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Episode 3. “I am just not motivated.”

“I just need more willpower.”

Have you ever said something like this? But actually, science does not support that.

It Ain’t About Amount, It’s About Type

Our first episode of the podcast was all about the 3 KEY psychological needs that facilitate long-term behavior change:

• Autonomy
• Competence
• Relatedness

Today, we are building on this information to talk about different types of motivation.

The different types listed above (ranging from external to internal) are:

• External: You do the behavior for the reward or to avoid a punishment. Should or shame based motivation would fall here. Also exercising for the calorie burn or to lose weight would also fall into this category.
• Introjected: This one is still shame-based, usually. The behavior is often motivated by guilt and should and the person is often putting a lot of internal pressure of themselves to do it, which makes it hard to keep up over the long-term. If nothing else because stress and pressure is exhausting.
• Identified/Integrated: These types of motivation are based in the person you want to be, like you exercise because it’s personally important and/or consistent with how you want to show up in the world. You may or may not love it all the time, but often doing a certain exercise is part of who you are, part of your identity.
• Intrinsic: You do the behavior because something about it is inherently enjoyable.

Examples of Internal Motivators for Exercise

I wrote a detailed post on this in the past, that you can check out here. The idea with this list is to give you ideas about some of internal motivations for some. Remember that there are no right or wrong answers here, but the list below is just for ideas of what some internal motivators might be for you.

As a reminder, here are some of the ideas:

• Make Exercise a Social Occasion

• Improve Mobility and Reduce Pain

• Manage Stress or Boost Your Mood

• Increase Focus & Concentration

• Improve Creativity & Problem-Solving

5 Tips to Move Towards Internal Motivation For Exercise

1. Be on the lookout for ways to make exercise more enjoyable or fun! Time to move away from the shoulds! As children, at some point we intuitively loved to move our bodies. Many of us have lost touch with that and we need to work to get back in touch with our body and what movement it actually likes. I made a free 10 minute audio to help you with this goal. Grab it for free here!
2. Make a realistic plan for the timing and routine that will work best for YOU. Have you heard those articles about the fact that you should workout in the morning? Yeah, me too, and they stress me out. Working out in the morning is great because you get it done and you are less likely to have things come up that get in your way, however, this isn’t right for everyone. Right now, working out in the morning sounds terrible to me. I want to sleep in, so I let myself. In the evening if a walk sounds better than a strength/cardio workout in my basement, I let that “count.” Being flexible in this way leads to better mood benefits from exercise and better long term adherence. And it’s the long-term adding up of your habits that really matters, not whether I can force myself to get up at 5:30am and workout for 21 days in a row.
3. Find a supportive and like-minded community. We are incredibly influenced by the people around us in so many ways. If you are constantly around someone who is saying “I’m too fat, I need to exercise more” or “I need to burn off the calories from this meal” in a self-deprecating way, it will likely influence you negatively. The more we can surround ourselves with people who are exercising in a self-supportive way, the more we get inspired and find new ideas to do the same. Myself and about 10 of my friends have had a private group to provide support and accountability for exercise for about 3 years now. Most of us post several times per week about what we did along with a picture of our sweaty face. The language is always about exercise as self-care and never about hating our bodies or weight loss. We aren’t perfect and we miss days sometimes, but most of us consistently show up week after week, year after year, and many of us attribute the consistency at least partially to the support of the group.
4. Be on the lookout for weight loss as a motivator. Be on the lookout for unhelpful mindsets. Do you hop on the scale (just because, you are “curious”) and then think “what’s the point, my weight is the same.”? If your reasons for exercise are not weight-related, then the number on the scale should have no bearing whatsoever on your motivation to move. Just take notice of the mindset and how it impacts that internal motivation, it might be enlightening.
5. Think creatively, or ask for help. Many people have pain or other reasons why exercise is challenging. Sometimes finding creative ways to move is needed, and luckily with the internet there are tons of options. There is chair yoga, other exercises tailored to specific injuries, and yoga modified for different body types. However, always talk to a trusted professional to make sure you fully understand the causes of the pain and your treatment options. And if the professional you talk to tells you the only thing you can do is lose weight, get a second opinion. Unfortunately, weight bias is a common issue among health care professionals and the reality is that many problems can be improved even if the number on the scale does not change.

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