey where you're just like, I don't want to do it. I'm just struggling to get my workouts in. And when that happens, first of all, you want to step back and you want to look at what is actually, what's my mindset towards my fitness right now? Is it just a means to an end or am I viewing it as this personal journey that I'm on?
(13:07)
And that's going to have different story arcs and different branches to it, different stretches of it, which are going to focus on different things. So how do you view your fitness? What's your relationship with your fitness? How are you envisioning it? If you are viewing your workouts and if you're viewing your fitness with that short-term goal in mind of like, oh, it's just a means to an end, then yeah, you're probably going to struggle to stay motivated in your workouts and you're probably not going to want to do them if they're just a means to an end, if they're just something that you have to check off because you have to, then yeah, you're going to struggle to do them. The other thing to think about beyond your macro vision of your fitness is it might be time to change up your workout program. You may be bored with what you've been doing.
(13:52)
It may be time that you change up your split or you try a different type of activity going from doing power lifting to maybe more Olympic lifting. Try Olympic lifting and mastering new skills or switch to more like stabilization and balance challenge training, changing up the focus of your program, not just the split, but the focus and say, I'm going to focus on these movements for a while and I'm going to develop these movements for myself or these different skills. Learning a new skill, that's one way that you can kind of shake up your program and give you something new to look forward to. Sometimes we lose our motivation because we don't really have a milestone goal in mind. And this happens a lot. I would say this happens the most to my clients who are pursuing fat loss. They are the ones who tend to lose the motivation to work out the most, and I think it's because they're so hyper-focused on that number on the scale and what it reads every day when they weigh in. And that number can change for so many reasons beyond what your body fat percentage is because we can gain as much as 15. I've even seen people gain 20 pounds in one day from just eating a lot of salty, sugary food because your body will retain water, which will make you heavy depending on how much salt and how much sugar you eat.
(15:18)
Your body can retain and lose water as much as 15 to 20 pounds in one day. Or even just like if you've pooped, right? If you've pooped or peed, that adds weight to the scale. And people, they put so much importance on the number that's on the scale that when it changes, it has this huge effect on their emotional state and on their level of motivation. And that's why I personally don't really like to use the scale very much unless I'm specifically in a very focused cut phase with a client. Because if you're in a cut phase and you're focusing on that, it's just going to fuck with your head, and you have to know that going into it, it's going to be very hard on your brain emotionally for most people that I've worked with. If you're weighing yourself in every day and you're trying to lose fat, the number is not always going to go the direction that you want it to go.
(16:17)
It's not always going to read progress the way that you're looking for. And you got to know that going into it, which is why I don't like to do fat loss phases for a very long period of time because it just weighs on people for a long period of time. So if you have been really focused on fat loss for a long time, six to 12 weeks or more, and that is been your main focus, it may be time to switch up the focus of your fitness and do a stretch a block or however it is a chunk of time where you're focusing on something else. You're focusing on developing a skill, you're focusing on building strength and a certain movement pattern, or you're learning to work with a different type of equipment. I think that that would be a great way to kind of shake things up and make it so that you look forward to your workouts again.
(17:09)
But also don't forget that when you're in a fat loss phase, in a calorie deficit, you're naturally just going to have less energy, which is going to make your workouts harder, and it's also going to make recovering from your workouts harder. So if you're already feeling badly about yourself because of what you see on the scale, and then you're also tired and then you're tired, so you don't feel like you can perform very well during your workouts, or at least doing the workout just feels really like, Ugh, everything just feels hard. And then after the workout, you're really fricking tired and you're experiencing other symptoms of just being tired and being in a calorie deficit. Yeah, a fucking course, you're going to lose motivation.
