How to train your brain to embrace exercise and stick to a fitness routine

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The mindset you bring to exercise really matters. Simply adjusting yours can be an important step towards turning yourself into a consistent exerciser.

The mindset you bring to exercise really matters. Simply adjusting yours can be an important step towards turning yourself into a consistent exerciser.

If you have a job that makes you sit at a desk most of the time, by the end of the workday you might feel stiff and exhausted.

At that point, “it might seem overwhelming to drum up the energy to then go work out,” said Danielle Boles, a behavioural psychologist who studies the impact of mindset on behaviour. But what if you could flip that state of mind around?

“The other mindset would be, ‘I’ve been sitting all day, I cannot wait to move,’” Boles said. In both cases, she added, the situation is the same – only the framing is different.

The mindset you bring to exercise really matters. Simply adjusting yours can be an important step towards turning yourself into a consistent exerciser.

In a study published in 2021, Boles found that people starting an exercise class who were told to focus on fun, relaxation and social connection were less likely to skip class than those who were instead given general information about public health recommendations related to exercise.

Other research has shown that giving yourself credit for exercise can help you build good habits. For a study published in 2023, Octavia Hedwig Zahrt, a Stanford University doctoral student, recruited 162 moderately active adults who were not tracking their physical activity and gave them watches to monitor their steps. It’s a common experimental design, but this one had a twist: Some participants received step-trackers that gave accurate step counts; others received trackers rigged to either overcount or undercount steps by 40 per cent.

After five weeks, members of the group given deflated step counts not only reported reduced self-esteem and mental health, but also found that their blood pressure and heart rate increased and their diets deteriorated from eating more high fat foods and less produce.

Psychologists sometimes call this the “what the hell effect”…

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