It’s Monday morning.
Your alarm buzzes at 6:00am, and you promised yourself: “This week, I’ll be different. I’ll get up early, I’ll exercise and I’ll eat better today, and I definitely won’t give up by Thursday.”

But right now the duvet feels so warm, it’s still dark outside and it’s probably really cold… Your brain whispers, “Just five more minutes.”

You hit snooze, and again, and then just one more time…
By the time you finally emerge, you’re out of time, the day has begun and that voice in your head pipes up: “You’ve failed already.”

Sound familiar?

If so, l want to clear something upright now: you’re not lazy. You do not lack discipline and you definitely don’t need more motivation. You’ve just been told the wrong story about how change really works.

The Weight Loss Motivation Myth

Most people believe success comes down to motivation. People who “stick with it” just want it more than we do. Science tells a different story.

A 2023 study published in Nature Human Behaviour found that motivation is context-dependent. That just means that it fluctuates, with sleep, stress, time of day and even the weather. So, some mornings you wake up ready to go, but on others, just the thought of moving feels impossible.

You could try to think of motivation like your phone battery. At 8am, it’s probably be full, but by 6pm, when it’s time to exercise or prepare a healthy meal from scratch, the day’s tasks like work, errands and family responsibilities have all taken their toll, and that battery is drained.

Your motivation doesn’t disappear because you don’t care, or you don’t want it enough, it’s gone because your battery doesn’t last.

Even with that in your mind, it’s important to remember that motivation is a feeling, sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t and we can’t really predict it, so relying on it, is never a good idea.

Why Willpower Always Fails

Psychologists have studied willpower for decades, they often liked to frame it as a “muscle.” You can flex it, but the more you use it, the more fatigued it becomes.

Research on ego depletion (Baumeister et al., 2018) suggests that every decision you make and every act of self-control you have to do, chips away at your willpower reserves. By the end of the day, you’re exhausted. You’re emptying the biscuit tin, or you’re planted firmly on the couch and skipping your workout, that doesn’t mean you’re weak, it just means you’re depleted.

By the time you’ve also dealt with stress, poor sleep, or any type of emotional strain, those reserves dry up even faster. That’s why “I’ve just got to try harder” is some of the worst advice in the world.

The truth is that people who succeed in losing weight, or being fitter and healthier, don’t rely on motivation or willpower at all. They’ve found a different way.

Three strategies consistently rise to the top:

1. Habit Stacking – linking new habits to existing ones so they piggyback off routines you already do.
2. Environmental Hacks – designing your surroundings so the healthy choice is the easy choice.
3. Identity-Based Habits – shifting from “doing something” to “being someone.”

So, let’s break these down and see where you can use them to improve your chances of success.

1. Habit Stacking: The Anchoring Effect

Habits don’t live in isolation. They exist in chains of cues, routines and rewards.

A study by Carrero (2025) showed that implementation intentions (specific “if/then” plans), dramatically increase habit success. Example: “if I’ve brushed my teeth, then I need to do 10 squats.”

Why does this work? It’s quite simple really, it’s because you don’t have to try to remember to perform that new habit, you’re just attaching it to a strong (relevant) anchor you already do every day.

Examples could be:

• If I’ve brushed my teeth → then I’ll do 10 squats.
• If I’ve made a cup of coffee → then I’ll drink a glass of water.
• If I’ve finished a meal → then I’ll put on my walking shoes.

Over time, the new action becomes just as automatic as the old one.

2. Environmental Hacks: Make It Easy

Have you ever noticed how much more you snack if the biscuits are out on the counter? Every time you walk past, there’s temptation to eat ‘just one’. Well, that’s not weakness, it’s environmental design and it’s so effective that even supermarkets use it to sell you more stuff (but that’s another story).

Thaler & Sunstein’s Nudge Theory (2008) showed that small changes in your environment can profoundly steer behavior without any conscious effort. You’ve just got to set up your environment to better match your new goals.

Let’s look at some example ‘hacks’:

• Put a bowl of your favourite fruit where you can easily see and reach it, and hide crisps in a cupboard.
• Leave a water bottle on your desk or side table.
• Put your gym shoes by the front door, and leave your gym clothes out, ready to go.

When the healthy choice is the obvious choice, it stops being a battle to change.

3. Identity-Based Habits: Be Who You Want to Be

This one can be a serious game-changer.

Psychologist Daphna Oyserman (2024) showed that when people tie behaviors to their identity, they’re far more likely to stick with them and you can start to take advantage of this really easily, by just changing the way you talk to yourself:

Instead of saying: “I want to run three times a week.”
You can say: “I’m the kind of person who never misses a run.”

or

Instead of: “I want to eat more vegetables.”
Say: “I’m the kind of person who prioritises nourishing my body properly.”

Doing this means you’re can stop chasing motivation, and actually start being the person you want to become.

Let’s think about how this could work

Picture two versions of your Friday night.

Scenario 1:
It’s 8pm, you’ve just stopped after a very busy day and you’re exhausted. It’s the start of the weekend and you’re ready to relax. The fridge is empty but that doesn’t matter, you couldn’t be bothered to stand and cook anyway, so you pour a glass of wine to calm your nerves, and grab a handful of biscuits from the pack as you walk past on the way to the couch. You sit down, grab your phone from the side table and you scroll Just Eat. 10 minutes later (sometimes these decisions are tricky), the takeaway is ordered, and you think: “I’ll just start again Monday.”

