On Motivation and Behavior

Since I've embarked on my fitness journey, I've been contacted by many women who have said they've been inspired by me.  Their stories are usually pretty similar and are very familiar to me, because I lived that story for so many years - people who have let their health and fitness slide, and are looking for the motivation to make a change.  Most have tried repeatedly to lose weight, become more active, get healthier - and over and over, are never able to sustain the effort.  These "failures" create dejection and defeatism, which lead to more unhealthy behaviors, eventually becoming a seemingly endless circular roller coaster of self-loathing.

If I had the power to get every woman to truly internalize one message, it would be this: You have value just as you are.  You are worthy of love just as you are.  You are beautiful just as you are.  You are imperfectly perfect just as you are.

To me, there is no disconnect between loving the flawed, imperfect person that you are right this minute and still striving to be a happier and healthier version of that flawed, imperfect person. 

However, this is not a post about body image or self-esteem. Today I am thinking about motivation, and how it relates to changing your body and changing your life.

It feels good to be motivated.  I love the days when I wake up in the morning with tons of energy and am excited to hit the gym or go for a bike ride.  The days when you feel like nothing can stop you, and you know that you are going to have a killer workout, and your Fitbit is going to want to erupt with little electronic spasms of happiness throughout the day.  It's a great feeling - you're Leo at the brow hollering "I'm the king of the world!"

But what I finally learned this time around is that while motivation is nice, for me behavior is just as important. 

I started on this journey a few years ago, and was very motivated when I started out.  You have to be in order to get started.  We humans generally require a pretty strong catalyst to make significant changes in our lives, and I had that.  I saw the word "obese" on my medical chart and was horrified.  I hadn't realized I had let myself get that heavy.  There were other motivating factors as well, so suffice it to say, I was ready and raring to go.  But I was also a little worried - I'd been motivated to start before, and never managed to truly embrace the total changes I would need to make to really make a difference in my life.  I knew my motivation would lag at some point.

So I came up with one small, consistent behavioral change that would step in and take over when my motivation decided to take a day off.  Every night before a scheduled swim (I was swimming laps for exercise at that time) I would lay my gym bag and swimsuit out right next to the bed.  No matter how I felt, the first thing I did was put my swimsuit on.  I was ready to head to the gym before I was even fully awake most mornings.  I would have to make a deliberate decision to not work out at that point.  And I had a hard-and-fast rule that no matter how I felt, unless I was truly sick I would go to the pool and do the best I could.

Very few people can stay motivated all the time.  I certainly can't.  I've had fits and starts since I first started swimming those laps.  But what I finally figured out is that you don't actually have to be motivated to work out.  You can work out even if you don't really feel like it at that particular time.  I don't always feel like going to work, but I go anyway because that is what I have to do.  I now treat my workouts like a job - they are something I do whether I feel like it or not.  I treat missing a workout the same as missing a day of work - it has to happen sometimes, but for the most part you need to be there every day that you are scheduled.

Motivation starts the process, behavior drives results, which in turn drives the motivation, which helps reinforce the behavior, etc.  Motivation and behavior are symbiotic to me; the yin and yang of fitness.  You won't do the necessary behaviors (workouts) if you never have any motivation, but you also won't replenish your motivation (or get through periods of low motivation) without performing consistent behaviors.