How Can Psychology Help You Overcome Your Fitness Struggles?
Deep Dive
Takeaway: Fitness psychology looks at how your beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors affect your motivation to exercise and eat well. Traditional fitness approaches often miss this step, focusing only on behavior changes without understanding the thoughts behind them. By changing your mindset and the stories you tell yourself, you can increase motivation and achieve better, lasting results.
Fitness Psychology: The 135-Character Definition
Fitness psychology explores how beliefs, behaviors, and thoughts impact a person’s desire and motivation toward nutrition and exercise.
Here’s the 68-character definition:
Fitness psychology helps you figure out why you get in your own way.
The Deep Dive
Fitness psychology explores how your beliefs, behaviors, and thoughts impact your motivation for exercise and nutrition.
This step is often overlooked by traditional fitness approaches, which focus on behavior change without considering the underlying thoughts driving those behaviors.
The whole process looks something like this:
Beliefs —> Attitudes/Environment —> Behavior
I Think Therefore I Am
Beliefs encompass all the ideas you hold about yourself and your capabilities, as well as your thoughts about the world.
Beliefs guide your decision-making and actions.
Your thoughts are the moment-to-moment interpretations of the events around you, forming stories to explain the data you perceive.
Mindset is the lens through which you interpret this raw data. Stimuli pass through this lens, and the resulting thought is the story that guides your actions.
Process:
Stimulus Occurs —> Mindset Lens Adds Perspective —> Thoughts Interpret Data —> Brain Creates a Story —> Story Dictates Actions
Your thoughts and mindset can reinforce or challenge your beliefs about yourself and the world.
Moved to Action
Attitude is your motivation for doing something. To perform a behavior, you need a reason to do so.
Every day, you have countless choices of actions, yet you manage to navigate through them. Your choices are limited by your environment and motivations. Given your environment, what actions move you closer to your goals?
Here’s where it gets tricky: your conscious goals don’t always align with your subconscious goals.
Many behaviors are driven by habits formed over years, originally serving goals you were motivated toward. Problems arise when these behaviors no longer serve you.
Much of the struggle in achieving fitness goals stems from subconscious behaviors that detract from desired outcomes. Success comes when you identify and remove these barriers.
But that’s not all—barriers can be environmental too. Kids' activities, late work meetings, or last-minute errands can limit your choices and time for the gym or preparing healthy meals.
When your environment changes, your motivation can decrease because of new stories and beliefs, like "I don’t have time for a workout" or "I don’t have the energy to cook at home."
Hacking the System
If you’re writing stories about your experiences, the solution is to learn to write different stories. Once you master this, you can achieve better outcomes at every level.
Process:
Environmental Shifts —> Less Negative Thoughts —> Better Stories —> Increased Motivation —> Better Behavioral Outcomes
Follow this formula long enough, and you’ll develop more positive beliefs and a healthier mindset.
This is why addressing the psychology of fitness is crucial. If you only focus on behaviors, you miss out on understanding the underlying 80% of what drives those behaviors. Without addressing this, any results from a diet or workout plan will likely be short-lived.
Imagine you have a belief that you’re not athletic.
This belief affects your motivation to exercise. If you start interpreting your daily experiences through a positive mindset lens, you might begin to think, "I can’t run a mile, but I can run to the end of the street and improve my fitness step by step."
This new story increases your motivation, leading to consistent workouts and, eventually, a more positive belief about your athletic abilities.
Applying the Concepts
Reflect on Your Beliefs: Identify a belief that might be holding you back. For example, "I’m too busy to work out."
Challenge the Belief: Write a new story that counters this belief. For example, "I can find 15 minutes in my day to exercise."
Act on the New Story: Follow through with small, consistent actions based on your new story.
Adjust as Needed: Continuously refine your stories and actions to align with your evolving goals and environment.
By addressing the psychology behind your fitness journey, you set yourself up for lasting success.
P.S. Want to learn how to change these stories in your head? Vote below to get on our list for the Mindset Makeover Online Course: