What are you waiting for?
5min read
Most people are not waiting for motivation. They are waiting for an easier week, and it rarely comes.
If you read nothing else
One thing worth knowing. Around half the people who genuinely intend to become more active never do. Intention is a poor predictor of action.
One thing to ponder. The results most people want are on the other side of a period of doing things differently. That period does not get shorter or easier by starting later.
One thing to experiment with. Pick one habit you keep postponing until a clear week. Start it this week instead. At the end of the week: how did it go, and what would you do differently?
Most people have a version of this list. There is the big project at work, the children are still small, a house move in the spring, more travelling than last year, two holidays booked and a wedding in September. A sister in law has just had a baby and needs someone for support.
So the decision is made. This is not the right time to complicate things. Too tired, too busy, too much going on, and the calendar is booked until Christmas.
So after Christmas it is. Time to quit smoking, cut down on alcohol, get a gym membership, do a detox, start a diet. Again.
And it is all real. None of it is an excuse, which makes it even harder.
What happens next is this. The big project ends and another one starts. The children get older and the logistics get harder, not easier. The house move is followed by a year of sorting boxes. January arrives and everyone is tired from December.
Time passes either way, whether or not anyone gets round to their own goals.
What waiting actually is
So waiting feels like preparation. It is not. It is a decision to act later, and later may or may not come.
Across studies of people who fully intend to become more active, roughly half never do [1]. They genuinely wanted to and they really meant it, but turning intention into action is close to a coin toss.
Why January and birthdays feel different
If waiting is a coin toss, the start of a new year looks like the fix. There is nothing magic about certain days, though. What they do is make you look back and see where another year has gone [2]. That is the pull, and it fuels motivation and gets things moving. It is not enough to keep the thing going when it gets hard.
Motivation lasts a few weeks. Then comes a week of no sleep, no time and nothing in the fridge, and motivation is no longer enough, because it was never the missing part.
What a bad night actually costs
Take that week. The first fortnight had gone well, and then comes a bad night. Awake at three, awake again at half four, alarm at six anyway.
The walk does not happen. Dinner is whatever is quickest. By nine it is the sofa, the TV, and something to munch on that soothes and numbs.
One bad night, then a domino effect. It does not have to be the case, though. There is still a chance to change direction the next morning, and that’s what matters.
It comes down to why
Willpower is not enough on its own. When goals get difficult, what predicts whether people carry on is the reason they started in the first place [3].
A deeply personal reason to want the change makes difficulty a problem worth solving. Because the pain of staying the same is greater than the challenge of change.
Something taken on because it should be done, because it is sensible, because other people seem to know better, turns difficulty into a threat. And moving away from a threat is a normal protective response.
Reasons that are not deeply personal, a photograph that looked different, a comment nobody asked for, a number on the scale, may hold up until the first hard week. Then they stop being enough.
Why now is the right time
The hard week is where the real reasons to keep going matter the most. And it is on a difficult week where there is an opportunity to master the skills to keep going and build the behaviours that define who you become.
It is not about trying harder, and it is not about being smarter. It is not about eating less and moving more. It is about eating enough to be well and satisfied, and moving the needle in the right direction. It’s about intentional movement, enough to build strength and resilience, and still have a life.
It is knowing what to do when there is nothing in the fridge, before you reach the point of writing off the day. What to do with a craving at nine at night, and the food noise that comes with it. How to shorten the walk instead of dropping it when you are exhausted. How to look back at a difficult week and ask what could have been done differently, with curiosity rather than judgement.
That is learned by starting, not by waiting for better days. By having the difficult week, handling it imperfectly, and finding out what works and what needs changing next time. It is about who you become in the process.
The ones who reach their goals do not have more willpower or discipline
There is a version of commitment that looks superhuman, but even in Olympians it does not last: rigidity, the grind, the all-or-nothing mentality. Even the best systems break [4]. What works is flexibility and adaptability. Doing something instead of nothing. Having a plan for the weeks you feel on top of the world, another for the weeks you want to hide from it, and something for everything in between.
The cost of waiting
Doing nothing is a choice too, and it rarely leaves you where you are, it leaves you in a worse position.
Without consistent lifestyle changes there is loss in muscle mass and strength [5], increase in body fat [6], and the body handles glucose less well than before. Over time the shopping feels heavier, the stairs take more out of you, and your health quietly moves in the wrong direction. None of it shows from one week to the next, which is the trap. It is slow, and it adds up.
So starting later is not starting fresh, it is starting from further back than you are today.
The good news is that the same chain works both ways: the earlier you begin, the better off you will be in the years to come.
A year from now
The date comes round either way. What is different is whether it arrives as another year gone, or as twelve months of small things done imperfectly and often, which is what actually adds up.
The right week is rarely the one that comes, but waiting only makes it worse.
So what are you really waiting for?
In summary
Motivation and good intentions to start a health and fitness routine fade within weeks. What keeps people going is a strong why and the skills to handle a bad week, which are only built by starting out and doing the thing.
Progress is built on imperfect action and is often invisible at first. Small things done regularly, better than last time, add up.
There is never a right week to start your health and fitness routine. Waiting only makes you worse off, because nothing holds steady on its own.
The best time to start is the messy week you are already in. If you would like some help doing that, book a free call and we will work out your first step together.
References
Feil K, Fritsch J, Rhodes RE. The intention-behaviour gap in physical activity: a systematic review and meta-analysis of the action control framework. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2023;57(19):1265-1271. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2022-106640
Dai H, Milkman KL, Riis J. Put your imperfections behind you: temporal landmarks spur goal initiation when they signal new beginnings. Psychological Science. 2015;26(12):1927-1936. doi:10.1177/0956797615605818
Ntoumanis N, Healy LC, Sedikides C, et al. When the going gets tough: the "why" of goal striving matters. Journal of Personality. 2014;82(3):225-236. doi:10.1111/jopy.12047
Schiphof-Godart L, Hettinga FJ. Passion and pacing in endurance performance. Frontiers in Physiology. 2017;8:83. doi:10.3389/fphys.2017.00083
Goodpaster BH, Park SW, Harris TB, et al. The loss of skeletal muscle strength, mass, and quality in older adults: the Health ABC Study. Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. 2006;61(10):1059-1064. doi:10.1093/gerona/61.10.1059
Greendale GA, Sternfeld B, Huang M, et al. Changes in body composition and weight during the menopause transition. JCI Insight. 2019;4(5):e124865. doi:10.1172/jci.insight.124865