​I have recently posted a poll on my Instagram stories, asking my followers if they were staying on top of exercise.
 
“No” was the most popular answer.
 
In another poll, I asked “Why?” and offered two options: “No guidance” and “Low motivation”.
 
“Low motivation” received an overwhelming 100% response.
 
What many of us might not realise is that your initial motivation is fuelled by a sense of novelty and inspiration to achieve success.
 
Unfortunately, neither of the two lasts long.
 
Your shiny new training program becomes old news in a couple of weeks.
 
And your long-term goal of losing 50lbs can seem too far away when you step on the scale and you’ve only lost half a pound this week.
 
Once your starting levels of motivation are running low, don’t wait to wake up one day and find them miraculously restored.
 
Spoiler alert: It won’t happen.
 
Instead, become the architect of your own motivation.
 
One way to do this is to accomplish a workout when it’s the very last thing you want to do.
 
This will boost your confidence and thus perpetuate a positive feedback loop of success, followed by a sense of accomplishment and renewed motivation, followed by repeated success.
 
In this article, I will cover my top tips to do exactly that.

​Following a maintenance phase, in the last month I have resumed high-volume training and a calorie surplus to induce hypertrophy and gain more muscle.
 
I feel like I am in a better mental place to welcome this process than ever before, as I find myself better equipped, from a psychological standpoint, to deal with the inevitable fat gain and the increasing number on the scale.
 
Sharing my thoughts on the topic on Instagram, I received some great comments about the relatability of the fear of weight gain. So, in this article, I aim to provide some strategies that have helped me and might aid others in the mental struggle against the scale and the mirror.

​Working in a commercial gym, I have the opportunity to talk about fitness with individuals from all walks of life. When I ask how their training is going, the number one obstacle they bring up is the big bad M-word: motivation.
 
In fact, many of them hire a personal trainer just to have someone to push them to exercise and eat in a different way.
 
But what is motivation? And how can you manipulate it to succeed in your fitness journey?
 
In this article, I will examine different types of motivation and how to harness the most common one to achieve your fitness goals.

A habit is an automatic behaviour repeated on a regular basis. It’s our brain’s smart way to work less to perform routine actions so we can invest more into new activities that expand our knowledge. However, forming a habit isn’t easy. No wonder habit-building tips abound on the internet, but how many times have you come across them and thought, “Ok, I’ve tried all this and it doesn’t really work for me. Now what?”
 
I know I have. Many of these articles assume there’s only one right way to build habits, and they don’t take into account differences between personality types. For example, some of us might do very well with written reminders on post-it notes, while others will forget to look at them. Some might respond well to an alarm; others will be ticked off and ignore it.
 
The good news is, there are many habit-building hacks, each of them catering to a different personality type. As a personality and general psychology nerd, I put together seven tips (plus one!) based on the science of habit formation, the MBTI, and the Four Tendencies theory. You have plenty to try out!

Humanity has a long tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions, dating back to the Babylonians, who used to make promises to gain their gods’ favour and start the new year on the path to success. This is my favourite holiday practice because it’s rooted in an aspiration for self-improvement and success. However, U.S. News tells us that 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February. As for the UK, a poll showed that 63% of respondents had broken at least one of their resolutions in the past, the majority within a single month.
 
And yet, we’ve all heard of SMART goals. In other words, we all know our chances of success increase dramatically if our goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. So why haven’t we become goal-achieving machines by now?
 
The truth is, SMART goals are indeed the key to success, but setting goals and achieving them is a skill like any other. If we don’t learn to practise it correctly, goal setting will remain wishful thinking.