Scenario 2:
It’s 8pm, and you’re so tired. You go upstairs to change out of your work clothes, and your gym kit is on the bed. You’re not sure that you have the energy, but you remind yourself that you’re “someone who never misses a workout”, so maybe you’ll just go for a short, relaxing walk tonight, it’ll help you get some fresh air and deal with the stress of the day. You change, put trainers on at the door and out you go.

It only takes 20 minutes, but you feel so much better. You go into the kitchen a realise you have a healthy Fakeaway meal in the fridge (you’re so pleased that you prepped it earlier in the week – you were cooking that day anyway). Your water bottle is full so you have a drink – rehydrate. You sit down after heating up your meal with a calm, clear head, you eat, and you think: “I feel so much better now.”

The difference? Not motivation. Not willpower. Systems.

How to Build Your Own System

Here’s your step-by-step guide to making this real:

Step 1: Choose Your Anchor

Decide on something you really want to change, eating better, moving more, hydrating properly, then identify something you do every day, like brushing your teeth, boiling the kettle, getting dressed.

Step 2: Add a Tiny Habit

Now, think about one simple action that will help you achieve the change you want, and attach it to one of those daily actions. Try your best to make sure they flow together easily, because if they make sense together, that’ll make it even easier to follow through.

• If I’m brushing my teeth → then I’ll do 10 squats.
• If I’m making my coffee → then I’ll dring a glass of water while the kettle boils.
• If I’m putting on my work clothes → then I’ll lay my gym clothes out on the bed.
• If I’m preparing a meal → then I’ll make an extra portion that I can put in the fridge or freezer for later.

Step 3: Hack Your Environment

Next, think about how you can make your environment support this choice

• Leave a note on the bathroom mirror, that just says ‘squats’
• Put your water glass by the kettle.
• Make sure you have enough gym outfits available so you don’t run out.
• Make sure you bought enough ingredients to cover the extra portions.

Step 4: Shift Your Identity

Think about the person you want to be, and the decisions they would make in that situation…

• I’m someone who takes any opportunity to move and get stronger / fitter / healthier.
• I someone who believes that I perform better when I’m properly hydrated.
• I’m someone who doesn’t miss a workout
• I’m someone who thinks ahead to make it easier to be healthy.

Then prove these statements by consistently perfoming these tiny actions.

Step 5: Celebrate Micro-Wins

Don’t wait for the “big results.” Every time you follow through, acknowledge it. It’s so important because you’re reinforcing your new story and how positive the changes are. Every step in the right direction is worth recognising and celebrating.

Real-Life Story

Meet Alex.

Alex’s story is a fictional representation of my work with real people. He had tried different diets, products and exercise plans for years, and always fell off plan by week three or four. He came me feeling that he just lacked the level of motivation he needed to change, after all, he has a wife and family that loved him, and he didn’t have any long term health problems – he just wanted to feel better, healthier and more confident.

When we worked together, we talked about some of the things you’ve seen here, and we looked at the importance he placed on motivation for success. We explored other things that were also important for change, and he came up with a couple of really good ideas. Consistency and discipline. We thought about what change would look like with these things in mind. Changes needed to be small, so they could fit easily into his daily routine and he needed to make sure he could follow through, even when he didn’t really feel like it.

It goes without saying, that he didn’t start with a 6-day workout routine and a super clean diet, because that was the old him, and he never succeeded. Instead, he started with one anchor: every morning, after his coffee, drink one glass of water. This helped him to feem more energised, and he started thinking more clearly and generally feeling better at work.

After a few weeks of this, he started to think about the next change he could make, and decided to stack a 15-minute walk after lunch. He put his trainers in his work bag with his lunch and started to remind himself that he is already feeling better than he did, and he’s now someone who doesn’t make excuses, because they keep him from his success.

He gradually built up these small habits until six months later, Alex wasn’t just drinking more water. Now he was 20 pounds lighter, sleeping better, and exercising regularly. He’d proven to himself that he could change, that he could stick to new behaviours and his confidence soared.

Not because he suddenly found motivation, but because he built systems that worked without it.

The Big Takeaway

Motivation is a myth. It’s a story we’ve been sold that keeps us stuck in the cycle of “start strong, give up, blame ourselves.”

But you’re not broken. You don’t need more willpower.
You need systems that make success automatic.

• Stack habits.
• Hack your environment.
• Live into your identity.

Stop waiting for motivation. Start building the structures that carry you forward, even on your hardest days, because the truth is this: you don’t need to feel motivated to become the person you want to be. You just need to build the right system.

Read the next post in this series: The “All-or-Nothing” Trap: Why Giving Up After a Slip Isn’t Your Fault — and How to Break Free

References

• Carrero, I. (2025). A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of implementation intentions interventions in promoting physical activity. ScienceDirect.
• Oyserman, D. (2024). Identity-Based Motivation: Updated Review. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
• Thaler, R., & Sunstein, C. (2008). Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Yale University Press.
• Nature Human Behaviour (2023). The contextual variability of motivation and self-control.
• Baumeister, R. F., et al. (2018). Ego depletion and self-control: The strength model of self-regulation