If I had a pound for every time somebody told me, “I’ve just lost my motivation” or “I’ve completely fallen off the wagon”, I’d never have to work ever again!
It happens to all of us. It’s normal.
We start off with the best intentions, we’re doing our workouts, eating well and feeling really good… and then life gets busy. We miss a couple of workouts, our usual routine goes out of the window and before we know it, we feel like you’re back at square one.
But losing motivation isn’t really the problem.
The problem is relying on motivation in the first place.
You’re Not Going to Feel Motivated All the Time
I love exercise. It’s a huge part of my life and has been for years. But do I wake up every single morning absolutely desperate to work out?
Of course I don’t!
Motivation comes and goes. You might have had a terrible night’s sleep, work might be really busy, the kids might need you, you might be on your period or you might just have one of those days where you really cannot be bothered.
That is completely normal.
If we wait until we feel motivated before we exercise, though, it becomes really difficult to build any sort of consistency.
This is where having a routine makes such a difference.
I personally love getting my workout done first thing in the morning because it’s done before the rest of the day has a chance to get in the way. But that won’t work for everybody.
What matters is finding a time that works for you and actually planning it into your week.
Give Yourself a Range, Not a Perfect Number
One thing I really like people to do is give themselves a range for the week.
So instead of saying, “I MUST work out five times this week”, you might decide that three workouts is your minimum and five would be your ideal.
If you do three? Brilliant.
If you manage four? Brilliant.
If everything falls into place and you do five? Also brilliant!
It gives you some flexibility without falling into that all-or-nothing mindset where one missed workout suddenly means the whole week is a write-off.
Your weeks aren’t always going to look the same, and they don’t need to.
Try My Rule of 3
This is another really simple one.
If you plan to exercise on Monday and something happens so you can’t do it, fine.
Try again on Tuesday.
If Tuesday also goes completely pear-shaped, then do everything you can to make Wednesday happen.
Get your clothes ready. Decide exactly what workout you’re doing. Put it in your diary. Remove as many barriers as you possibly can.
The idea is that we don’t let three planned opportunities go by without doing something.
Because the more times we tell ourselves we’re going to do something and then don’t do it, the easier it becomes to keep putting it off.
And the opposite is true too.
Every time you say you’re going to do something and actually follow through with it, you start building that trust in yourself again.
Sometimes You Have to Start Before You Feel Like It
This is such a big one.
We often think we need motivation to take action but taking action is what creates the motivation!!
You might really not fancy exercising, but then you start your workout, get five or ten minutes in and think, “Actually, I feel so much better for doing this.”
You remember why you do it.
And please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that if you can’t give 100%, there’s no point.
If you’ve only got 30% in the tank today and you give that 30%, you’ve given what you had.
That counts.
You do not need every workout to be your best workout. You just need to keep showing up consistently enough over time.
Don’t Forget About Your Food
Your workouts are only one part of looking after yourself, and one of the biggest things I encourage women to think about with their food is protein.
Rather than completely overhauling your diet, start by looking at the meals you already eat and asking:
Where’s my protein?
Breakfast and lunch are often the meals where people struggle.
If you normally have toast for breakfast, could you have eggs on toast?
If you love cereal, could you have some high-protein Greek yoghurt with it?
At lunchtime, instead of starting with the bread or salad and then adding a tiny bit of protein, turn it around. Choose your protein first — chicken, tuna, eggs, tofu, cottage cheese, whatever you enjoy — and then build the rest of your lunch around that.
Protein helps with fullness, recovery and maintaining muscle, which becomes increasingly important as we get older.
And no, this doesn’t mean you can’t have bread or cheese!
It’s about looking at the overall balance of your meal rather than cutting foods out.
Do You Need to Try Intermittent Fasting?
I get asked about intermittent fasting a lot, particularly by women in perimenopause.
And my answer is always that it depends on you.
Intermittent fasting isn’t magic.
For some people, having a smaller window in which they eat naturally means they consume fewer calories overall, and they genuinely enjoy eating that way.
Great.
But if you’re absolutely starving, your workouts feel rubbish, you’re thinking about food all morning and then eating everything in sight when your fasting window finishes, it probably isn’t helping you!
There’s no prize for fasting for the longest.
Your nutrition needs to work with your lifestyle, your training and how you actually feel.
So, How Do You Get Back on Track?
You draw a line.
You don’t need to punish yourself for what you’ve eaten, squeeze in loads of extra workouts or wait until Monday to “start again”.
Look at the week ahead.
When can you realistically exercise?
What is your minimum this week?
What would a really good week look like?
Then start.
Because you’re probably not going to suddenly wake up one morning with endless motivation.
But once you start moving again, get a couple of workouts under your belt and begin looking after yourself, it becomes so much easier to keep going.
You don’t need to be perfect.
You just need to keep coming back to it.
Want Some Support Getting Back Into a Routine?
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