13 posts
Authors’ note: in this article we go over some tested tips on how to get past dips in motivation. If you enjoyed this article, then you’ll love joining us for our live Q&A session, Nerding Out on Willpower, later this week! When: 2:00PM Pacific Time, Thursday 3/24 Recording will be available later....
Do you know why you achieved the things you've achieved? Do you know how? We're all excited and inspired when we see stories of transformation. In the United States, personal transformation is part of our cultural identity. We see ourselves as people who transform from the lowest status to the...
When you know you need to make a change, the number of choices and “should”s in the world can overwhelm you. It can feel difficult to know what exactly to try next. Let’s talk about the top five things you should be working on. But… Below you won’t find twenty things to do when you wake up or the...
Well, here you are. You failed at a goal you set yourself. Maybe it was a New Year’s resolution, or maybe it was a longtime dream. Regardless of what kind of goal it was, it can feel terrible to have failed at achieving something you want. And yet it's a very common experience. People often fail to...
A sense of belonging is one of the most important drivers of motivation. And the tougher the goal, the more vital it is for you to feel that you belong to people who understand the struggle. Here's what you should be talking about with people who can support you in your goals. The first two are...
This excellent article is one of what I hope to be a series of perspectives from clients, potential clients, athletes, and regular folks about their experiences with their bodies, behavior, and mindset around health and fitness. Andrea Ellen is a force of nature and I want to thank her publicly for...
If there is one problem that leads more people to ruin than anything else, it’s that we think we’re pretty smart. It’s a problem so pervasive in social science that it has a name. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is an identified cognitive bias that people who do not know a lot about a topic tend to think...
Originally posted on Hello Healthy, the MyFitnessPal blog Did you know: gyms are at their highest capacity in March, not January? Why? Because, no matter how ambitious we get with our New Year’s resolutions, it takes the weather getting warm and the thought of wearing that bikini or a pair of...
Originally posted on Hello Healthy, the MyFitnessPal blog You’re home on a Saturday. You’re hungry. Your kids are hungry. So you go to the pantry to make a healthy snack and the only thing you have is a box of stale Lucky Charms and soon-to-expire milk. It takes a series of less-than-stellar...
When I do workshops on habit-formation, people react to the information in a number of ways that I’ve gotten used to seeing. One type of reaction (that I see a lot with fitness buffs) is what I call the, “Tim Ferriss Reaction,” aka “how do I hack this?” These people love the system for fostering...
Last year I had two clients, a couple, that hired me to help them change their nutrition habits and hopefully lose some fat. They actually had ambitious goals (sub-10% body fat for a gentleman who could have voted for Hubert Humphrey is pretty ambitious), and I agreed to work with them. The reason...
My weird little career means I visit a lot of gyms. It also means I have seen a lot of gym T-shirts. Gym T-shirts fall broadly into these categories: Ed Hardy Hard-ons Inside jokes no one outside the 200 members will get The vaguely misogynist/homophobic The over-the-top patriotic Well-designed,...
As a exercise psych guy, this time of year is very busy for me. This is the time of year I get the most emails that contains the words, “goals,” “resolutions,” “core,” “tone,” “marathon,” and “pounds.” They started a few weeks ago and their numbers are climbing daily. But I have a confession. For...