The Truth About Motivation Vs. Discipline

It’s New Year’s Day. It’s a month before summer starts. It’s a few weeks before your vacation. It’s the day after your doctor’s visit. You are M-O-T-I-V-A-T-E-D.

You are gonna get fit, get healthy, and you are your own biggest cheerleader.

But losing weight is HARD. Improving your health and changing your habits are HARD. So you fall off the wagon until a resurgence of motivation inspires you to get back on.

The Problem With Motivation

Motivation is usually temporary. It stimulates you to act, but fazes out over time due to both internal and external factors. Here’s why your motivation may fade once you begin your health and fitness journey:

1. You feel that success is impossible. If you’re reading this, you’ve likely started a diet, failed to lose weight within your specific time frame, and stopped. You felt that success wasn’t within your reach, so your motivation waned.

2. There is no longer an incentive to continue. Once you reached your goal weight or went on vacation, you felt that there was no longer a reason to stay motivated, fit, and healthy. You likely wait until the next vacation or until you gain weight again for another surge of motivation to start again.

3. You aren’t enjoying the process. Starting a health and fitness journey usually involves reworking your habits, which can be difficult. Walking more, exercising regularly, drinking more water, and minimizing processed foods are hard habits to instill if you’ve never done it before. Especially if you’re not seeing fat loss occur immediately. You’re incredibly dissatisfied, so why continue?

Motivation Vs. Discipline

“Motivation will get you going. Discipline will keep you going.” Sal Di Stefano

If you’re motivated to lose fat, are you disciplined enough to keep it off?

If you’re motivated to get healthy, are you disciplined enough to be consistent with your habits?

Motivation will only get you so far. But discipline will help you for the rest of your life. So how can you become disciplined while on your health and fitness journey? 

1. Don’t fake it ‘till you make it. Do it ‘till you love it. Maybe you were a cardio junkie and now you have to lift weights. Maybe you thought Keto was the end-all be-all and now we’re reintroducing carbs into your diet. Or maybe you hate water and now you have to drink 64 oz a day. Repeat these healthy lifestyle habits everyday and reflect on how much better you feel. Find ways to look forward to accomplishing these tasks and make them your own. Make it your aim to get better at them with each passing day. You WILL begin love these habits, just trust the process.

2. Reframe your mindset on priorities. Instead of saying “I don’t have time for (strength training, cooking meals, drinking water, reading personal development books, getting more sleep, losing fat, etc)…” say “(strength training, cooking meals, drinking water, reading personal development books, getting more sleep, losing fat, etc) is not important to me.” You’ll find that those habits and goals are more important to yourself than you think and you will be more willing to MAKE TIME for these habits.

3. Keep yourself accountable. It can be easy to be lax with yourself. I mean, if you don’t hit your water goal or eat enough protein, who’s going to know, right? That can snowball into days and weeks of not hitting your goals. So keep yourself accountable. Have an accountability calendar, use a habit tracking app, write in a daily reflection journal, or work with a nutrition coach to keep you on track.

I work with many individuals like you who may know where to start, but are unsure of how to implement these goals and habits for the long run. Apply here for a free consultation to see how I can help YOU specifically feel strong and get healthy!

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