(17:56)
And I think that it's easy to get on a shame spiral about it too, and be like, oh, well, I've lost my motivation. I don't want to work out anymore. What's wrong with me? And that's where a lot of my clients get into trouble is they reflect on, oh, I don't have a lot of motivation. And then they start flogging themselves basically like, oh, I should, what do I feel like this? And then they start shaming themselves or feeling that way, and it's like, no, your system feels exactly like it should. It makes so much sense that you would feel depressed, that you would feel tired and fatigued and not motivated to do your workouts. Your system is suppressed. It's been suppressed for a longer period of time, and this also is just even way worse if you have anything else going on in your life, if you have difficult relationships going on and you're dealing with a difficult relationship or multiple difficult relationships, some kind of work stress, right?
(18:48)
If you're dealing with having to move or if there's other stresses in your life, then of course you're going to feel that and it's going to weigh in on your motivation to do your workouts. I wanted to address that because there's a couple of things that you can do if you're experiencing just low motivation towards your workouts. One, think about the macro vision of your fitness. How do you view fitness and how does it fit into your life? And you may need to reframe that. You may need to build a different vision and a different idea of how fitness works into your life as not just so much a means to an end, but more a lifestyle that you built for yourself to care better for your body, to take better care of your body, which I think is the ideal. You may need to switch up how you're training, you may need to choose a different focus, choose a different workout split, and just to give yourself something else to focus on, you may be bored.
(19:50)
If you have been in a fat loss phase for a long time, you may need to take a break from that or continue in your calorie deficit and just change the focus of your workouts instead of focusing so much on what number is on the scale. Focus on really mastering and cleaning up your squat technique or learning how to work out with kettlebells or learning how to do a martial arts skill. Focus on the actual skill development side of things because that's going to keep you motivated to show up and do your workouts right? If you're just relying on the number on the scale to motivate you, that's not going to work. It's just not going to work. It's not going to keep you motivated for very long because it fluctuates and how you feel about it is going to fluctuate over time. And at the end of the day, there is a certain amount of this where you just have to have the discipline to show up regardless of whether you feel like it or not.
(20:41)
Some days you're just not going to feel like it, and that's going to be a lot of the time. But you have have the discipline to show up anyway, and that's why, again, I think we need to focus on habits and building those habits. And that's also another reason why I think it's a good idea to make sure that when you're doing this, when you're starting to build a workout routine, try to keep your workouts on the same days at the same time every week. Because what's going to happen is when you have those days where you have low motivation, you're more likely to show up to your workout because it's just part of what you do. It's just part of your schedule, and you'll feel off and feel weird if you get off of your schedule. And then it will be a lot easier to get back onto your schedule because you have that designated time on the same days and the same time every week.
(21:30)
And there's going to be a lot of times where the pure momentum of this is what I have scheduled is going to be what gets you through the door. And there's nothing wrong with you if that's the case. If you're experiencing that low motivation and you're like, the only reason I showed up today is because this is what was on the schedule and this is just what I do on Tuesdays, you don't necessarily have to be super, super motivated to get a good workout in or to achieve your fitness goals. You don't have to be super motivated or want to do it all the time in order for it to benefit you. So that's my thoughts on motivation. I hope that you find it helpful. I wanted to talk about it because I have a couple of clients who are struggling with it right now, and sometimes you need to change things up. Sometimes you need to reframe your fitness, sometimes you need to just suck it up and show up. And that's true of lots of things in life because sometimes when you do just show up, even if you don't feel like it, once you get started, you're actually like, Hmm, this is actually not so bad. It's not so bad. I'm glad I did this right.
(22:43)
You will feel better once you actually get started. And if you absolutely have to then go into the workout and just go with the idea of, I'm going to just take it easy today. I would rather you show up to your workout and sandbag and stay consistent on your workout routine, then show up. Or I would rather you show up and sandbag than have you not show up at all and not do anything for your health. Even if you're like, I just can't lift today. I can't make it to the gym. Go for a walk. Do something for your health every single day. Do something active. Move your body in some way. I would so much rather you do that than just not do anything at all. That's what I would like to see from my clients, and that's what I would like to see from my followers, and that's the rule of thumb that I follow for myself personally.